CANNES2025 - remote notes

OSCAR EXPERT'S 'BROTHER BRO' - SIRAT by Oliver LAXE his favorite so far

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IMAGE FROM SIRAT

This YOUTUBE VIDEO (for channel subscribers) from Oscar Expert "brother bro" Justin Jaeger is interesting not for details but as an on-the-scene set of reactions. He loved SOUND OF FALLING by Mascha SCHILINSKI, sees it as a tone piece or "a tapestry" with layers of meaning. He has watched it twice and will review it in detail. It is "impeccably well crafted," and "a must-see Cannes film." He said some people thought TWO PROSECUTORS by Sergei LOZNITSA "a snooze" and it was "slow-paced" but he thought it was "very sophisticated" and obviously relevant as a "deconstruction of fascism" seen through the pursuit of a legal case. Later he posted a sit-down review of SIRAT.

He saw PROMISED SKY/PROMIS LE CIEL by Erige SEHIRI, the opening Un Certain Regard film and thought it had "very good performaces" and was "solid" and a "touching and important immigrant story." But he was half asleep for it and will not review it. DOSSIER 137 by Dominik MOLL "was good" and was "very straightforward" but he "actually" didn't think it belonged in the Cannes Festival and will not review it. LEFT-HANDED GIRL (in Critics' Week) was co-written by Sean Baker; he could not remember the director (Shih-Ching Tsou) but found it "Tender, sweet, funny, entertaining... very good" and the "third act kind of blowing up in. your face" reminded him of TANGERINE. (The story is of a single mother and her two daughters who relocate from China to Taipei to open a night market stall and strive to make ends meet. He will review it but won't go into much detail. Ben Konigsberg discusses it in more detail on ROGEREBERT.com.)

On a whole other level for 'brother bro' was SIRAT by Oliver LAXE, which he declares "fucking rips." "It is not a film for everybody," but "riveting, and a joy," and in the second half he felt "existential terror." He is most excited about SIRAT so far, enthusiastic about its powerful suspense and its soundtrack, which begins with the sounds of a music festival in the desert, then takes us out into the desert itself with the cast and "you feel that score rippling through your bones,." Clearly SIRAT is his favorite so far. (It depicts a small group searching for a rave in the desert at an apocalyptic time and a father searching for a child lost at a rave.)

THE PLAGUE by Charlie POLINGER | 1st film (Un Certain Regard) was "pretty excellent" and he'll give it an 8 or manybe a 9; concerns bullying and exclusion among boys where a shy boy's anxiety spirals into psychological turmoil when at a summer water polo camp. He found the child performances some of the best performances he has seen at the festival. His reaction to NZO by Laurent Cantet, directed by Robin Campillo - opening film was somewhat lukewarm. With CHRONOLOGY OF WATER by Kristen Stewart he felt "her voice was very strong with "free flowing" motion and editing that is "quite striking." EDDINGTON by Ari Aster he found quire worthless but then in response to some reallly liking it provided a longer comment. So there you have a first report of 10 films in which "brother bro" shows his considerable festival stamina and composure.

RENOIR (Chie Hayakawa) in Competition

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HIKARI ISHIDA IN RENOIR

This Japanese Cannes Competition film about the story of 11-year-old Fuki who "experiences the turbulence of loneliness, sexual curiosity, and the pain of her dying father over one summer in Tokyo," was reviewed by Clarance Tsui of SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST and this Japanese film was singled out by Peter Bradshaw among the first half of Cannes films he's seen. It features the superb Lily Franky as the aging, dying father of 11-year-old Fuki, who suffers from a lack of affect in this examination of of death and Japan's moral anorexia and turns to the supernatural and art (including Renoir) to escape. . Tsui found excellent acting and a piquant subject here. Hayakawa's debut film, PLAN 75, depicts a dystopia in which the elderly are encouraged to participate in a state-sponsored euthanasia programme "to make the country young again." RENOIR is set in the 1980's but looks for the origins of the "twisted social norms" that would make PLAN 75 happen, Tsui says. Bradshaw mentions RENOIR favorably in one of his short videos but has not published a review of it yet.

LEO AND BOB, THE HONORARY LIFETIME PALME D'OR

This was a few nights ago, but everyoe knows Leonardo Di Caprio presented the honorary Palme d'Or to Robert De Niro. on Tuesday. They were both very eloquent. Thanks to YouTube, we can watch them.
Leonardo Di Capro's speech
Robert De Niro's speech

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Here is De Niro's speech:

In my country, we are fighting like hell for the democracy we once took for granted. That affects all of us here because the arts are democratic. Art is inclusive, it brings people together. Art embraces diversity and that’s why art is a threat, that’s why we are a threat to autocrats and fascists.

America’s philistine president has had himself appointed head of one of our premier cultural institutions. He has cut funding and support to the arts, humanities and education. And now he has announced a 100% tariff on films produced outside of the U.S. Let that sink in. … You can’t put a price on creativity, but apparently you can put a tariff on it.

This is not just an American problem, it’s a global one. We can’t all just sit back and watch. We have to act and we have to act now, not with violence but with great passion and determination. It’s time for everyone who cares about liberty to organize, to protest — and when there are elections, of course, to vote. Tonight and for the next 11 days we show our strength and commitment by celebrating art in this glorious festival. Libérté, égalité, fraternité!.

TWO TOUGH CHARACTER STUDIES FROM BRITISH DIRECTORS, ONE NEW, ONE VETERAN

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FRANK DILLANE IN URCHIN

URCHIN (Harris Dickinson) - directorial debut

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Wendy Ide of SCREEN DAILY signals a "boldly creative" directorial debut of the 28-year-old English actor in an addiction study of a young man with surprising leavening moments of levity and beauty. Frank Dillane plays the lead, with Dickinson himself in a small role. Dickenson draws on his own experience of volunteer work with homeless charities in North London for the story, Ide reports, which focuses on a young man who has been living in London for years with crime and addiction problems who is trying to get his life together, with mixed results. Peter Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN, awarding four out of five stars, calls it "a strong, singular and sometimes surrealist" debut with "a superb central turn" by Dillane. "The ending is downbeat, but like much in the film, it is infused with an unexpected beauty," Ide writes. Dickinson has always seemed astute to me; its not surprising that he'd score behind the camera, or that he would choose a tough subject and direct an outstanding performance.

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JENNIFER LAWRENCE IN DIE MY LOVE

DIE MY LOVE (Lynne Ramsey) - fifth feature

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The Scottish auteur, in her first feature in eight years, provides "a ferociously intense study of a lonely, passionate woman and her descent into bipolar disorder," Bradshaw reports (awarding four out of five stars). Playing "a new mother unravelling in terrifying fashion" Jennifer Lawrence is "the match that lights Ramsey's gripping, slow-burn fifth feature," says Tim Grierson in SCREEN DAILY. She gives "a no-holds-barred performance that careens between disturbed reality and disturbing fantasy," writes David Romney in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, in a combustible, difficult marriage with husband played by Robert Pattinson. This adaptation of a 2012 novel by Ariana Marwicz "quickly reveals new layers, examining mental health and the passionate bond between volatile lovers that’s so feverish it can sometimes make them feel like they’re losing their minds," writes Grierson. Ramsay "brings the Gothic-realist steam heat, some violent shocks and deafening music slams to this movie, adapted by her with co-writers Alice Birch and Enda Walsh," says Bradshaw. The action takes place in a rambling Montana house where Lawrence, descending into bi-polar disorder, is left alone all day. Ramsey's style is to project a style of "overwhelming muscular strength," Bradshaw writes. Sissy Spacek is present as Jackson's (Lawrence's character's) mother, with Nick Nolte as her husband, who has dementia. Mixed scores for this one on the Cannes jury grid of which EDDINGTON is at the bottom.

THE CANNES JURY GRID

Jury Grid at day six: TWO PROSECUTORS remains at the top with 3.0, followed by THE SOUND OF FALLING and THE SECRET AGENT with 2.8, then NOUVELLE VAGUE. DIE MY LOVE, RENOIR and SIRAT are all at 2.5. Still 13 more films to come.

https://www.screendaily.com/cannes-jury-grid

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BENICIO DEL TORO AND MIA THREAPLETON IN THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME

THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME (Wes Anderson) - 12th feature - Cannes in Competition

Wes is more Wes than ever, reports are, but more warm and accessible than in recent outings in his well-received 2025 Cannes Competition debut THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME. The focus is on an unscrupulous Fifties multi-millionaire played by Benicio del Toro who has made his pile selling arms and such. Now he wants to leave his wealth to his daughter (played by Kate Winslet’s daughter Mia Threapleton) who is about to become a nun, and she is thinking it over. Many notable cast members deliver dialogue with Wes rapidity and chill. There is the requisite precise and handsome sound design and a score again by Alexandre Desplat. Familiar faces and some new ones are to be seen. It's "a dense but undeniably enjoyable saga" says Peter Debruge in VARIETY, that "doubles as a moving father-daughter tale and ultimately seems far more interested in exploring the robber baron spirit of 20th-century capitalism than its consequences." Inspired by former moguls like J. Paul Getty, J.P. Morgan and Anderson’s own late father-in-law, Lebanese construction mogul Fouad Mikhael Malouf. Actors new to the Wes crew include Michael Cera (who was right all along), Riz Ahmed, and Mia Threapleton, who plays the daughter.

PILLION (Harry Lighton) - 1st film - Un Certain Regard

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HARRY MELLING AND ALEXANDER SKARSGARD IN PILLION

This gay (coming-of-age?) film feature debut set in the commuter town of Bromley outside London adapts Adam Mars-Jones' 2020 novella Box Hill (an ironic title since Box Hill is the location of a pivotal scene in Jane Austen's Emma).The presence of Alexander Skarsgard will garner attention as no doubt will its explicit sex, says Nikki Braughan in her SCREEN DAILY review, "although Lighton’s own light yet confident approach is what drives Pillion forward." Harry Melling (a Harry Potter actor) is the other lead in this film already sold to the US (A24) and the UK (Picturehouse). Colin (Melling) has gay-friendly salt-of-the-earth working class parents, Pete (Douglas Hodge) and Peggy (Lesley Sharp) with whom he still lives. He sings in a cornily costumed barbershop quarted with his dad. He meets tall handsome biker Ray (Skarsgard) at a pub. The proper bourgeois gay relationship Collin and his parents may expect doesn't happen: licking his boots on Christmas Day is their first date and young traffic warden Collin becomes Ray's live-in submissive "expected to meet all of Ray’s domestic and sexual needs," reports Peter Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN (four out of five stars), who describes PILLION as "funny and touching and alarming" and "like a cross between Alan Bennett and Tom of Finland" with "a tiny smidgen" of "a BDSM Wallace and Gromit" and "what Fifty Shades of Grey should have been." David Rooney in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER says the leads are "fearless" in the "graphic but surprisingly tender study of a sub/dom queer romance" that is "less about the shock factor of some very graphic gay kink than the nuances of love, desire and mutual needs within a sub/dom relationship."

THE SECRET AGENT (Kleber Mendoça Filho) - Competition

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WAGNER MOURA IN THE SECRET AGENT

Wendy Ide says in SCREEN DAILY that O AGENTE SECRETO (the Brazilian title) is "a sweat-soaked riot of a movie." It's also a "period politifcal thriler about a widowed father," Marcelo ("Narcos" star Wagner Moura), "whose life is in danger," explains David Rooney in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER., a left-leaning academic and technology expert in trouble in 1977 Brazil who flees back to his birthplace near Recife with his 8-year-old son (probbably a stand-in for the director) using an assumed name. A well-connected government official has taken a contract out on Marcelo, forcing him to seek refuge with an old woman in Recife," Peter Debruge explains in his VARIETY review. It has a recurrant hairy leg that is some kind of metaphor "for the regime’s persecution of the queer community, among other groups, including dope-smokers, longhairs and anyone else who might be automatically branded as a communist," says Rooney. But Recife is in carnival and full of violence and wildness with thousands in the streets and a mounting death toll. History and its erasure for people who arenn't rich is a theme, and Marcelo is looking for the story of his mother, while after Marcelo " negotiates the jackals of the local police" is befriended by the corrupt local police chief. It's the time of the dictatorship again (but different from I'M STILL HERE) - A lawless world where many corpses turn up. Marcelo befriends a "covert community of refugees" and meets a German with many scars played by Udo Kier. Mendoça Filho shot the picture, as he did BAKARAU, in anamorphic Panovision, and "it looks terrific." A serrous film about a terrible time but full of wild and riotous eleents. It is fun for reviewers to describe as shown by this paragraph from David Rooney's HOLLYWOOD REPORTER review: "There’s also a conjoined-twins cat, with two faces on one body; a woman experiencing demonic possession while being helped out of a movie theater showing The Omen; a less perturbed gentleman at the same screening getting a zesty blowjob in a back row while poor Lee Remick gets whacked by her Antichrist child; a kid so obsessed with Jaws he has nightmares but is too young to see the 14-certificate release; and a shark motif that even appears in an old black-and-white Popeye episode." With its run-time 160 minutes, there's obviously a lot packed into this film: you get a different impression of it in each review but the critical and Cannes audience reaction was overwhelmingly positive. Bradshaw gave it five out of five stars and called it the best film of Cannes. Only "brother bro" of YouTube didn't go for it; he has trouble with complicated plot lines and it definitely has one. This film sounds richly layered and exciting, and it has scored a North American deal, so we'll be able to see it in the US.

THE LOVE THAT REMAINS (Hlynur Pálmason) - Cannes premieres

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THE LOVE THAT REMAINS (ÁSTIN SEM EFTIR ER), a film about the (impending) end of a marriege, is the very different followup by the Icelandic director to his powerful breakthrough historical film GODLAND (2022) about an unstable Danish priest establishing a new church on the islands. His first two films, reviewed on FILMLEAF, were WINTER BROTHERS (2017) and A WHITE, WHITE DAY (2019), whose Nordic austerity lingers in the mind. Peter Bradshaw reviewed the new one for the GUARDIAN and gave it three out of five stars. His summary was that the film "examines a broken marriage through stunning imagery and quirky fantasy visions, but [its] new comic tone undermines the pain." This is a somewhat autobiographical film about a fisherman not-quite-separated from from his artist wife. His own children Ída, Grímur, and Þorgils play fictional couple’s brood. The scenes float between reality and fantasy to show the distance between the husband, Magnus, "Maggi" (Sverrir Gudnason) and his wife. There is an INDIEWIRE review by David Katz and one by Wendy Ide in SCREENDAILY. There is "A jazz-infused piano score by Harry Hunt," Ide explains, to link the "vignettes that make up the film," and its lightness echoes the narrative's "light-footed dance around its interconnected stories and moments of surreality." But Ide thinks the best parts are the ones rooted in reality.

MY FATHER’S SHADOW (Akinola Davies Jr.) - Un Certain Regard - 1st film

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GODWIN AND CHIBUKE MARVELLLOUS EGBO WITH SOPE DIRISU (CENTER) IN MY FATHER'S SHADOW

This film debuted in Un Certain Regard on Cannes day six follows a father and his two sons on a day trip to Lagos in 1993, navigating a political and social landscape on the brink of a coup. Wendy Ide in SCREENDAILY called it a "terrific semi-autobiographical first feature." It stars "Gangs of London’s" Sope Dirisu as the boys’ "magnetic" father Folarin, and is a "thrillingly vital account of the moment when everything changes," Ide wrote. Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN called it "deft and intriguing," "subtle and intelligent" and "a rich, heartfelt and rewarding movie" and he gave it four out of five stars. Ide links its use of archival footage and a "textural" sound design and child's eye POV to RaMell Ross's NICKEL BOYS while its fusion of African-infused energy and European sensibility she connects with Mati Diop and her ATLANTICS. Le Pacte has picked it up for European disribution, she notes. The film depicts a fraught time spent by the boys with their father who is away a lot for work: in this day he shows he has allies and admirers but also flirts. The end is ambiguous: did this day even happen? Ide asks. The boys ask the heavy question, is absence a sign of love? Pete Hammond for DEADLINE says this is "one of the most moving and universally relevant and emotional films of any in this year’s fest." The director won a major prize at Sundance and elsewhere for a short, and this is the proof of his promise.

NINO (Pauline Loquès) - Critics Week

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THÉODORE PELLLERIN IN NINO

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Whimsy and humor accompany a young man wandering around Paris who has learned he has throat cancer and must enter intense treatment in this surreal, adventurous debut feature whose Cannes premiere was very well received. No reviews yet by major players but here is a collective one: "Reinventing the narrative: If you thought a film following a man's weekend after discovering he's ill couldn't be charming, funny, tender, warm and thoroughly entertaining from beginning to end, journalist turned filmmaker Pauline Loquès will change your mind." Alex Heeney of SEVENTH ROW writes: "Nino beautifully and viscerally captures that strange limbo you enter when you get a serious medical diagnosis, like treatable cancer. You’re not dying, but you’re not healthy either." A French report says the room was weeping ("salle en larmes") when it ended. The star, Théodore Pellerin, is from Quebec and looks interesting.

LA VIE PRIVÉE (Rebecca Zlokowski) - Out of Competition

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JODIE FOSTER IN VIE PRIVÉE

Rebecca Zlotowski’s VIE PRIVÉE/A PRIVATE LIFE sees Jodie Foter acting in French. We know she learned to speak French at a bilingual schol in LA, and learned to speak it uncommonly well, but she hasn't had a French role since Jeunet's A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT over 20 years ago in a very small role. The cast this time includes popular French actors Virginie Efira, Mathieu Amalric, Vincent Lacoste and Luana Bajrami. The plot concerns a renowned psychiatrist called Lilian Steiner, played by Foster, an American long resident in Paris, who mounts her own private investigation into the death of one of her patients, said to be a suicide but whom she is convinced has been murdered. Peter Debruge in VARIETY says this one is "an old-school psychological mystery, the likes of which Hollywood once made in abundance, before the genre migrated to TV." Jodie Foster's "sophisticated American in Paris" he says is "an almost Hitichcockisn character." Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN also calls the film ""Hitchcockian" and gives int three out of. five stars. Pete Hammond in his DEADLINE review says Jodie is "remarkable" and this is great entertainment. It got a ten-minute standing ovation. Sony has snapped it up for US distribution.

ELEANOR THE GREAT (Scarlett Johansson) - Un Certain Regard

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RITA SOHAR AND JUNE SQUIBB IN ELEANOR THE GREAT

In this iffy directorial debut by the actress Scarlett Johansson, the 95-year-old Jane Squibb "gives an enjoyably twinkly performance" says Bradshaw in his GUARDIAN review, but this is "a film that misjudges how seriously its story should be taken." He reminds us Squibb got a "remarkable career renaissance" in 2013 with Alexander Payne's NEBRASKA. The screenplay cowritten with Tory Kamen means well, Bradshaw says, but misjudges the solemnity of the holocaust theme and also of the question of whether or not to commit one's elders to a care home. The plot leads Squbb's American-born Jewish character to pretend to be a Holocaust survivor to fit into a NYC social group, pretending to herself she is honoring late Florida best friend-roommate Bessie (Rita Zohar) who was that but never got to tell her story publicly. Bradshaw awards two out of five stars. Owen Gleiberman in VARIETY thinks the film should "have sharpened its comedy more," but the direction is just neutral and the material "often seems to have come out of a screenwriting processor." He shows Eleanor is an entertaining but unsympathetic character. Rude elders and Holocaust fraud sound like a dangerous combination. Gleiberman doesn't buy that Eleanor is fraudulently assuming her dead friend's identity out of grief; he thinks she just greatly enjoys being the center of attention. Maybe Scarlett Johansson was unwise to choose this screenplay.

EAGLES OF THE REPUBLIC نسر الجمهورية (Tarek Saleh) - In Competition

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In this Saleh completes his Cairo trilogy, mostly shot elsewhere because he has been banned for his explicitness about contemporary Egyptian life and politics. EAGLES OF THE REPUBLIC was shot in Istanbul, Turkey with post-production in Gothenberg. It runs 128 mins. Tim Grierson for SCREENDAILY, who describes this film very favorably as as "A darkly amusing look at a dysfunctional film shoot which becomes a terse thriller," says the first two panels of the trilogy show orruption and paranoia coursing through Egyptian society. The third sharpens its knife focusing on the principled actor who finds how easy it is to make the film the regime wants. Again Saleh uses Lebanese-Swedish actor Fares Fares in the lead. This time the story is more satirical, depicting how George, a vain aging star of Egyptian movies, is seduced (and coerced) into portraying an over-flattering portrait of President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, even though he disapproves of him. Alexandre Desplat has joined a top level company along with Pierre Aim’s cinematography and Roger Rosenberg’s production design to provide the score. Jordan Mintzer of HOLLYWOOD REPORTER calls the film "dark and clever." Mintzer says Saleh occupies an "intriguing middle ground," making a film that is highly entertaining while also having a lot ot say about contemporary politics. But EAGLES OF THE REPUBLIC isn't much of a blip on the SCREENDAILY Cannes Jury grid - 1.8, just above EDDINGTON.

IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT یک تصادف ساده (Jafar Panahi) - In Competition

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(Originally entitled A SIMPLE ACCIDENT.) Premise: "Vahid kidnaps a man with a false leg who resembles the man who tortured him in prison and ruined his life." World renouned Iranian dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi is at Cannes in person for the first time isince 2003 for what is more a comedy and much more a reallistic story than usual lately. It's about a man who, driving at night, hits a dog, then has his car break down and must seek a mechaic. A man starts to follow him. Vahid is a guy who follows the driver home and kidnaps him in his van for the reason already given. A group of victims of this man, called Eghbal, Pegleg, now gather. There are droll and human touches while the endsmble considers murdering their torturer, but they aren't sure he is that. Lots of single shots and specific action detail. The dp is Amin Jafari — who shot Jafar's son Panah Panahi's wpnderful 2021 debut HIT THE ROAD. This reminds me of the 2025 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema film GHOST TRAIL/ LES FANTÔMES (Jonathan Millet 2024), about a man seeking to hunt down his prison torturer. "Subtly plotted like a good thriller, the movie slowly but surely builds into a stark condemnation of abusive power and its long-lasting effects," says Jordan Mintzer in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. In 2003 when Panahi was allowed free travel last it was when his CRIMSON GOLD won the Un Certain Regard prize. (My first festival look at Panhi was the NYFF, 2006, for OFFSIDE, a vivid film that used vérité filming at an actual game to dramatize, as I put it, "the disconnect between modern world soccer madness and retro-Islamic social prohibitions repressing women." Maybe IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT was the most important Cannes film of the day, and got a 3.0 on the Cannes Jury Grid - the highest score so far.

ALPHA (Julia Ducournau). - In Competition

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MELISSA BOROS AS "ALPHA"

Two years ago Julia Ducournau won the Palme d'Or for the horror-drama film TITANE, becoming the second female winner and first all by herself; Jane Campion shared the award with Chen Kaige in 1993. This year she uses the same attention-getting maximalism as in TITANE for an AIDS-rellated sci-fi allegory, one of three at Cannes this year. Her film Peter Debruge says in VARIETY, "at once bluntly obvious and maddeningly unclear." A 13-year-old is in danger from a crude tattoo received at a party. Golshifteh Farahani plays her mother. The disease, which is killing her addict brother (played by a drastically thin Tahar Rahim), causes victims to "cough a chalky powder as their bodies slowly turn to stone", while the broken stone still oozes and bleeds. Debruge says it is "painful to watch" Farahani and Rahim, "among the most gifted performers of their generation," forced to put so much into roles that are common and clichéd "by American indie standsrds." The film, says Stephanie Bumbury of DEADLINE, takes place largely at "clubs filled with multiply pierced human wrecks, living it up while waiting to die." The images are in extremely desaturated color. Jordan Mintzer of HOLLYWOOD REPORTER calls thie film "arrestingly original and numbingly ove-the-top." Peter Debruge simiply calls it "rotten." The Jury grid score is 1.5, the same as EDDINGTON, the bottom rung of Competition films this year so far. (Later beaten by Mario Martone's FUORI with a 1.0.)

THE RICHEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD (Thierry Kifa) - Out of Competition

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ISABELLE HUPPERT, MARINA FOÏS IN THE RICHEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD

La femme la plus riche du monde (the French title) is a megawealthy downfall drama (aoubt one woman giving away a lot of her wealth to another) loosely based on the 2010 Bettencourt l'Oreal heiress empire Affair. Jessica Kiang VARIETY finds it "middling," unworthy of Isabelle Huppert, the star, playing the titular woman, but simultaneiously ideally suited to her. She is great at playing the rich and spoiled. This was shown with VISITING HOURS/LA PRISONNIÈRE DE BORDEAUX (Patricia Mazuy, 2024)at Rendez-Vous with French Cinema earlier this year; and there are plenty of others. Reviews found that despite some dark jokes about the gilded cage of the rich,this film isn't sharp enough,lacks the necessary edge, the "Successon" energy, and can't "make this battle for power deliciously devious" ("https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-richest-woman-in-the-world-review-isabelle-huppert-drama-plays-on-a-notorious-real-life-loreal-heir/5205245.article") or alternately "surprisingly sympathetic and nuanced." Tim Grierson in SCREENDAILY however says the film "boasts the dependable pleasures of watching wealthy people plot and scheme," and one might add simply watching how it looks to be super rich: it's like a 21st-century version of the 1001 Nights. But GRierson admits it "lacks the killer instinct." With Isabelle Huppert in it, one might be willing to watch it anyway, but Kiang's review is pretty damning.