Titane begins not with a whimper but a cacophony: a deafening engine rev; the crash as car meets concrete; then the image of a girl in a horrific head-brace, like something from a Saw film, as she gets fitted with a titanium plate. Next a temporal leap to a car show, erotic dancers, pulsating synth music, chrome, and neon. The girl from the crash appears from the milieu, now a serial killer and sex worker. After the show, a stalker follows her to her car and gets a needle the size of a chopstick lodged in his eardrum. His mouth sputters like a piece of faulty machinery. Scarcely 10 minutes have passed.

Julia Ducournau, a Parisian whose debut Raw became the breakout success of the Critics’ Week sidebar at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, returns to the South of France last week in Competition—a sharp ascendency—and it has been nothing short of sensational. An experience as invigorating as a pair of jumper cables, it premiered halfway through the second week as late-fest fatigue was descending on the Croissette and seemed to almost singlehandedly wake the festival back up—enough at least to capture the eyes and imagination of Spike Lee’s Jury who have awarded it the Palme d’Or; a truly shocking, punky choice that made Ducournau only the second woman in history to collect that award.

Continue reading our Cannes review of Titane.

Many of the best qualities of early and late Verhoeven combine in Benedetta, a tale of sex, blood, and sacrilege in 17th-century Italy. Based on the American historian Judith C. Brown’s 1986 non-fiction book Immoral Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (quite the title), its story focuses on the life of Benedetta Carlini, a nun in Precia who entered a sexual relationship with another woman in her convent. Paul Verhoeven originally adapted the book with his longtime collaborator Gerard Soeteman (Black Book, Turkish Delight), but the screenwriter stepped down when it became too “sexualized.” In the opening act there are not one, but two fart jokes. We are also, in many instances, offered evidence of the director’s well-founded appreciation for mommy’s milkies.

Originally titled Blessed Virgin and pegged for release way back in 2019, it marks an ever-welcome return for the great director, his first outing since 2016 when Elle took Isabelle Huppert all the way to the Oscars. Elle co-star Virginie Efira reteams with the director as the precariously self-assured Sister Benedetta. Verhoeven introduces the character as a child who, on the way to take “the veil,” saves her well-to-do family from being robbed by praying to the Virgin Mary. The mother of Jesus seems to respond by having a bird shit in one of the assailant’s eyes. (Much of the film’s drama is drawn from that fine line between divinity and pure chance.) This formative experience speaks to Benedetta’s belief that she is a chosen vessel for the Lord’s work. (It would be a stretch to say this is Verhoeven’s answer to Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, but there are some knowing similarities—as there are with Ordet.)

Continue reading our Cannes review of Benedetta.

The premise of After Yang might require a mild digestif. A work of speculative science fiction from the video-essayist-turned-director kogonada, it concerns the inner workings of an unconventional family: adoptive father Jake (played by Colin Farrel), the proprietor of an artisanal tea shop; his wife Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith), busy and detached; their daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja), an adopted child from China; and Yang, the android they purchased to be her ersatz older brother. Near the film’s start Yang breaks down and, with Mika distraught, Jake must find a way to get him back online. On his travels he discovers that Yang’s hardware has been custom fitted to record and save a few seconds of video each day, a moment that the A.I. finds most valuable; or, in other words, to find evidence of an inner emotional life. Phew.

It is the second feature to be released by kogonada, a South Korean-born, American-based filmmaker who took to making features with consummate ease with his 2017 debut Columbus. A love story in hushed tones, it used the clean lines of that city’s famed architecture as a profound backdrop to the complicities of his characters’ desires—an allegory as neat as Saarinen’s spire. After Yang swings for a similar calm catharsis but fails to make contact. Though ambitious in reach, its tone is one-note, stilted, and saccharine sweet, its ideas as disjointed as they are ultimately unsatisfying.

Continue reading our Cannes review of After Yang.

In Annette, a provocative comedian (Adam Driver) and renowned opera singer (Marion Cotillard) fall in love and have a gifted child. Written and composed by Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks, the singular rock band that formed in the early 1970s, the musical is directed by Leos Carax, making his long-awaited return with his first feature since Holy Motors in 2012. (The Maels reached out after Carax used one of their songs in that film.) And though a dyed-in-the-wool collaboration, it remains an unmistakably Caraxian film—not long after Sparks’ overture (“This is the start!” goes the refrain) does the director dip into his own back catalog: a motorbike, shot from low, tearing down an illuminated tunnel at night; glistening limousines; nods to Jean Vigo and Melville; eroticism; lots of cigarettes. It really has been too long.

Held over from last year, Annette was chosen to reopen Cannes as the first big premiere to grace the festival after suffering its longest hiatus since the Second World War. That kind of billing and hype almost demanded a sugar rush, yet Carax has delivered something gloriously gnarled and uncomfortable: a bludgeoning rock opera that takes aim at the entertainment industry and the dregs of toxic masculinity; that flourishes just as it drips with self-loathing; and that gestures toward such far-flung places as Dadaism, A Star is Born, Pinocchio, and even the director’s own life.

Continue reading our Cannes review of Annette.

Our 20 most-anticipated Cannes 2021 premieres.

We explore the poster art of July.

“The lesson in Siberia is that films themselves are like a dream; even the shittiest film. You’re sitting in the dark, you’re watching some crazy shit. It’s edited, so it’s not real life anyways. Even if it’s edited well it’s all fucked-up anyways, right?  That juxtaposition of time, it’s so dreamlike that you have to almost kill yourself to make it not dreamlike. The nature of the medium is: you’re in the dark, you’re half-asleep, or you’re in some other kind of hypnotic state, watching these images, telling a story—it’s the nature of a dream. It’s hard, because when you really think about the dreams you have, to try to film them you have to be a master. You’ve got to be as good as Welles or Jean Vigo. We’ll keep working at it, you know what I mean?”

We talk to Abel Ferrara about reinventing the cinematic form.

We round up the best films of 2021 (so far).

The first look at Timothée Chalamet & Taylor Russell in Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All.

See more details.

Titane (Julia Ducournau, 2021)

Watch the first trailer.

Watch the exclusive U.S. trailer for Hong Sangsoo’s The Woman Who Ran, opening July 9.

The first trailer for Wong Kar-wai’s Blossoms Shanghai has arrived!

Watch.

We explore the poster art of June.

The 2021 Cannes Film Festival lineup has been announced!

Explore.

During writing, he’s really in his own space and needs to create his story, in a way that you can tell when reading the screenplay, as every single detail from the film is already mapped out. This is why I find him so interesting––he’s so structured, and yet when it comes to rehearsals and filming, he’s so open to suggestions from actors, and surprisingly thrives on spontaneity. He can adapt to anything the shoot throws at him; sometimes I feel like he has two brains.

For example, we worked together after I read the screenplay to further develop how to make a tangible character based on a myth who could feasibly exist in modern Berlin. And then during his rehearsals with actors, we realized that we didn’t need about two-thirds of the dialogue––so we just got rid of it. Working with him never feels like working; he’s very organized, but you always feel like you’re figuring out what works and what doesn’t together.

Read our conversation with Undine star Paula Beer.