Stories in Motion

We open day seven with Arthur Harari's  The Unknown , a body-swap thriller about identity, transformation, and the idea that who we are is ultimately a memory we share with ourselves. Léa Seydoux plays a man in her own body. It is stranger and more honest than it sounds. We talk about the trans readings, the Antonioni influence, and why this film's ambiguity feels like a feature rather tha...

We close day six with  Jim Queen , a raunchy French animated feature about a disease that turns gay men straight. It is not deep. It is not trying to be. The audience we watched it with laughed like people being seen for the first time in a long time, and on the last film of a very long day at Cannes, that was exactly enough. Full day six wrap from the Croisette.

Film thirty-three of the festival and Na Hong-jin is finally back.  Hope  is a Korean monster movie with the largest budget in Korean film history, one extraordinary hour of pure brawling joy, and a CGI creature design that looks like it belongs in a different decade. We talk about what the first hour gets absolutely right, where the film falls apart, and whether Michael Fassbender playing a motio...

Film thirty-two of the festival and Yukiko Sode's  All The Lovers In The Night  is the slowest and most interior film we've seen at Cannes this year. A woman who has made a life out of not being known. A physics teacher who explains how light travels. Shot on 16mm in Tokyo and utterly unhurried. We talk about what the film earns and what it occasionally costs, and why Misato Morita might b...

Film thirty-one of the festival and Judith Godrèche's debut feature adapts Annie Ernaux's most intimate novel with the knowledge of someone who lived a version of it. She cast her own daughter in the lead. The film is assured, disturbing, and exactly as personal as it needs to be. We talk about the lightbulb shot, Tess Barthélemy's extraordinary performance, and what this debut says ab...

Film thirty of the festival and Jeanne Herry's  Another Day  is one of the most quietly honest addiction dramas in years. Adèle Exarchopoulos plays a functioning alcoholic over eight years in Paris without a single false note. We talk about what the film gets right, where the ending gets too tidy, and why this performance deserves to be in the awards conversation. 

Film twenty-nine of the festival and László Nemes brings his aesthetic brilliance to the story of French Resistance hero Jean Moulin. The photography is extraordinary, Lellouche is excellent, and the film's central idea about ordinary courage is genuinely original. So why does it flatline so often? We talk about what Moulin gets right, what it leaves on the table, and how it compares to Son of...

Film twenty-eight of the festival and Dupieux's  Full Phil  is his most unexpectedly sincere film yet. Woody Harrelson, Kristen Stewart, a clogged toilet, Tim and Eric as Nobel-winning mad scientists, and somewhere underneath all of it, a real family drama. We talk about what makes Dupieux's absurdist universe so distinct and why this Hollywood cast fits inside it perfectly. 

We open day six with Katharina Rivilis'  I'll Be Gone in June , a German exchange student in New Mexico in the weeks after 9/11. Shot from memory, built on a breakout performance by Naomi Cosma, and one of the most quietly spellbinding debuts at this year's festival. We talk about what it means to watch a national tragedy from the outside, and why this film says things about that momen...

Film twenty-six of the festival and James Gray's  Paper Tiger  is the one we will be talking about when Cannes is over. Queens, 1986, the Russian mob, Adam Driver in a career-best performance, and Scarlett Johansson growing more hollowed out with every scene. Gray has made his masterpiece and we are still not over it.

Film twenty-five of the festival and Sorogoyen's  The Beloved  is one of the most satisfying films in Competition. Bardem plays a famous director trying to mend things with the daughter he abandoned, and the film uses a chaotic desert shoot as the arena for thirteen years of unfinished business. We talk about the fish stew scene, Bardem's masterful controlled performance, and why this is e...

Film twenty-four of the festival and the Esiri brothers'  Clarissa  is a genuine revelation. Mrs. Dalloway transplanted to present-day Lagos, shot on 35mm, with Sophie Okonedo, Ayo Edebiri and a Septimus played by Fortune Nwafor that will stay with us long after Cannes ends. We talk about what this adaptation finds that Woolf herself could not, and why this is the film of the festival we did n...

Film twenty-three of the festival and Koreeda's  Sheep in the Box  is the most thought-provoking mild disappointment at Cannes this year. A couple adopt an AI version of their dead son and the film is too bright, too resolved, and too philosophically optimistic to let the grief actually hurt. We talk about what Koreeda gets right, what the sunshine drowns out, and why this is still worth seein...

Film twenty-two of the festival and Yeon Sang-ho returns to zombies with  Colony . The good news: the creature design is genuinely chilling and Jun Ji-hyun is great. The bad news: CGI primates, an unnecessary parallel investigation, and a film that keeps interrupting itself right before it becomes something special. We talk about what made Train to Busan work and why Colony can't quite get the...

We open day five with John Travolta's directorial debut, a sixty-minute love letter to a TWA flight he took as an eight-year-old in 1962. It is slim, sincere, and completely inseparable from the ten-minute career montage that preceded it. We talk about what it means to be a movie star, his daughter Ella Bleu's scene-stealing turn, and why this might be the most charming nothing at Cannes t...

We close day four with  The Blow , a film with two remarkable performances, a bold visual instinct, and an editing problem that undoes most of it. Twenty films into the festival, this is the one that frustrates most because of how good it could have been. Full day four wrap from the Croisette.

Film nineteen of the festival and Marie Kreutzer's  Gentle Monster  is one of the bravest films at Cannes this year. Léa Seydoux discovers her husband is a pedophile and the film watches her decide what to do with that knowledge, one unbearable detail at a time. We talk about Seydoux's implosive performance, Kreutzer's personal connection to the material, and why this film refuses ever...

Film eighteen of the festival and  Karma , Guillaume Canet's cult melodrama starring his now-ex-wife Marion Cotillard, is exactly as juicy as it sounds. Flawed, lurid, two and a half hours long, and Cotillard carries every single minute of it. We talk about what the film gets right, what it strains to sell, and why Denis Ménochet might be the most quietly terrifying presence at this year's...

We continue day four with  Congo Boy , Rafiki Fariala's debut about a seventeen-year-old Congolese refugee in Bangui holding his family together by sheer force of love. Shot on location with non-professional actors, it is one of the warmest and most honest films we have seen at the festival. We talk about what new voices bring to Cannes and why this one matters.

Film sixteen and Hamaguchi's  All of a Sudden  is the one. 196 minutes of two women talking, one of them dying, all of it in Paris, and somehow the most hopeful film at this year's festival. We talk about what Virginie Efira did learning Japanese for a role, the whiteboard scene, and why this might be the Palme d'Or to beat.

Film fifteen of the festival and  Club Kid  is the surprise we didn't see coming. Jordan Firstman's debut is filthy, funny, shot on 35mm in a New York that's already disappearing, and somehow one of the most emotionally honest films we've seen at Cannes. We talk found family, Arthur Russell, Cara Delevingne two inches from a breakdown, and why this is the beginning of a real filmma...

ilm fourteen of the festival and Reed Van Dyk's  Atonement  is the most morally serious American film we've seen at Cannes. A Marine. An Iraqi mother. A knock on the door ten years later. We talk about what the film gets right, where it stumbles, and why Hiam Abbass is giving one of the performances of the festival. Day four dispatch from the Croisette.

We open day four with  Words of Love , Rudi Rosenberg's Un Certain Regard family drama about a girl chasing a father who won't answer the door. It's warm, it's funny, it's not trying to win the Un Certain Regard prize, and after three days of Cannes we needed it more than we expected. First dispatch from day four on the Croisette.

Film Twelfth of the festival and Farhadi's  Parallel Tales  is our biggest disappointment so far. Not a disaster, just a misfire, which from a filmmaker of his caliber hurts just as much. We talk voyeurism, Kieslowski, wasted greatness, and one genuinely interesting idea about sound that arrives too late. Day three dispatch from the Croisette.

Film eleven of the festival and  Tangles  wrecked us. Leah Nelson's animated debut about a daughter watching her mother disappear to Alzheimer's is funny and drawn in monochrome and completely devastating. Julia Louis-Dreyfus gives one of the best voice performances we've heard in years. We talk about grief, animation, and why we walked out still holding hands.