Cannes is upon us once again. One of the biggest film festivals in the world, and certainly the glitziest and most recognizable of the bunch, Cannes is almost a parallel universe of its own. Every year, it takes over the titular seaside town so entirely that you can't even picture what normality looks like beyond its borders.
I'm covering the festival for the fourth year, and this time around – for both my own sanity and the sake of your inboxes – I'll send out a weekly recap of capsule reviews for subscribers every Friday. I will still post full reviews on the site, but since I'm seeing five films or more every day, I know most would get sick of seeing messages from me that often.
To start with, here are some of the films I'm most excited about this year. Naturally, there are dozens more I haven't listed here, and countless others I'm still unfamiliar with that I'll hopefully discover during the festivities. But we have to start somewhere.
Fjord by Cristian Mungiu
Cristian Mungiu is a talented chronicler of humanity, often to the point where his films are extremely difficult to watch because of their sharp observations. His latest, Fjord, tells the story of the Gheorghius, a devout Romanian Norwegian couple, who resettle in a village set in a distant fjord. There, they grow close to their neighbours, the Halbergs, and their children become friends.
Then, one day, Elia Gheorghiu, the youngest, shows up at school with some bruises on her body. It's not long before the community begins to question whether the traditional education the Gheorghiu children get from their parents might have anything to do with it.
Starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve, Fjord promises to be a deeply troubling, humane, and timely portrait of cultural differences, petty grievances, and xenophobia. It is yet another addition to Mungiu's filmography, depicting ugly behavior in some of the most beautiful places on Earth.
Full Phil by Quentin Dupieux
Ever since I was introduced to Dupieux's films through Night Visions, I've made it a point to seek out whatever the French cinematic trickster makes. His films rarely follow any pattern, and they're just as likely to be outlandishly violent as they are funny, but they're also never, ever boring.
Last year, Dupieux baffled and delighted audiences with his anti-AI satire. This year, he's brought along Woody Harrelson and Kristen Stewart for an absurdist romp about a rich American industrialist (named Philip Doom!), who winds up tormented by French service workers. I have no idea what to expect beyond that, but I'm fairly certain I'll come out laughing.
Gun-Che (Colony) by Yeon Sang-ho
Yeon Sang-ho's Train to Busan is one of the greatest zombie films ever made, so he comes to the festival with a gargantuan amount of expectations.
Since Busan, Sang-ho has kept busy, directing almost a film per year, although nothing has yet come close to the highs of Train to Busan. Nevertheless, Sang-ho's filmography is a solid showcase for a tremendously talented master of the macabre. For example, look no further than his devastating horror-drama, The Ugly, released last year, which is a tremendous showcase of his ability to wrench primal terror from a shoestring budget.
Colony is part of the Cannes midnight series, which is the perfect place for it. The action is set at a biotech conference, where a crazed scientist unleashes a bioweapon into the remote facility. As it mutates the population, outside forces seal the survivors inside, forcing them to fight against hordes of fast-moving monstrosities.
Is it anything new? Probably not. But it also looks like a heck of a lot of fun.
Hope by Na Hong-jin
It's already been a decade since Na Hong-jin's previous film, The Wailing, which freaked me out in the best possible way during its initial festival run.
In the intervening years, Hong-jin has stayed busy writing films for others and directing shorts, all the while working on his sci-fi thriller, about which we know very, very little. The official synopsis says the story is set in a remote village near a heavily fortified DMZ, where the sudden appearance of a tiger drives the entire community into chaos.
As with The Wailing, I expect that Hong-jin won't stick to a single genre, and the eclectic casting, including Hwang Jung-min, Jung Ho-yeon, Alicia Vikander, and Michael Fassbender, indicates that might very well be the case.
Kokurojo (The Samurai and the Prisoner) by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
I'm a sucker for period dramas, especially when it comes to Japanese history, and director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is one of those hard-to-pin-down filmmakers who always delights with their genre-hopping. So, naturally, I'm thrilled he's at the festival with his latest, a chamber piece about betrayal, power, and how often history is written in blood.
The story takes place during Oda Nobunaga's reign of terror. When Lord Murashige Araki rises against the tyrannical Nobunaga, he finds himself besieged within the walls of his own castle. Isolated, he is confronted with a series of mysterious crimes that shatter the fragile order of his court, plunging the fortress into fear and suspicion.
The plot description leans on the melodrama, but if there's one thing I've learned from Kurosawa's filmography, it's that his works are rarely what they seem on the page.
Paper Tiger by James Gray
James Gray is one of my favorite directors working today, so, naturally, I will see anything and everything he makes. It helps that his cast is stacked with heavy-hitters like Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson.
Paper Tiger is also exciting because it sees Gray return to his roots of family-heavy crime thrillers, like Little Odessa and The Yards. While I love his bigger films, like Ad Astra and The Lost City of Z, I can't wait to see how a more mature and experienced Gray handles similar material that he once began his career with.
There's very little out there about Paper Tiger beyond the pedigree. The official synopsis says it's a story about two brothers chasing the American dream, who end up entangling with the Russian mafia, which tests their bonds and loyalties.
It sounds very traditional, but I have faith in Gray to deliver something exceptional from even the most familiar elements.
Sheep in the Box by Hirokazu Kore-eda
Sheep in the Box isn't the first film about grieving parents purchasing an android to replace a dead loved one. It isn't even the first film about the ethics of robots that look like humans that Kore-eda has made (that would be Air Doll).
But when it comes to crafting sincerity out of outlandish elements, few directors are as accomplished as Kore-eda. Which is why Sheep in the Box, a deep-dive into the world of robotics, AI, the meaning of life, and big sci-fi themes like the definition of a soul, is so tremendously exciting.
I, for one, can't wait to be befuddled.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma by Jane Schoenbrun
Schoenbrun's directorial debut, I Saw the TV Glow, is one of the most devastatingly sincere depictions of feeling like a stranger in your own skin. Upon my first viewing, I rejected it outright. It hit too close to home. I had to look away because I wasn't ready to have the conversation it wanted to have with its audience. About a year later, I was a lot stronger, and Schoenbrun's beautiful and heartfelt story clicked on a cellular level.
Superficially, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma shares similarities with I Saw the TV Glow in their fascination with old-school exploitation genres and commercialized nostalgia. Schoenbrun says Camp Miasma is her attempt to recapture the "sleepover classic" film, a kind of watch-it-on-a-dare film you find at the darkest, most overlooked sections of a rental store. It also happens to be a meta-level slasher film starring Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson.
I'm both terrified and supremely excited about what's to come.
Victorian Psycho by Zachary Wigon
After her terrific leading performance in Longlegs, Maika Monroe has my attention with whatever she makes next. That happens to be Victorian Psycho, a thriller based on Virginia Feito's novel of the same name, where a troubled governess arrives at a remote estate, settles in, and the staff promptly start to go missing.
Supporting Monroe are genre stalwarts Thomasin McKenzie, Jason Isaacs, and Ruth Wilson, which at least means that Victorian Psycho has impeccable talent attached. Director Zachary Wigon's previous film, Sanctuary, freaked me out with its painfully accurate depictions of power dynamics and the ways a conversation can occur entirely through things left unsaid. I'm excited to see how Wigon's talents for the unspoken work in the restrained world of Victorian England, especially when he's got the hugely expressive Monroe to help.
