While we try to divide and conquer a large amount of the Cannes program, including every one of the Competition titles, the scheduling inevitably leads to situations where a writer on this team sees something that was assigned elsewhere. It could be a case of wanting to be a part of the conversation about the biggest titles, no other alternatives in a timeslot that aren’t being covered, or just the final day, when all of Comp replays. In my 40-film schedule (!!!), I ended up seeing seven films that were hit first by Robert Daniels or Ben Kenigsberg at this site, and only one misfired for me (“Coward”). I’d like to offer a few thoughts on the other six, all worth tracking as they make their way from Cannes to a theater near you later this year.
“All of a Sudden”
One of the buzziest titles coming into Cannes seems to be one of the titles that also satisfied viewers here in ways that works by other acclaimed authors (“Parallel Tales,” “A Sheep in the Box”) failed to do. Ryusuke Hamaguchi is back with a 196-minute drama that justifies its length by being intrinsically about patience. It’s a film that asks us to be patient and present with people, especially the elderly and the infirm. Virginia Efira stars as the head of a program called Humanitude at a nursing home in Paris, where she is stymied by practicalities like financial concerns. When she meets a dying theater director (Tao Okamoto), she’s inspired to work harder to connect with those who are so often denied connections. In a year with a lot of cynicism and anxiety in the Cannes line-up, “All of a Sudden” is a big-hearted cry for empathy, a film that asks us to really look people in the eyes, put our hand on their shoulder, and be there in the moment with them. It’s an antidote to a fest that can be exhausting to consider the wealth of humanity on display in Hamaguchi’s vision, a movie that grows in esteem in my mind every day since I saw it.
“Club Kid”
The explosive buzz generated by the world premiere of Jordan Firstman’s writing/directing/acting showcase could be heard across Europe. In a fest with few standout sales titles, this one going to A24 for a whopping $17 million is easily one of the year’s big stories. Firstman plays a party organizer near the end of his rope when a woman drops a kid off at his door, claiming that he’s the father. As cheesy as it sounds, Firstman’s hilarious and moving dramedy is earnestly about how your kids can make you a better version of yourself, sometimes even one you didn’t think could happen. We’ve seen hundreds of movies about adults releasing the potential within children, but it can go both ways. Trust me, my kids inspire me every day. And I saw some of that heartfelt truth in this buoyant, funny movie. When people like Firstman jump into feature filmmaking across three fields, one almost always suffers, but this is the rare case when one would have tough time choosing whether Firstman’s writing, acting, or directing are his greatest accomplishment here.
“The Beloved”
A quick way to describe Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s riveting drama about filmmaking might be to call it “Unsentimental Value.” Much like the Joachim Trier Oscar winner, this is the tale of a filmmaker father (Javier Bardem, as good as he’s been in years) who tries to mend bridges with his estranged daughter Emilia (Victoria Luengo, also at Cannes in “Bitter Christmas,” and phenomenal in both). Sorogoyen opens his film with one of the best scenes in years: A 20-minute conversation between the leads that sets the foundation for the film to come as it devolves into conflicting memories and accusations. The film never quite reaches that peak again (although an on-set meltdown comes close) but it remains a searing character study for its entire runtime, grounded by not only two of my favorite performances of Cannes, but that I’ll see all year.
“Hope”
Widely acknowledged as the craziest film in Competition this year, Na Hong-jin’s action epic is the likeliest in the slate to find a big audience around the world. Wearing its James Cameron and Bong Joon-ho inspirations on its sleeve, “Hope” opens with one of the most impressive hours of action cinema I’ve ever seen. As a cop in a small village named Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) races to catch up to whatever is causing insane devastation around the region, Na Hong-jin’s camera can barely keep up with him. It’s a bravura sequence that the rest of the movie can’t quite catch up to, but a bookending bit of Big Chase chaos comes close. This is a ridiculously indulgent action movie (160 minutes!) with some admittedly janky VFX (that might get fixed before you see it), but what makes it memorable is its unapologetic ambition. While too many films at Cannes this year felt like auteurs playing it safe by exploring themes they had done more eloquently elsewhere, this one felt fresh, new, and borderline insane.
“Minotaur”
“Leviathan” director Andrey Zvyagintsev came to Cannes this year with a chilly remake of Chabrol’s “The Unfaithful Wife” (also made into “Unfaithful” with Diane Lane), told in a very Russian dialect. The acclaimed director uses the backdrop of the early days of the Russo-Ukrainian War to reveal what can happen when people are seen as disposable. A business executive named Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov) has been asked by the Russian government which of his employees are to be sent to war. At the same time, he discovers that his wife is having an affair. There’s a centerpiece sequence in “Minotaur” that is the reason it’s been so acclaimed, a feat of Hitchcockian direction that almost makes us feel like we’re in the room with a man covering up a crime. Like so much of the movie’s color palette, it’s icy, calculated, and chilling, a reminder of what can happen in broad daylight in a time when human life has lost so much of its value.
“The Man I Love”
There’s nothing chilly about Ira Sachs’ moving drama that successfully reclaims Rami Malek from years of blockbusters that didn’t know what to do with him. He gives arguably his best performance as a NYC actor in the ‘80s who is facing the inevitability of AIDS. Sachs has honed a delicate sense of realism in his last few films—this would make a fascinating double feature with “Peter Hujar’s Day” in the way it captures a very specific time—and it allows “The Man I Love” to sneak up on you. There are times when I felt like it was too purposefully reaching for poignancy, but the last fifteen minutes are devastating, especially a scene in which Malek’s character is pulled from a stage he doesn’t want to leave. So many men were pulled from that spotlight too young. Sachs has made a tribute to them all.
