Cannes Review: Vicky Krieps & Gaspard Ulliel In ‘More Than Ever’

Jury Prize: “Joyland,” directed by Saim SadiqBest Director Prize: Alexandru Belc for “Metronomes”Best Actor Prize (jointly awarded):Vicky Krieps in “Corsage”Adam Bessa in “Harka”Best Screenplay Prize: “Mediterranean Fever,” directed by Maha HajCoup de cœur Prize: “Rodeo,” directed by Lola Quivoron

Guy Lodge Film CriticFrench film “The Worst Ones (Les Pires)” is the surprise winner of the top prize at this year’s Un Certain Regard awards ceremony, with Italian actor-director Valeria Golino and her fellow jurors also handing prizes to Pakistani breakout “Joyland,” Romanian drama “Metronom” and “Corsage” star Vicky Krieps.

CANNES – Lukas Dhont’s second feature, “Close,” starts off where most love stories end, and, in that respect, it begins with almost euphoric joy. Leo (Eden Dambrine) and Remi (Gustav De Waele) are the best of friends.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent“The Three Musketeers,” Pathé Films’s $75-million two-part adventure epic saga based on Alexandre Dumas’s masterpiece, has been bought in major international territories rolling off a busy Cannes market. Pathé unveiled a sprawling 15-minute promoreel for both “The Three Musketeers” – D’Artagnan” and “The Three Musketeers – Milady” at Cannes Marché du Film. Both movies are directed by Martin Bourboulon and boast a star-studded cast, including Vincent Cassel, Eva Green, Vicky Krieps, Romain Duris, Pio Marmaï, François Civil, Lyna Khoudri and Louis Garrel.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorWhen filmmaker Marie Kreutzer was writing “Corsage,” which chronicles a critical period in the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, also known as “Sissi,” she had in mind the experience of other women in the public eye, in particular Princess Diana and Meghan Markle. In recent weeks, she has been mulling the treatment of Amber Heard as well.

Nostalgia has seldom looked grittier, or more treacherous, than it does in Mario Martone’s eponymous new film. The Italian director splashes his teaming, boisterous, unruly native city of Naples across the screen in fulsome fashion in telling the story of a man who left as a teenager but, some 40 years later, is drawn back into its sinister embrace.

Detective Hae-joon investigating the death of a man who fell from a mountain top. When he meets the deceased man’s wife in Park Chan-wook’s latest film in competition at Cannes, Decision To Leave.  

It’s a very big day for Riley Keough!

review, Nicholas Barber wrote that “Corsage” stylistically resembles the dreamy Kristen Stewart film “Spencer.” “Whenever the film seems to be settling into an atmospheric but conventionally good-looking period piece, Kreutzer throws in an amusing and jarring reminder of the modern world, as if Elisabeth were breaking out of her allotted role by time-traveling, momentarily, to the present day,” Barber wrote. “Corsage” follows Elisabeth around her 40th birthday at a time when her role in the empire is slowly becoming more performative and has to fight to maintain her public image by lacing her corset ever tighter and tighter.

For all their faults, the 2020s are shaping up to be a welcome celebration of actor Vicky Krieps. The Luxembourg actress is perhaps best-known with domestic audiences for her performance in Paul Thomas Anderson‘s “Phantom Thread,” but with 2021’s “Bergman Island” and a pair of 2022 Cannes Film Festival titles (“Corsage,” “More Than Ever“) under her belt, she seems poised to enter that rare stratosphere of performers who move between national cinema and Hollywood with ease.

IFC Films has nabbed North American rights to “Corsage,” Marie Kreutzer’s bold costume drama starring Vicky Krieps as the Empress Elisabeth of Austria known as Sissi. Represented in international markets by MK2 Films, the movie world premiered at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard and earned unanimous praises.

CANNES – It may seem obvious, but sometimes combining two compelling stories doesn’t lead to an overall more captivating film. That’s the primary takeaway from Gina Gammell and Riley Keough‘s somewhat messy “War Pony,” which debuted at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival this weekend.

Inspired by her own late mother’s long battle with multiple sclerosis, writer/director Emily Atef’s (“Molly’s Way,” “3 Days in Quiberon”) latest work, “More Than Ever,” delivers a poignant and well-acted story. Featuring Gaspard Ulliel’s last performance, the film asks its audience to face the reality of and ponder the inevitability of death as well as the line between those who have experienced a type of suffering and those who haven’t.

CANNES – We are living in yet another era of European history where old battles over the borders of nation-states are being disputed. Russia has invaded the sovereign nation of Ukraine after already annexing the province of Crimea less than a decade ago.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorLeading arthouse sales company the Match Factory has acquired the rights to “Bachmann & Frisch,” a biopic about the radical Austrian writer and poet Ingeborg Bachmann, directed by Venice Golden Lion winner Margarethe von Trotta. The film stars Vicky Krieps — who appears in two Cannes Film Festival films this year, “Corsage” and “More Than Ever” — as the poet, and Ronald Zehrfeld (“Barbara,” “Phoenix”) as her partner, the Swiss writer Max Frisch.The pickup follows the international sales success for the Match Factory with Von Trotta’s “Hannah Arendt” in 2012.

There’s a lot happening at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival right now and so many big stars stepped out for photo calls during day five.

Naman Ramachandran New York-based Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells’ feature debut “Aftersun,” premiering at Cannes Critics’ Week, aims to achieve a balance of joy and melancholia in equal measure.Framed as a look back at a father-daughter holiday at a Turkish resort in the late 1990s, with occasional mini DV footage adding to the period texture, the film is an ode to nostalgia with hints of something far darker.Wells’ first short, “Tuesday” (2015), was about the loss of her father, which happened when she was a teenager. “I wanted to explore a different period in that relationship, like a young father and his daughter on holiday.

A silver spoon clunks loudly inside a bowl of beef broth. The meal — well, barely a meal — is served to Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Vicky Krieps) twice a day, her diet a strict combination of insipid soup and wafer-thin slices of lemon.

Mark Jenkin’s 2019 film Bait had the rare distinction of being a genuine out-of-the-blue discovery, featuring heavily on UK critics’ year-best lists after a modest arthouse release by the BFI. The black-and-white film’s experimental style was emphasized in all its press coverage, nodding to avant-garde auteurs like Stan Brakhage, Derek Jarman and Guy Maddin — all directors who are interested in the literal grain of film and video (indeed, Jenkin reportedly developed the negative with coffee and washing soda then distressed the image by hand). Throw in post-synch sound, and you have a film more likely to screen to two people and a dog at a smoky underground 1960s cine-club than win a BAFTA.