Back In Action
CANNES | The must-see films from the returning French festival.
LAMB
Arriving the same day as bizarre competition entry Titane from Julia Ducournau (Raw), Lamb somehow stole the crown away from that as the weirdest film in Cannes this year. Playing in Un Certain Regard, Icelandic director Valdimar Jóhannsson’s feature debut blends mythology and folk horror into a touching tale about a childless couple (Hilmir Snaer Guðnason and Noomi Rapace) living on a remote sheep farm. The secret of Lamb may already be out the bag, but we’re not going to spoil it here. Suffice it to say, try not to read anything more about it and watch it as soon as you can. It’s baa-my.
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND
Todd Haynes delivers his first-ever documentary and it’s a doozy. Focusing on The Velvet Underground, fronted by the irrepressible Lou Reed, Haynes offers a stunning look at the 1960s New York art and music scene, with the group hanging out with Andy Warhol at his infamous Factory. Contemporary interviews with ex-Velvets John Cale and Moe Tucker, alongside bystanders to the scene like filmmaker John Waters and critic Amy Taubin, add flavour, but it’s the skilfully mixed archive footage that really brings the film alive, as Haynes does for the documentary what his avantgarde Bob Dylan film I’m Not There did for the music bio.
THE SOUVENIR PART II
Joanna Hogg returned with her follow-up to her 2019 semiautobiographical tale The Souvenir, picking up almost immediately where that left off as film student Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) tries to process the death of her mysterious lover (Tom Burke). In this instalment, newcomers like Joe Alwyn and Harris Dickinson enter the fray, while Richard Ayoade’s cameo as a tantruming filmmaker from the first film is expanded into a more substantial role, as he becomes a sort of mentor to Julie, who sets out to work on her graduation film. Very much more of the same, in a good way.
TITANE
The surprise (but not unwelcome) winner of the Palme d’Or, Julia Ducorneau’s follow-up to her 2016 cannibal drama Raw simply explodes with hallucinogenic ambition, starring newcomer Agathe Rousselle as Alexia, a twerking serial killer who has sex with cars, shaves her head and poses as a missing boy to escape a police dragnet operation. Vincent Lindon is the father who accepts her, warts and all, even though she is clearly not his son – and her pregnancy is starting to show. It’s another gorefest, this time with a more explicitly Cronenbergian riff on body horror, but newcomer Rousselle is the standout, giving her all in a part that somehow grounds all of the story’s violent excesses.
BENEDETTA
Held over from last year’s cancelled Cannes, Paul Verhoeven’s erotic historical drama was easily the most controversial film at the festival. Some critics accused this true-life tale of the titular 17th-century novice nun of being blasphemous. Played by Virginie Efira, Benedetta joins an Italian convent, but sees her head turned by a wild newcomer to the order. The scene where she gets pleasured by a statue of the Virgin Mary, which has been carved into the shape of a sex toy, will stand as notorious in Verhoeven’s career. And that’s saying something, coming from the man who directed Basic Instinct and Showgirls.
ALI & AVA
Clio Barnard was sadly unable to come to Cannes due to travel restrictions returning to the UK, where she is currently shooting miniseries The Essex Serpent for Apple TV+. But she was able to send her latest film, Ali & Ava, playing in Director’s Fortnight. Set in Bradford, this tender, low-key, love story starring Adeel Akhtar and Claire Rushbrook is a sensitive and yet hardhitting contemporary tale of love across racial divides. Also featuring Ellora Torchia, who has just been in Ben Wheatley’s In The Earth, it’s a minimasterpiece that never outstays its welcome.
RED ROCKET
After two female-led stories (Tangerine and The Florida Project), Sean Baker takes us into a man’s world, that of Micky Saber (Simon Rex), a washed-up former porn star who rocks up at his old Texas stomping ground to the strains of NSYNC’s 2000 hit ‘Bye Bye Bye’. Moving in with his ex-wife and her mother Lil, Rex picks up where he left off, dealing weed to workers at the local chemical plant, but he becomes infatuated with a pretty redhead called Strawberry who works at the donut shop. By turns funny, sexy and crushingly sad, it’s another deep dive into one of modern America’s forgotten communities. JM/DW
PARIS, 13TH DISTRICT
A former Cannes winner with Dheepan, Jacques Audiard is not exactly known for contemporary romances. But this black-and-white take on the comics of American cartoonist Adrian Tomine is a vibrant and sexy take on dating in the 21st century. Newcomer Lucie Zhang delivers a knockout performance as Emilie, who lives in her grandmother’s flat in the 13th arrondissement of Paris and falls for her new lodger (Makita Samba). There’s a second story involving Portrait Of A Lady On Fire’s Noémie Merlant as a mature student that intertwines to create a compelling look at sex and the City (of Lights).