Stories in Motion

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.

Film ten of the festival and Pawel Pawlikowski's  Fatherland  is the one. Thomas Mann, his daughter Erika, a road trip through a country trying to forget what it did, and Sandra Hüller doing things on screen we still cannot fully explain. Our highest score of Cannes so far. Day three dispatch from the Croisette.

Film two of day three and Manuela Martelli's  The Meltdown  gives us one of the festival's most haunting central images: a country that tried to ship its trauma to a world expo and watch it dissolve. We talk about post-Pinochet Chile, a missing girl in the snow, and why a perfect metaphor sometimes needs a sharper thriller around it. Day three dispatch from the Croisette.

We open day three with  Forsaken , Vincent Garenq's docudrama about the murder of French schoolteacher Samuel Paty. The subject is essential, Antoine Reinartz is extraordinary, and yet the film keeps reaching for thriller when it should be reaching for truth. We talk about what this story needed and what it got. First dispatch from day three on the Croisette.

We close out our second day at Cannes with Jane Schoenbrun's wildest, warmest film yet.  Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma  is about slashers, orgasms, Gillian Anderson in a fedora, and the radical act of letting yourself feel good. We talk about why this might be the most joyful film at the festival so far. Day two wrap from the Croisette.

Film six of our second day and  A Woman's Life  gives us the festival's best performance so far in Léa Drucker, wrapped inside a film that starts vast and slowly shrinks. We talk about obsession, facial reconstruction, and why the second half can't quite keep up with the first. More from the Croisette still to come.

Film five of our second day at Cannes, and  Ashes  is the one that frustrates most. Diego Luna's immigrant drama strips itself so bare it forgets to have a pulse. We talk about what the film owed its source material, what it owed Anna Díaz, and why restraint without depth is just emptiness. More dispatches from the Croisette still to come.

After a shaky start to the festival, Koji Fukada's  Nagi Notes  arrives like a deep breath. Two women, a barn, a camphorwood sculpture, and three runaway cows. We talk about why this quiet Competition entry might be the one to beat. Day two dispatch from the Croisette.

Barry Keoghan feeds people bug jam, a pelican witnesses a coming of age, and Kantemir Balagov somehow makes all of it feel like a fairy tale. We dig into Butterfly Jam, the most unclassifiable film of Cannes so far, and ask the only question that matters: does the strangeness earn its keep?

The animation in  In Waves  is some of the most beautiful we've seen at Cannes this year. So why did we leave the theater feeling nothing? We talk gorgeous visuals, dying girl clichés, and what the film owed its subject but never delivered. Day two dispatch from the Croisette.