You Can-Cannes From Home
(It's pronounced "can," not "con")
Today is a big day in the cinema world — the Cannes Film Festival kicks off in the South of France. This festival holds a special place in my heart as the one that radicalized me in college and gave me the so-called “festival bug” that I’ve been doomed and delighted to chase for the past decade.
The festival is perhaps most notable for the way it combines old-school Hollywood/European glamour with a celebration of the “now” of moviemaking. Cannes is an imperfect but invaluable snapshot of where global cinema stands, and its selections still have an unmatched power to make a career on the rise or crown a legend. The holy grail for any filmmaker is to crack the festival’s coveted Official Competition, a lineup of about two dozen films vying for the Palme d’Or that get the red-carpet premiere treatment at Cannes. While somewhat of an old boy’s club (a legacy the festival still struggles to surmount), the prestige of the laurels remains illustrious.
It will take months, if not years, for some of these titles from Cannes to wash up on foreign shores. But if you want to start building your excitement now, might I recommend getting a head start by diving into the filmographies of the directors in Official Competition? Here are ten movies from ten directors set to unveil their latest works at Cannes ready to watch from the comfort of your own home.
David Cronenberg, Crimes of the Future
Legendary Canadian auteur David Cronenberg is perhaps best known for his body horror films like Scanners, Videodrome, and the Palme d’Or-winning Crash. (NB: not the Best Picture winning one with what film critic Odie Henderson calls “racism-curing stairs.”) I’ve tended to gravitate more towards the director’s later work, however, where he finds the true horror in the black abyss of the human soul. Though it got a somewhat mixed reception upon release, Maps to the Stars (available to rent) is a note-perfect satire of a venal and incestuous Hollywood ecosystem. I will forever tell myself that Julianne Moore’s Oscar is actually for this movie, where her petulant, entitled character Havana Segrand lays bare the depravity of aging actresses left hanging in the wind by the industry.
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Tori and Lokita
If you’ve tired of filmmakers using jerky handheld camera movements as a lazy shorthand for a character’s internal turbulence, go back to the source. A comment on my WordPress blog over a decade ago, of all things introduced me to the Dardenne brothers. These masters of social realist cinema have nailed the connection between the form of their films and the content of their stories. This is most evident in their first Palme d’Or winner, Rosetta (available on The Criterion Channel), which makes precarity palpable as it charts the pained journey of its titular character to keep her head above water in a tight labor market. The kinetic force of their camera eliminates the need for sermonizing about her economic condition.
Claire Denis, The Stars at Noon
Few filmmakers have taught me more about how to watch and interpret a movie than French director Claire Denis. Her elliptical dramas respond to an editing rhythm based on sensation and touch as much as they do to narrative logic. Since some of her more challenging works remain tough to watch stateside, I’ll recommend one that’s an interesting change of page. Denis took part in a French TV series called “All the Boys and Girls of Their Time,” an anthology series that gave emerging filmmakers artistic liberty to make whatever they wanted so long as it used rock music of the era and involved some scene of teenagers partying. Her entry U.S. Go Home (available to watch in full on YouTube) is a coming-of-age tale dominated in confusion and loneliness even amidst jubilation, and it’s wrapped in her longstanding critique of French colonialism. It’s only an hour long and well worth your time!
James Gray, Armageddon Time
My own history with Cannes magic is deeply intertwined with the films of James Gray. I was lucky enough to experience his masterpiece The Immigrant before any reviews or reactions dropped, lending me a feeling akin to floating on air as I felt as if my rapturous response was truly mine alone. While I could recommend that film for the umpteenth time, I’ll go in a different direction by encouraging you to watch his misunderstood 2007 work We Own the Night (available on Hulu). I saw this in high school and had no idea what to make of the film given that it did not match the kind of action-pacjed police thriller Sony sold it as. Fifteen years later, a rewatch knowing the artistry of James Gray has revealed a brooding, contemplative drama about the inescapable draw of familial and institutional ties. This pulsates with the introspection and artistry of a vintage Coppola film as it plumbs the shadowy depths of Joaquin Phoenix’s conflicted club owner-cum-deputized police officer.
Hirokazu Kore-eda, The Broker
I get it — if you’ve been reading this consecutively, you’re probably wondering if any of these movies won’t make you want to stick your head in an oven. Enter Hirokazu Kore-eda, a Palme d’Or winner for his touching familial drama Shoplifters back in 2018. Though his films delve into tense interpersonal strife, the stories unfurl with such a gentleness of touch that you never doubt you’re in the hands of a compassionate soul. While his affecting Still Walking (available on The Criterion Channel) might involve the ripple effects of a child’s untimely death, Kore-eda leaves us feeling filled up with tenderness rather than depleted with hopelessness.
Christian Mungiu, RMN
If you’ve any doubt of Cannes’ kingmaking status, look no further than how it launched the Romanian New Wave to international prominence. At the forefront of this movement taking audacious formal risks following the fall of Communism in the country is Christian Mungiu. His Palme d’Or win in 2007 for the chilling abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and Days helped cement the movement as one to watch. While perhaps that film would be the timeliest one to recommend, I must sing the praises of his follow-up Beyond the Hills (available on The Criterion Channel). It both captures the rigorously austere aesthetic that marks Mungiu’s work and finds complex, compelling emotion all the same. The film’s provocative story about a nun and the wayward friend who takes shelter with her exposes the hypocrisy of religious institutions that tend to their own image rather than those in great need.
Ruben Östlund, Triangle of Sadness
A bit of a hot take: I haven’t been quite as taken by the films of Ruben Östlund as many of my critical companions. The Swedish director has something of an enfant terrible streak that I just don’t respond to, and I find that his dark comedies Force Majeure and The Square (2017’s Palme d’Or winner) somewhat overstay their welcome because Östlund is so high on his own supply. Maybe a short film is all I can tolerate of him, which is why I’m recommending the 10-minute gem that is his Incident by a Bank (available in full on YouTube). This single take recreating an odd bank robbery is chock full of odd observational humor hidden in nooks and crannies. For once, the cleverness does not feel forced or oversold.
Park Chan-wook, Decision to Leave
If the success of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite makes you want to check out other South Korean genre cinema, a logical next step would be Park Chan-wook. The two directors emerged from the New Korean Cinema of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, finding fresh ways to infuse familiar conventions with artistry and imagination. It’s been revelatory to watch some of those iconoclastic tendencies developed on films like Oldboy creep into stodgier material. There’s certainly a version of The Handmaiden (available on Amazon Prime Video) that would feel as staid as its historical setting of Japanese colonial rule ver Korea. But this twisty thriller is, well, twisted in the best possible way. Know as little as you can and let it take you on a true journey.
Kelly Reichardt, Showing Up
Kelly Reichardt has experienced something of a career renaissance over the last few years. She’s gained respect as a kind of poet laureate for the Pacific Northwest as her quiet dramas such as Certain Women and First Cow struck a chord in a noisy world. Reichardt has also found something of a muse in Michelle Williams, whose deeply internal yet intensely physical characterizations jive seamlessly with the director’s style. She’s perhaps never been better than their first collaboration in Wendy and Lucy (available for free with ads on Tubi TV and Pluto TV), a meticulously meandering look at the hidden costs of poverty through the eyes of an itinerant woman trying to reconnect with her precious dog. Reichardt immediately attunes us to the hectic pace of homelessness, immersing us without ever needing to get in our face about it.
Kirill Serebrennikov, Tchaikovsky's Wife
I don't envy Russian filmmakers having to present a new movie to the world right now given what havoc their country’s leader has wreaked on the world. But Russian artists have been sounding the alarm bell for years now through allegory and artistry, such as Kirill Serebrennikov in his forceful drama The Student (available for free with ads on Tubi TV). The film follows teenage Vĕnia who becomes something of a religious zealot in response to family hardships and begins enacting his fire-and-brimstone views on the community around him. It’s a chilling tale of how quickly radicalization occurs and poisons the water we all drink, told with the kind of bleakness that anyone familiar with Russian art knows to expect.
You can always keep up with my film-watching in real-time on the app Letterboxd.
Also, if you haven’t seen the wild Elizabeth Olsen lie detector video, take a minute for a hearty laugh:
Really loved this episode of Still Processing where Wesley Morris dives into the uniquely charismatic screen presence of Keanu Reeves with writer Alex Pappademas, who recently wrote a book about the actor.
I’ve also been fully We Own the Night-pilled and can’t stop listening to the film’s operatic score from Polish composer Wojciech Kilar. It hums with the rich, emotive drama that powers the film itself.
I could do without some of the “gotcha” quoting from press tour interviews (the word choices are overly scrutinized for answers given largely off-the-cuff), but this piece from Quilette entitled “Art Is Not Therapy” offers an interesting rejoinder to discussion of Turning Red and Everything Everywhere All At Once. Worth a read, especially if you grappled with the Vox piece on the two movies I shared last week.
No new published pieces, although I do feel compelled to share an interview I did with Joe Alwyn for /Film back in 2018. My impression of the Conversations with Friends star and was quite the opposite of the one Mr. Taylor Swift gave to his GQ and Vulture profilers recently. He was kind, forthright, and open … although I was only asking about the work. I do wonder if half-a-decade inside the T-Swizzle protective bubble has changed him…
Subscribers also got an additional list of 10 movies under 90 minutes earlier this week:
Have a busy week coming up, but I hope to be back in your inboxes with a long-delayed list soon!
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall