The Herald - The Herald Magazine
10 Cannes film hits coming to a cinema near you
From Bowie documentary to Elvis spectacular and debut from Scottish movie-maker Charlotte Wells
THIS year’s Cannes Film Festival felt just like normal – which, after two years of pandemic interruptions, was a blessed relief for the movie business. A-Listers flocked to the red carpets. Parties reverberated up and down the Croisette, including a lavish bash for Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis.
And, best of all, cinema got people excited again. Below are ten films to look forward to, all unveiled in Cannes and heading to cinemas in the coming months
THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING
Australia’s George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road) was back with this exhilarating take on an A.S. Byatt short story that stars Cannes doyenne Tilda Swinton as a lonely academic.
Arriving in Istanbul for a conference, she buys a vase which unleashes a Djinn (Idris Elba) who grants her three wishes – but rather than ask for endless pots of money, she patiently hears the Djinn’s remarkable tale of love and incarceration.
Realised with some beautiful visual effects, it was a marvellous ode to storytelling, and a chance to see two actors at the peak of their powers.
TRIANGLE OF SADNESS
It wouldn’t be Cannes without some controversy, and certainly the jury’s decision to award Ruben Östlund’s savage satire the coveted Palme d’Or – his second after winning for 2017’s The Square – didn’t play well in some quarters. But this ambitiously staged tale of a luxury cruise and the obscenely wealthy who come aboard does not hold back. A by-nowinfamous scene when a storm rages outside and guests become progressively queasier has all the subtly of a sledgehammer, but Östlund
is relentless as he targets the 1%.
THE FIVE DEVILS
This Director’s Fortnight entry from French filmmaker Léa Mysius (Ava) stars Adèle Exarchopoulos in one of her best films since her breakout Cannes movie, the intense lesbian drama Blue Is the Warmest Colour. She plays Joanna, mother to the mixedrace Vicky (Sally Dramé), a shy, lonely girl bullied by others around her. But this youngster boasts a unique ability – as she captures scents and smells in jars and uses them as a way of vividly exploring the past, almost like timetravelling. A clever mix of fantasy and social commentary.
ONE FINE MORNING
This week, the UK finally sees the release of Mia Hansen-Løve’s Bergman Island, which played in Cannes competition last year. But her new film, One Fine Morning, was a much more engaging experience. Léa Seydoux gives a stirring performance as the daughter of a former philosophy professor who suffers from Benson’s Syndrome, a rare form of Alzheimer’s – something that happened to HansenLøve’s own father. In Cannes, it took the prize awarded by Europa Cinemas Label for Best European Film – and may yet pick up more gongs as the year goes on.
ELVIS
Baz Luhrmann sprinkled glitz onto the Croisette with his Elvis Presley biopic. Arriving in late June in the UK, it’s a big, bold, and brassy take on the life of the king of rock’n’roll, with
Austin Butler pulling out all the stops as the boy from Memphis who shocked a nation with his “lewd gyrations” on stage, as one character quaintly puts it in the film. Tom Hanks hams it up as Elvis’ scheming manager Colonel Tom Parker, faintly silly Europudding accent and all, but as ever, Baz is the real star – swooping his camera hither and thither across some killer concert scenes.
AFTERSUN
A bright new talent arrived in Cannes in the shape of Charlotte Wells, a Scottish-born, New York-based director making her feature debut with this dreamy father-daughter story. Normal People’s Paul Mescal offered up a really nuanced turn as Callum, a divorcee looking to bond with his daughter Sophie in a Turkish resort in the Nineties, although Wells’ sensitive handling of the material rightly drew comparisons with fellow Scot Lynne Ramsay. The film won the French Touch Prize – a new award in the Critics’ Week sidebar where Aftersun played. The future looks bright for Wells.
DECISION TO LEAVE
Korean cinema did well out of Cannes 2022 – with Parasite star Song Kang Ho winning Best Actor for Broker and Park Chan-wook claiming Best Director for Decision to Leave. An elegant, dense melodrama, about a detective who starts pining for the woman he’s investigating after her husband falls to his death, it was arguably Park’s most mature work to date. It may not jive with fans of his more violent escapades like Oldboy – which launched his international career in Cannes 2003 –but there’s something to be said for the masterful assurance with which it’s made.
MOONAGE DAYDREAM
Five years in the making, Brett Morgan’s David Bowie film is less a documentary than an “experience”, a collage culled from the artist’s personal archives (as such it’s the first film approved by the Bowie estate). Featuring some remarkable performance footage – particularly from the Ziggy Stardust era – Morgan weaves together an impressionistic portrait of Bowie, that eternal musical shapeshifter. Devotees will squeal with delight at legendary-but-little-seen gigs like Earls Court 1978 appearance, which was never released professionally as Bowie didn’t like the way it was shot. A sheer delight.
THE SILENT TWINS
Polish director Agnieszka Smoczynska took on a very British true story – that of June and Jennifer Gibbons. Immigrant twin sisters from Barbados, they grew up in Wales in the 1970s and ’80s – but literally refused to talk to anyone apart from each other. A potent tale of mental health and creativity, their story was documented by journalist Marjorie Wallace at the time and was made into a film back in 1986, but Smoczynska’s take is a real original. Black Panther star Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrance (The Long Song) co-star.
ARMAGEDDON TIME
The French adore James Gray, an American filmmaker (The Yards, We Own the Night) who doesn’t seem to get the same love elsewhere. This competition entry walked away with no prizes, but it led Screen International’s Jury Grid (a collation of critics’ scores) for a long time, and most seemed to find it one of Gray’s most accessible works.
Set in Queens in 1980, with Reagan on the verge of election, Anne Hathaway, Succession’s Jeremy Strong and Anthony Hopkins came together for this thought-provoking Jewish family portrait drawn from Gray’s own upbringing.