This year’s Cannes Film Festival promises to be interesting viewing, with a record number of female directors in contention (a stark contrast to the 2023 Academy Awards) and a greater than usual representation of old-guard auteurs (including Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders, Ken Loach and Finnish maverick Aki Kaurismäki).
Fans will no doubt be enthused by the return of Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast) with his first picture since 2013’s acclaimed Under the Skin. I can’t say Glazer’s choice of material – Martin Amis’s 2014 concentration camp novel Zone of Interest – particularly grabs me, but the director’s work is always worth checking out. This year’s blockbuster spot, meanwhile, will be taken by Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the fifth (and almost certainly last) outing for Harrison Ford as the octogenarian adventurer.
Before the festival kicks off next week, here’s my selection of ten motion pictures premiering there that are worth keeping an eye out for:
Killers of the Flower Moon
At a rumoured three hours and 45 minutes, Martin Scorsese’s first Western threatens to be as bum-numbing an experience as his 2019 Netflix picture The Irishman (three hours and 29 minutes), which could have benefited from some judicious pruning by editor Thelma Schoonmaker. Not that the premise (the real-life murders of Osage tribe members of north-eastern Oklahoma in the 1920s) and cast (including Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Brendan Fraser) aren’t interesting – but the prospect of such a cinematic endurance test can appear daunting. Still, if you’re Scorsese, I guess you have the right to call the shots. Two musicians appear in KOTFM: country star Sturgill Simpson and former White Stripes frontman Jack White.
Occupied City
Steve McQueen’s first feature-length documentary is based on his wife Bianca Stigter’s illustrated history book, Atlas of an Occupied City: Amsterdam 1940-1945, exploring the heavy-handed Nazi subjugation of the Dutch capital during the second world war. McQueen’s next scripted movie will be Blitz, sticking with the second world war theme.
If you’re interested in dramatic takes on the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, I can heartily recommend two pictures by Dutch iconoclast Paul Verhoeven: Soldier of Orange (1977) and the excellent Black Book (2006). You may also want to find the agreeably old-fashioned The Last Vermeer (2019), where Guy Pearce plays forger Han van Meegeren, who bilked the Nazis (including Herman Goering) with his Johannes Vermeer fakes.
Le Règne Animal [Animal Kingdom]
Writer-director Thomas Cailley (2014’s César-winning Love at First Fight) returns to the sci-fi genre of his 2018 TV series Ad Vitam. Le Règne Animal is set in a world where some humans have started to mutate into other species; when a number of these human-animal hybrids escape from a containment facility-bound convoy, the fun begins. Gallic star Romain Duris (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) leads as the father caught up in the action with his son (Paul Kircher, whose mother is actress Irène Jacob). Shades of The Island of Dr Moreau and the Netflix series Sweet Tooth?
Asteroid City
Set the controls for Wes Anderson’s latest whimsy-fest, this time concerning an annual Junior Stargazer convention set in the American south-west of 1955. Anderson’s ensemble cast includes both regular collaborators and newcomers, with Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Jeff Goldblum, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Rupert Friend, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie and Tony Revolori among them. Here’s hoping Anderson has more self-discipline than in 2021’s The French Dispatch, which (excepting Alexandre Desplat’s wonderful score) tried the patience of many fans, including myself. Some viewers may notice a passing resemblance to Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories (1980), which includes a remote convention, possible alien encounters and discussions about the meaning of life.
Firebrand
Based on Elizabeth Fremantle’s Queen’s Gambit and described by director Karim Aïnouz as a ‘potboiler’, Firebrand follows the ageing, unpleasant Henry VIII’s sixth and final marriage to Catherine Parr. Since the movie is described as an ‘horror historical drama’, we can probably expect to see the morbidly obese Henry’s stinking, ulcerated legs and the unhinged behaviour occasioned by head injuries when he fell from his horse in 1524. Jude Law plays the quick-tempered monarch, with Alicia Vikander as the unfortunate Parr. The role of Henry VIII was deemed as actor-proof by Richard Burton (who played it in 1969’s Anne of the Thousand Days). He wrote in his diaries: ‘Anyone can play Henry VIII: I mean even Robert Shaw… has played it.’ Let’s hope Law doesn’t let the side down, then.
May December
No, not a big screen remake of the beloved BBC1 1980s sitcom. Todd Haynes’s (Carol, Far from Heaven) drama is described in the official synopsis as follows: ‘Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, Gracie Atherton-Yoo and her husband Joe (23 years her junior) brace themselves for their twins to graduate from high school. When Hollywood actress Elizabeth Berry comes to spend time with the family to better understand Gracie, who she will be playing in a film, family dynamics unravel under the pressure of the outside gaze. Joe, never having processed what happened in his youth, starts to confront the reality of life as an empty-nester at 36.’ Pretty much in the director’s Sirkian bailiwick, then. Natalie Portman is Berry, with Charles Melton as Joe and Haynes fixture Julianne Moore in the role of Gracie.
Jeanne du Barry
Director/star/co-writer and producer Maïwenn (herself the subject of recent controversy over an alleged assault) gave Johnny Depp his first high-profile role in the festival opening biopic about the courtesan and favourite of Louis XV, Madame du Barry. Depp speaks French in the part, something he surely picked up during his 14-year relationship with actress and singer Vanessa Paradis. Louis XV was memorably essayed by Rip Torn in 2006’s Marie Antoinette, with Asia Argento as du Barry. Whilst Louis died (relatively) peacefully in his bed, du Barry was executed by guillotine during the French Revolution in December 1793.
L’Été Dernier [Last Summer]
Flipping the premise of Netflix’s new series Obsession, Catherine Breillat’s (Romance) L’Été Dernier sees high-profile child abuse prosecuting lawyer Anna (Lea Drucker) fall for her husband’s (Olivier Rabourdin) 17-year-old son from a previous marriage, Theo (Samuel Kircher, brother of Animal Kingdom’s Paul), when he moves in with them. What’s the betting the relationship won’t work out? Veteran director Breillat knows the ropes of these taboo-busting subjects, as evidenced by previous pictures such as A Real Young Girl (1976), Virgin/Junior Size 36 (1988) and the aforementioned Romance (1999), probably the film best known to UK audiences.
La Chimera
If you enjoyed The Dig (2021) and Ammonite (2020), you may well be tempted by Alice Rohrwacher’s (The Wonders) La Chimera. Set in the 1980s, the film stars Josh O’Connor (The Crown) as an archaeologist who becomes involved in the tomb-raiding Etruscan artifact racket of southern Tuscany and Northern Lazio. Expect a healthy dose of Rohrwacher’s trademark magic realism as the tumuli of the mysterious Rasenna (the Etruscan name for their people) are broken into. Incidentally, Etruscan tombs also feature in The Omen (1976).
The Old Oak
Ken Loach is in familiar territory with a tale of the sole remaining pub in an economically depressed North-East former pit village. Mix in Syrian refugees located in the area due to the cheap housing available and one may expect social friction, but 86-year-old Loach promises a more uplifting picture than some in his oeuvre.
Other pub-based movies to prepare yourself for a night at The Old Oak? Withnail and I (1987), Last Orders (2001), Shaun of The Dead (2004) and of course Jamaica Inn (1939) should do the trick.
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