CANNES 2023 - remote notes

Cannes Film Festival May 16-27, 2023

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JOHNNY DEPP AS KING LOUIS XV IN THE CANNES OPENING FILM, MAÏWENN'S JEANNE DU BERRY

A stellar lineup (as usual) includes new films by Martin Scorsese, Todd Haynes, and Wes Anderson

Cannes. First look.
The festival is off and running and Johnny Depp got an ovation for playing a French king for a few minutes, his "comeback." There are new films by Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, Jonathan Glazer, Todd Haynes. Harrison Ford is to be seen doing his last turn in the "Indiana Jones" franchise. This probably will be Ken Loach's last film; but Wim Wenders'? Will it be his?

There are also big international names such as Aki Kaurismäki, Nanni Moretti, Catherine Breillat, Alice Rohrwacher. There's the Turkish heavyweight Nuri Bilge Ceylan, the remarkable Marco Bellocchio, who's 83, the cultish Takeshi Kitano. A more sOlemn Japanese master, back for the first time since PARASITE won the Palme d'Or in 2019, IS Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose new film “Monster” is the first film he has shot in Japan since his Palme winner “Shoplifters.” Martin Provost, who has celebrated midwifery and the towering wartime female FRench writer Violette Leduc, not has one about the universally loved painter of interiors, PIerre Bonnard. Lisando Alsnso who produced the haunting, unforgettable LOS MUERTOS, is back. The challenging and powerful UK black auteur Steve McQueen has something that runs four hours. Almodóvar has something very short! Con Ethan Hawke. And much, much more.

But maybe the best of Cannes is the films from names we don't know yet. Because what comes in this most hallowed and exciting of the world's cinematic festival venues always matters.

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Maïwenn's movie was inspired by Sofia Coppola's where the character of Jenne du Berry was played by Asia Argento. Here Maïwenn plays her herself. It's also got Louis Garrel and Melvil Poupaud in it. It may be mediocre, but it is also sumptuous. TRAILER.

Cannes Film Festival May 16-27, 2023

A stellar lineup (as usual) includes new films by Martin Scorsese, Todd Haynes, and Wes Anderson

LIST OF THE MAIN FESTIVAL FILMS (subject to update):

IN COMPETITION

JEANNE DU BARRY by MAÏWENN – Opening Film Out of Competition
CLUB ZERO by Jessica HAUSNER
THE ZONE OF INTEREST by Jonathan GLAZER
KUOLLEET LEHDET (FALLEN LEAVES) by Aki KAURISMAKI
LES FILLES D’OLFA (FOUR DAUGHTERS) by Kaouther BEN HANIA
ASTEROID CITY by Wes ANDERSON
ANATOMIE D’UNE CHUTE (ANATOMY OF A FALL) by Justine TRIET
KAIBUTSU (MONSTER) by KORE-EDA Hirokazu
IL SOL DELL’ AVVENIRE (A BRIGHTER TOMORROW) by Nanni MORETTI
L’ÉTÉ DERNIER (LAST SUMMER) by Catherine BREILLAT
KURU OTLAR USTUNE (ABOUT DRY GRASSES) by Nuri Bilge CEYLAN
LA CHIMERA by Alice ROHRWACHER
LA PASSION DE DODIN BOUFFANT (THE POT–AU–FEU) by TRAN ANH Hùng
RAPITO (KIDNAPPED) by Marco BELLOCCHIO
QING CHUN (YOUTH) by WANG Bing
MAY DECEMBER by Todd HAYNES
THE OLD OAK by Ken LOACH
BANEL E ADAMA by Ramata-Toulaye SY | 1st film
PERFECT DAYS by Wim WENDERS
FIREBRAND by Karim AÏNOUZ
BLACK FLIES by Jean-Stéphane SAUVAIRE
LE RETOUR(HOMECOMING). by Catherine CORSINI
ELEMENTAL by Peter SOHN – Closing Film Out of Competition

UN CERTAIN REGARD

LE RÈGNE ANIMAL by Thomas CAILLEY – Opening Film
LOS DELINCUENTES by Rodrigo MORENO
(THE DELINQUENTS)
HOW TO HAVE SEX by Molly MANNING WALKER | 1st film
GOODBYE JULIA by Mohamed KORDOFANI | 1st film
KADIB ABYAD (THE MOTHER OF ALL LIES) by Asmae EL MOUDIR
SIMPLE COMME SYLVAIN by Monia CHOKRI
(THE NATURE OF LOVE)
CROWRÃ by João SALAVIZA, Renée NADER MESSORA
(THE BURITI FLOWER)
LOS COLONOS by Felipe GÁLVEZ | 1st film
(THE SETTLERS)
OMEN by BALOJI | 1st film
(AUGURE)
RAN DONG (THE BREAKING ICE) by Anthony CHEN
ROSALIE by Stéphanie DI GIUSTO
THE NEW BOY by Warwick THORNTON
IF ONLY I COULD HIBERNATE by Zoljargal PUREVDASH | 1st film
HWA–RAN (HOPELESS) by KIM Chang-hoon | 1st film
AYEH HAYE ZAMINI by Ali ASGARI, Alireza KHATAMI
(TERRESTRIAL VERSES)RIEN À PERDRE by Delphine DELOGET | 1st film
LES MEUTES by Kamal LAZRAQ | 1st film
(HOUNDS)
HE BIAN DE CUO WU by WEI Shujun
(ONLY THE RIVER FLOWS)
SALEM by Jean-Bernard MARLIN
UNE NUIT by Alex LUTZ – Closing Film Out of Competition
(STRANGERS BY NIGHT)

OUT OF COMPETITION

INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY by James MANGOLD
GEO–MI–JIP by KIM Jee-woon
(COBWEB)
THE IDOL by Sam LEVINSON
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON by Martin SCORSESE
L’ABBÉ PIERRE – UNE VIE DE COMBATS by Frédéric TELLIER

MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS

KENNEDY by Anurag KASHYAP
OMAR LA FRAISE by Elias BELKEDDAR | 1st film
(THE KING OF ALGIERS)
ACID by Just PHILIPPOT
HYPNOTIC by Robert RODRIGUEZ
PROJECT SILENCE by KIM Tae-gon

CANNES PREMIERE

KUBI by Takeshi KITANO
BONNARD, PIERRE AND MARTHE by Martin PROVOST
CERRAR LOS OJOS (CLOSE YOUR EYES) by Victor ERICE
LE TEMPS D’AIMER (ALONG CAME LOVE) by Katell QUILLÉVÉRÉ
PERDIDOS EN LA NOCHE (LOST IN THE NIGHT) by Amat ESCALANTE
L’AMOUR ET LES FORÊTS (JUST THE TWO OF US) by Valérie DONZELLI
EUREKA by Lisandro ALONSO

SPECIAL SCREENINGS

MAN IN BLACK by WANG Bing
OCCUPIED CITY by Steve MCQUEEN
ANSELM by Wim WENDER
RETRATOS FANTASMAS by Kleber MENDONÇA FILHO
(PICTURES OF GHOSTS)
LITTLE GIRL BLUE by Mona ACHACHE
BREAD AND ROSES by Sahra MANI
LE THÉORÈME DE MARGUERITE by Anna NOVION
(MARGUERITE’S THEOREM)
AS FILHAS DO FOGO by Pedro COSTA | Short Movie
(THE DAUGHTERS OF FIRE)
EXTRANA FORMA DE VIDA by Pedro ALMODÓVAR | Short Movie
(STRANGE WAY OF LIFE)

Cannes....

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HOMECOMING (CATHERINE CORSINI)

For daily coverage check out The Film Verdict which gives scheduled first screenings:

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17 MARCH
19.00 MONSTER
by KORE-EDA HIROKAZU
22.15 HOMECOMING
by CATHERINE CORSINI

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Cannes...

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OCCUPIED CITY (STEVE MCQUEEN)

JEANNE DU BARRY (Maïwenn).
In his review for the GUARDIAN lead critic Peter Bradshaw gives it a 3/5. He calls it "a preposterous confection of a movie, like one of the rich sweetmeats being languidly nibbled at court. . ." but adds that it's :handsomely furnished: and "costumed with blue-chip character actors in the supporting roles" and features "wonderful locations" and "interiors at the Palace of Versailles itself." Not coming here anytime soon, though.

OCCUPIED CITY (Steve McQueen)
This "moving meditation on wartime Amsterdam" gets five stars from Bradshaw. It's a monumental, patient depiction of day-to-day life under Nazi rule based on McQueen's wife Bianca Stigter’s Dutch-language book Atlas of an Occupied City, Amsterdam 1940-1945. The four-hour film shows contemporary images of places in the city while narrating what happened in them under Nazi occupation. The effect is to "ask hard questions of what we think about the gulf between past and present," show us the past ain't so far away after all.

TIGER STRIPES (Amanda Nell Eu)
This is Bradshaw's 3rd Cannes 2023 review, a film by a Malasian filmmaker that depicts a repressive girls school and focuses on a natural rebel and is a "supernatural-realist drama and coming-of-age chiller" about the female body and sexuality, "with hints of Brian De Palma, David Cronenberg and Apichatpong Weerasethakul." It's "a bit derivitive" and "sometimes seems to be treading water in narrative terms" but nonetheless provides a "very woozy and hallucinatory experience."

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TIGER STRIPES (AMANDA NELL EU)

Cannes...

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ANSELM (WIM WENDERS)

ANSELM (Wim Wenders)
Wim Wenders’ "reverent 3D portrait of artist Anselm Kiefer" writes Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN, gets four stars from him. "The creator of paintings, photographs, colossal installations and illustrated book artefacts is celebrated but in some quarters criticised for his engagement with German fascism and the Holocaust, mediated through his lifelong love for the poetry of Paul Celan." Shows Kiefer's 40-hectare studio in the South of France that's virtually "his own city state." A TRAILER showing Kiefer riding around another studio on a bike shows the ateliers may even be more jaw-droppingly monumental evan than the paintings. Looks like a "wow" of an art doc. This may also make you run to refuge in the upcoming [I]Close to Vermeer for contrast and solace... Small really is beautiful, ain't it? The film doesn't show assistants, but Kiefer obviously has used an army of them.

STRANGE WAY OF LIFE/ESTRAÑA FORMA DE VIDA (Pedro Almodóvar)
It gets four stars from Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN, who says "Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke sizzle in Almodóvar’s queer cowboy yarn." It's an "entertaining divertissement," a 30-minute short that's a "queer western with a hint of kink." "There is some very robust and old-fashioned storytelling here." It is "certainly good to see Almodóvar back in the saddle at Cannes." But are we ready for a gay Western - even now? TRAILER Sony Pictures Classics.

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STRANGE WAY OF LIFE (PEDRO PASCAL)

Cannes... new headlines and previews

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MONSTER (KORE-EDA)

From the GUARDIAN:

Homecoming review – Catherine Corsini’s tragic family drama misses an inner life - two stars (Bradshaw).

Monster review – 'Hirokazu Kore-eda’s hydra of modern morals and manners' - four stars (Bradshaw). Monster Review: "Kore-eda Hirokazu Hides Surprise Plea for Acceptance Beneath Much Darker Themes" - Peter Debruge, Variety. Action revolves around a fire, and at the end we find out who set it.

Youth review – heart-stopping stories in China’s sweatshop capital - four stars (Bradshaw). Doc by Wang Bing (Dead Souls, Cannes Special Screening 2018). "Exceptional" (Deadline), "unflinching" (Variety).

The Delinquents review (Rodrigo Moreno) – beguilingly surreal slow-motion Buenos Aires [bank] heist tale. "If Pedro Almodóvar and Eric Rohmer teamed up to compose a meanderingly long crime caper it might look like this" - five stars (Bradshaw)

More details later today.

Cannes...

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PHOEBE WALLER0BRIDGE AND HARRISON FORD

INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (James Mangold) - "Harrison Ford cracks the whip in taut sequel. . . There’s still much to dig about the octogenarian archeologist as he teams up with Phoebe Waller-Bridge to re-defeat the Nazis....Indiana Jones still has a certain old-school class." Three stars (Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN)

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THE DELINQUENTS

THE DELINQUENTS (Rodrigo Moreno) – beguilingly surreal slow-motion Buenos Aires [bank] heist tale. "If Pedro Almodóvar and Eric Rohmer teamed up to compose a meanderingly long crime caper it might look like this" - five stars (Bradshaw reviewing the 3-hour Buenos Aires film for the GUARDIAN.)

ANIMAL KINGDOM by Thomas Cailley imagines another kind of covid."While the world was grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic, French director Thomas Cailley (2014's LOVE AT FIRST FIGHT) was imagining another kind of coronavirus, one he’d cooked up before the crisis, but which suddenly took on new real-world relevance. In “The Animal Kingdom,” a mysterious malady is sweeping France" Featuring Romain Duris, Paul Kircher of Honoré's WINTER BOY, Tom Mercier of SYNONYMS and WE ARE WHO WE ARE. Peter Debruge reviews it in Variety.

Cannes...


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HOW TO HAVE SEX , MIA MCKENNA-BRUCE

HOW TO HAVE SEX review – "An education in consent for 24 hour party people
Tara and her friends decamp to a garish holiday resort on the lookout for her first sexual experience in Molly Manning Walker’s strong debut feature" - (Four stars from Peter Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN). Premiered in the Un Certain Regard section.

BLACK FLIES (SEAN PENN). "Fresh-faced rookie Tye Sheridan is led through a world of medical grimness by a grizzled Penn in a tale full of lifeless cliche... There are some strident cliches alongside redundant self-harming machismo in this sub-Schraderesque movie about New York paramedics." Directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire. Two stars from Peter Bradshaw (GUARDIAN).

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SEAN PENN, TY SHERIDAN IN BLACK FLIES

Cannes...

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HARRISON FORD RECEIVES HONORARY PALME D'OR AT CANNES (WITH THIERY FREMAUX).

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The 80-year-old veteran actor was presented with the accolade ahead of the world debut screening of his new film Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny. Harrison Ford has said he is "deeply moved and humbled" to receive an honorary Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

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Quote:

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When asked on Friday how he felt about the response of the fans on the streets and the reaction of the audience inside the gala screening, Ford’s eyes filled with tears and he found it hard to speak for some seconds.

“Indescribable,” he eventually said. “I can’t even tell you. The welcome is unimaginable and it makes me feel good.”

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Cannes...


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CATE BLANCHETT IN THE NEW BOY

THE ZONE OF INTEREST (Jonathan Glazer)
Glazer adapts Martin Amis’s chilling Holocaust drama. Focusing on the everyday domesticity of the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss’s family might only reflect the horror indirectly, but the film pulls the banality of evil into pin-sharp focus, reports Peter Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN, giving it four stars. Note: Martin Amis has just died at 73.

THE NEW BOY (Warwick Thornton)
"Cate Blanchett’s boozy nun indulges possible second coming in woozy wartime saga"...
"Blanchett in imperious zealot mode is hard to resist, but Warwick Thornton’s story of orphans and evangelists in the 40s outback never quite fulfills its promise," says Bradshaw, who gives the movie three stars in his Cannes GUARDIAN review. A minor effort from the hitherto interesting Australian director., says Bradshaw, who gives it three stars.

BANEL & ADAMA (Ramata-Toulaye Sy)
This Senegalese village love story with echoes of Romeo and Juliet is Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s Cannes Competition debut film, which pairs reluctant chief Adama and troublesome widow Banel as they battle local hostility to continue their relationship - A FILM " with relevant things to say about community, a woman’s place and the climate crisis", it gets three stars from Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN.

Cannes...

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STILL FROM ABOUT DRY GRASSES

ABOUT DRY GRASSES (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
An "absorbing, Chekhovian drama of a teacher-pupil crisis" says the GUARDIAN, giving this challenging 3 hour 17 minute potentially controversial Competition film by the notable Turkish director four stars. "Nuri Bilge Ceylan Paints the Minutiae of Misanthropy on a Vast, Ravishing Canvas" says Guy Lodge in Variety. The subject is an ethically bankrupt rural high school art teacher, a "a cynical, manipulative monster" (Lee Marshall, ScreenDaily) accused (justifiably) of sexual predation of a girl student. It's said that this may be an even harder to take film from this hard to take filmmaker, but as, I guess, a fan, this sounds absolutely fascinating - and highly relevant to this post-#MeTo world.

Cannes...

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ROBERT DENIRO AND LEONARDO DICAPRIO

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (Martin Scorsese)
Bradshaw: "Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Lily Gladstone star in this macabre western about serial murders among the Osage tribe in 1920s Oklahoma, which reflects the erasure of Native Americans from the US. . . Martin Scorsese’s western true-crime thriller is about the US’s Osage murders of the early 1920s, based on the nonfiction bestseller by David Grann. With co-writer Eric Roth, Scorsese crafts an epic of creeping, existential horror about the birth of the American century, a macabre tale of quasi-genocidal serial killings which mimic the larger erasure of Native Americans from the US." It's "an instant American classic." Five stars from Bradshaw. GUARDIAN. Peter Debruge (Variety) judges it to be "overlong" but "never slow." David Rooney (Hollywood Reporter) calls it "epic" and "searing." Also with Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser.

FOUR DAUGHTERS (Kaouther Ben Hania)
(GUARDIAN:) "Fact and fiction mix in mother’s heartbreak over Islamic State... Actors and real people re-enact the past to understand why two daughters left Tunisia to fight for IS in Syria, leaving the rest of the family behind". A unique hybrid "metafiction" (as Jessica Kiang calls it in her Variety review) with a troubling topic, for sure, but only three stars from Bradshaw. Kiang gives a through description and may like FOUR DAUGHTERS rather better. She says it "may operate better on a scene-to-scene basis than as a holistic narrative," but that "within those individual scenes there are plosive little puffs of insight" that are "sometimes provocative, sometimes moving, and sometimes, unexpectedly, very funny." Not sure whether the underlying theme of having children who disappear to become terrorists is served though.

Cannes...

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NATALIE PORTMAN AND JULIANNE MOORE

MAY DECEMBER (Todd Haynes)
Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore play different angles on a tabloid enigma. Haynes explores the impossibility of ever truly knowing what motivates others" says Peter Debruge in Variety in a "layered look at the actor’s process" unfolding "as a young star attempts to understand a true-crime subject 20-odd years her senior" in preparation for a for-TV dramatization. Xian Brooks of the GUARDIAN gave it three stars, saying it's "too knowing and too glossy to drive its message home."

Cannes...

Two from Cannes Critics Week:

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(EX) PERIENCE OF LOVE

THE RAPTURE Iris Kaltenback)
A Parisian midwife takes a strange interest in her best friend’s baby in this slow-burn thriller, says Lisa Nesselson in her Screen Daily review. The person in question is played by Abdelatif Kechiche star Hafsia Herzi. "The first feature from writer/director Iris Kaltenbäck suggests she’s a talent to watch."

(EX) PERIENCE OF LOVE (Ann Sirot, Raphaël Balboni)
"A doctor advises a happy couple the best thing they can do for their relationship [to have a baby] is to track down all their exes and hook up with them again in whimsical second feature from Belgian/French filmmaking duo Ann Sirot and Raphaël Balboni," explains Catherine Bray in Variety writing about this high concept comedy that she finds "very watchable" and thinks might work well as a bigger budget US remake.

Cannes...

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THE BREAKING ICE (Anthony Chen]
The Singaporean director, here filming a kind of three-way romance on China's icy border with North Korea, exhibits "an arresting fluency and openness" and a style that owes something o the French New Wave, says Peter Bradshaw of the GUARDIAN, who gives it three stars. Both BANDE À PART and JULES ET JIM have been mentioned. Some plot points are dropped or devices make no sense but "All three performances, however, are tremendous," and Chen's filmmaking "has an arresting fluency and openness." Jeffrey Zhang in PLAYLIST says the film is "a humanist triumph." Un Certain Regard section. There is a terrific TRAILER. Magical!

In Competition:

ANATOMY OF A FALL/ANATOMIE D'UNE CHUTE (Justine Triet).
"There’s a bracing and chilly high-mindedness about Justine Triet’s psychothriller, about a suspicious death whose only reliable witness happens to be blind", says Peter Bradshaw, who gives it four stars in the GUARDIAN. That blind person is the dead man's devastated eleven-year-old son. Triet's previous films were THE AGE OF PANIC (2013), IN BED WITH VICTORIA (2016), AND SYBIL (2019). Critics admire the lead performance by Sandra Hüller as the German writer put on trial for murder when her less successful French writer husband falls to his death (it could well be a suicide). Joh Frosch in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER calls this a "rivetingly complex" drama. Peter Debruge elucidates that complexity further in VARIETY.

Special premiere:

EUREKA (Lisandro Alonso)
I loved Alonso's 2004 LOS MUERTOS and wrote one of my most passionate early rreviews. He has somewhat gotten away from me since. I understand he is considered a key figure of "slow cinema," and that JAUJA is his most"popular" and "accessible" film, but it lost me. Viggo Mortensen of JAUJA features also here in the first of three segments, in academy ratio, which turns out to be a segment of a B&W TV cowboy movie. The second part features the everyday dealings of an Indian reservation. The third shifts to an earlier time and South America. How the parts segue is complicated, perhaps cosmic. This is why Bradshaw, who gives the film four stars, calling it "a barmy yet rich experimental enigma," says it shows filmmakers aren't "storytellers" as current industry cant would have it.

Cannes...

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JUDE LAW AND ALICIA VIKANDER

FIREBRAND ( Karim Aïnouz)
Peter Debruge, writing in Variety,disapproves of the way (he says) the Brazilian director's good-looking but overly grungy first English-language film, which feels unrelated to his other work, freely adapting Elizabeth Fremantle’s The Queen's Gambit about Henry VIII's last wife Catherine Parr (Alicia Vikander, weak and underused), chooses to grossly rewrite history to serve a modern agenda. With a full-on gross-out Jude Law as the fat, pustulent king who this version makes die in a way Henry VIII didn't, to suit modern ideas, with other ahistorical changes and puzzling omissions. In the past people were beheaded for such "flagrant disregard for the facts." Bradshaw's GUARDIAN review , seeming less aware of thE historical subtleties, goes easier on it ("a watchable piece of faux history") and gives it three stars. Lots of press so far and an 8-minute standing ovation but no US distributor pickup yet. In Competition.

Cannes...


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VIRGINIE EFIRA, MELVIL POUPAUD

JUST THE TWO OF US/L'AMOUR ET LES FORETS (Valérie Donzelli)
French psychological drama starring Virginie Efira and Melvil Poupaud of a woman caught and isolated in the trap of a possessive and dangerous man. From the Gallimard novel by Éric Reinhardt. Cannes "Premieres" section, it's just out in Paris and got 3.9 (78%) on AlloCiné. L'Obs says "Donzelli delivers her most mature and accomplished film." Seems not to have gotten Cannes or English-languish reviews.

FALLEN LEAVES (Aki Kaurismäki)
Bradshaw: This "Ddeadpan Aki Kaurismäki comedy" has "springtime in its heart"; the Finnish auteur's "sweet-natured oddcouple romance," Bradshaw says, "fills you with a feel-good glow and laughs in the face of Putin’s threat to the country." He gives it four stars in his GUARDIAN review.

Cannes..

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[ASTEROID CITY (TOM HANKS, RIGHT)

ASTEROID CITY (Wes Anderson)
Peter Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN gives Anderson's Competition film four stars, calling the sci-fi "tale of earth-shattering events in a space-obsessed desert town" "an exhilarating triumph of pure style" that "leans nicely into its own artificiality," he says: "every delicious, microscopic detail is a delight." The film has a plethora of known actors including Tilda Swinton, Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johanssen and Jason Schwarzman and has a pervasive distinctive pastel-tinted look. Committed Anderson fans will of course love it, but some will be like David Rooney of HOLLYWOOD REPORTER who found it too lifeless and detached to relate to; he doesn't think Anderson himself seems all that engaged. (I have been finding the TRAILER off-putting.) David Erlich in INDIEWIRE says it's one of Anderson's best movies yet and of his comedies " the most cosmic and radical of them all." However this may be a minority critical opinion. Oswen Gleiberman in VARIETY finds the film "visually dazzling and dramatically inert." Consider: the Metacritic rating is 76%. There are some low ratings from those top writers. We'll just have to see...

The Cannes PRESS CONFERENCE FOR ASTEROID CITY was great and now I'm enthused about seeing it.

Cannes...2 Italians in Competition

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KIDNAPPED

KIDNAPPED/RAPITO (Marco Bellocchio).
Four stars from enthusiastic Bradshaw who says the "antisemitism drama" (A Jewish boy is kidnapped by the Vatican and converted to Catholicism in 1858) is "a classic in the making." He was genuinely moved by the main events of the film. "Kidnapped hides a bleak and bracing message inside lovely old costumes and sumptuous set pieces and this double nature will serve the film well both at home in Italy and abroad," says Lee Marshall in SCREEN DAILY. At 83, Bellocchio continues his lively late-stage career. his last big thing was the Aldo Moro kidnapping miniseries "Esterno Notte," in 2022, which was well-received, atms was THE TRAITOR in 2019, though the anglophone audience was less appreciative.

A BIGHTER TOMORROW/IL SOL DELL'AVENIRE (Nanni Moretti)
It's either densely complex (Lee Marshall) or "bafflingly awful" (Bradshaw), but clearly this film isn't easily summarizable, a "greatest hits" self-summary of Moretti's self-referential style film about a filmmaker in crisis. Strictly for fans, perhaps. It's Moretti's 9th film in Competition at Cannes, and Bradshaw declares his THE SON'S ROOM (2001) to be the finest Palme d'Or winner of this century so far. Moretti has a history of being very uneven. Perhaps it's hard to tell sometimes. Peter Debruge in VARIETY calls this new film "a welcome return to form" but also notes his popularity in Italy, far beyond his status elsewhere, "reminds just how far Italian cinema has fallen from its early-’60s high."

Cannes...

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ZERO CLUB

CLUB ZERO (Jessica Haussner)
In the GUARDIAN Bradshaw finds "not much to chew on in this baffling non-satire" and gives this Competition film only two stars out of five. She avoids saying anything specific about her "obvious subjects," which are "body image, eating disorders and western overconsumption." The form is a girl's school where the students are "encouraged to live without food" and anorexia becomes a cult. Bradshaw thinks Haussner's work hasn't been helped by her switch to English-language from her chilly, elegant German. Leslie Felperin in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER calls it "uneven" satire. She notes the set design and cinematography are fine but the points are poorly defined, the inexperienced young actors are inadequately directed and the dialogue frequently unidiomatic.

Cannes...

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CERRAR LOS OJOS

Lower profile Competition films and a comeback after 30 years.

CLOSE YOUR EYES/CERRAR LOS OJOS (Victor Erice)
The 82-year-old Spanish SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE director’s first feature in 30 years uses a film-within-a-film structure to ruminate on memory, aging and cinema itself in telling the enigmatic tale of a disappeared actor, recounts Peter Bradshaw, who gives in four stars in his GUARDIAN review. "There is something deeply civilized and gentle about this film,"he says, referring to late bloomers like Malick and Manoel de Oliveira. Jordan Mintzer in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER calls the film "a moving homage to the power of movies." Run time 2 hours 49 minutes: it requires patience to see it unfold. In the Cannes Premiere section.

PERFECT DAYS (Wim Wenders)
In the Competition section. Bradshaw found it a tad lightweight, but gives it three stars. "Bittersweet tale of an apparently contented toilet cleaner has an ambient urban charm, but feels a little too understated," Bradshaws wrote. Guy Lodge in VARIETY thinks it's Wenders' "best narrative film in decades." "After a long run of off-the-boil fiction features," Lodge writes. "The German veteran hits the sweet spot," Lodge says, with "this simple, touching ode to working routine and everyday human connection."

LAST SUMMER/L’ÉTÉ DERNIER (Catherine Breillat)
Her Competition film, Bradshaw says, is a "too safe" remake of 2019 Danish drama QUEEN OF HEARTS and "pointlessly draws the sting" from a "dangerous romance" with the teenage stepson. Only two stars from Bradshaw for it. But Peter Debruge in VARIETY sees this film as a strong comeback. Léa Drucker is the femme who errs, who's a lawyer, and Samuel Kircher who plays the seductive stepson, is the brother of Paul Kircher, who debuted starring in Christophe Honnoré's WNTER BOY/LE LYCÉE last year and "is every bit as formidable a new acting talent," says Debruge.

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L'ETÉ DERNIER

Cannes...

Peter Bradshaw's GUARDIAN Cannes award predictions and personal favorites:

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Palme d’Or The Zone of Interest (dir. Jonathan Glazer)
Grand Prix La Chimera (dir. Alice Rohrwacher)
Jury prize Anatomy of a Fall (dir. Justine Triet)
Best director Wang Bing, Youth
Best screenplay Aki Kaurismäki, Fallen Leaves
Best actor Jude Law, Firebrand
Best actress Sandra Hüller for Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest

Braddies for Cannes prize categories that don’t exist:

Best supporting actor Paolo Pierobon, Kidnapped
Best supporting actress Merve Dizdar, About Dry Grasses
Best cinematography Amine Berrada for Banel e Adama
Best production design Adam Stockhausen for Asteroid City

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Cannes...

VARIETY predictions by Clayton Davis for Cannes prizes.

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Palme d’Or (Golden Palm), Grand Prix (Grand Prize of the Festival), Prix du Jury (Jury Prize):

1. “Anatomy of a Fall” – Justine Triet
2. “The Zone of Interest” – Jonathan Glazer
3. “May December” – Todd Haynes
4. “Monster” – Hirokazu Kore-eda
5. “Asteroid City” – Wes Anderson

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Both ZONE OF INTEREST and ANATOMY OF A FALL star Sandra Hüller, so it's quite her moment.

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Prix de la mise en scene (best director)

1. Jonathan Glazer, “The Zone of Interest”
2. Justine Triet, “Anatomy of a Fall”
3. Todd Haynes, “May December”
4. Hirokazu Kore-eda, “Monster”
5. Alice Rohrwacher, “La Chimera”

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ZONE OF INTEREST could be lined up for multiple award slots, and move on to the Oscars, where the out of Competition Scorsese titlE KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON seems also a likely contender. See the VARIETY review of KILLERS and on the emerging stardom of Lilly Gladstone.

Cannes...on with the show

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THE OLD OAK


THE OLD OAK (Ken Loach)
His final film in Competition (he is 86); he has won two Palmes d'Or and two Jury Prizes at Cannes before. THE OLD OAK deals with prejudices against Syrian refugees surrounding the titular pub in a struggling working-class town adjacent to Durham, England. It's compassionate toward racist reactions because poor Brittons lives post-Thatcher have "gone to shit" (this is 2016, pre-Brexit). Damon Wise of DEADLINE says this movie "as as much fire and fury as his debut Poor Cow did in 1967." Bradshaw calls it "fierce' and give it four stars. Jordan Mintzer's HOLLYWOOD REPORTER review suggests this is a very moving, if sometimes schematic, film.

LA CHIMERA (Alice Rohrwacher)
Is "enchanting" (VARIETY) and "uproarious" and "captivating" and "teems with life," receiving one of only two five-star ratings from Bradshaw. It's a rollicking fantasy that features Josh O'Connor as a disheveled English archeologist now teamed up with a Felliniesque gang of grave-robbers who falls in love with the gone daughter of Isabella Rossellini. Watch the TRAILER see if it's your kind of thing.

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[SIZE=1]JOSH O'CONNOR IN LA CHIMERA

Cannes finishes ...

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JUSTINE TRIET AND SANDRA HÜLLER AT THE PALME D'OR AWARDING

Awards and summing up of Cannes 2023.

The Palme d'Or went to Justine Triet's ANATOMY OF A FALL. Triet is only the third woman to win the Palme d’Or (after Jane Campion for THE PIANO and TITANE director Julia Ducournau). Here is our summary on Triet's film again:

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ANATOMY OF A FALL/ANATOMIE D'UNE CHUTE (Justine Triet).
"There’s a bracing and chilly high-mindedness about Justine Triet’s psychothriller, about a suspicious death whose only reliable witness happens to be blind", says Peter Bradshaw, who gives it four stars in the GUARDIAN. That blind person is the dead man's devastated eleven-year-old son. Triet's previous films were THE AGE OF PANIC (2013), IN BED WITH VICTORIA (2016), AND SYBIL (2019). Critics admire the lead performance by Sandra Hüller as the German writer put on trial for murder when her less successful French writer husband falls to his death (it could well be a suicide). Joh Frosch in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER calls this a "rivetingly complex" drama. Peter Debruge elucidates that complexity further in VARIETY.

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Bradshaw says it wan't his choice and mentions "from Glazer to Kaurismäki to Wenders there was brilliant competition elsewhere." But he acknowledges FALL is "deeply intelligent and very grownup, a film whose meanings recede even as you pursue them... It absorbed and gripped me like Billy Wilder’s Witness for the Prosecution." It's not a left-field choice.

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QUENTIN TARANTINO GIVES THE GRAND PRIX TO JONATHAN GLAZER

The Grand Prix went to Jonathan Glazer's ZONE OF INTEREST. This is an obvious choice since there was a lot of buzz about this story about the manager/creator of Auschwitz living a comfy bourgeois life right next to the wall behind the incinerators. Also in a curious way a timely choice since the author of the source novel Martin Amis died (in Florida) only nine days ago.

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Glazer adapts Martin Amis’s chilling Holocaust drama. Focusing on the everyday domesticity of the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss’s family might only reflect the horror indirectly, but the film pulls the banality of evil into pin-sharp focus, reports Peter Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN, giving it four stars. Note: Martin Amis has just died at 73.

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Bradshaw confesses to being "a little uneasy at the sleekness and pure style of the film" and preferring "László Memes’s Son of Saul in Cannes in 2015."

Anyway ANATOMY OF A FALL and ZONE OF INTEREST are two films we want to see.

THE JURY PRIZE WENT TO AKI KAURISMAKI'S FALLEN LEAVES/Kuolleet lehdet. This helped soften the windup after those more severe choices, with a sweet romantic comedy in the Finnish director's uniquely quirky style.

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"Koji Yakusho won the best actor prize for Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days and clearly won the jury’s hearts with his gentle, complex performance as the toilet cleaner who has a seraphically Zen acceptance of his modest life" (Bradshaw)

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Merve Dizdar got the Best Actress award for her performance in ABOUT DRY GRASSES/Kuru Otlar Üstüne (Nuri Bilge Ceylan). "She plays Nuray, the woman who saves the villager schoolteacher Samet (Deniz Celiloglu) from depression in this Turkish film.

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Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s garrulous, densely considered drama About Dry Grasses was another of his absorbing and Chekhovian works; it was given a particular fierceness by Merve Dizdar, who wins best actress as a disabled woman Nuray, whom the conceited male lead — a teacher in trouble for an inappropriate relationship with a pupil — has got his eye on. She radiates a kind of wounded intelligence and shrewd skepticism, amounting to contempt, for the male world in which she is surrounded, and the men who appear to be interested in her" - Peter Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN.

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MERVE DIZLAR AT BEST ACTRESS AWARDING

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BEST SCREENPLAY:
Yuji Sakamoto, for MONSTER (dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda)
Winner

Ken Loach, for THE OLD OAK
Nominee

Alice Rohrwacher, for LA CHIMERA
Nominee

Wang Bing, for YOUTH (SPRING)
Nominee

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"This was an outstanding Cannes competition and every single film on this list is to be savoured. A vintage year." - Peter Bradshaw.

Cannes final hours...

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STILL FROM ANATOMY OF A FALL

Justine Triet caused controversy at Cannes in a "fiery" Palme d'Or acceptance speech, VARIETY says, that "took aim at the French government," an "impassioned plea" that "became instantly viral" and has been widely cited in French news headlines.

Triet referred to the "shocking manner" in which the very broad anti-pension reform movement was repressed, and referred to a "pattern of increasingly uninhibited dominating power" that is "now at work in several areas." There was an implied reference to French film industry figures who have pushed for drastic cuts in funding for auteur films, claiming such films are reducing box office returns.

It was pointed out that Triet's film was made with government support. So then she should shut up?

France's unique film support system is responsible for the high quality of the output. It's supported auteur films that account for the many of the exports of French films abroad, which would not happen with nothing but popular crowd-pleasers.

ANATOMY OF A FALL is expected to be a Best Foreign Oscar contender, despite having a lot of English-language dialogue.

Cannes... red carpet looks

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PERFECTLY GORGEOUS

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HELEN MIRREN STILL MAKES A SPLASH AT 77, AND NO "WORK" DONE (MAYBE)

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JENNIFER LAWRENCE: EXQUISITE SIMPLICITY of 'look' (WORK DONE THOUGH)

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JULIANNE MOORE: THIS ONE HAS HAD "WORK" DONE

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LIV ULMANN: THIS ONE HAS NOT HAD "WORK" DONE

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NATALIE PORTMAN IS ELEGANT, BUT LOOKS A BIT TOO THIN

The new Nuri Bilge Ceylan film opens in Paris today under the title Les herbes sèches. (Movies open in France on Wednesdays.) The AlloCiné press rating is 4.0 (80%), audience 3.7 (74%). This is a high-profile film in France sine Merve Dizdar got the Cannes Best Actress award for her performance in this film.