‘Falcon Lake’ Review: Charlotte Le Bon’s Debut Is A Bold, Haunting Coming-Of-Age Story [Cannes]

Though shot and set prior to the Russian invasion, by dint of being a Ukrainian picture detailing the aftermath of a woman soldier’s assault in the Donbas, “Butterfly Vision” lays claim to uniquely wretched timeliness at this year’s Cannes. What is an impressive if formally flawed first film from Maksym Nakonechnyi earns some emotional weight vis-a-vis present events: the Ukrainian flags of blue and white, flown with unsparing pride across Nakonechnyi’s images, bear the immediate frisson of beleaguered resistance, and that women Stateside presently face unprecedented threats to their bodily autonomy only compounds the miserable resonance.

This year’s dark horse in competition at Cannes is easily “Leila’s Brothers,” Iranian writer-director Saeed Roustaee’s third feature and worthy follow-up to his intense 2019 cop thriller “Just 6.5.” With hints of “The Godfather” and Arthur Miller evident throughout, the drama is a sprawling tale exploring dysfunctional family dynamics, economic hardships, and generational wealth. READ MORE: Cannes Film Festival 2022 Preview: 25 Must-See Films To Watch “Leila’s Brothers” follows the lives of a Tehran family as they struggle to stay afloat amidst financial hardships and complicated familial relationships.

The exquisite and sublime journeys of Oregon-based filmmaker Kelly Reichardt are arguably, more or less, incidental or oblique political statements about survival in America, often focusing on two or more friends, usually outsiders, and their struggle to endure. “Wendy And Lucy,” about a destitute woman and her soulmate canine companion, was overt about human inequity and hardship; “Meek’s Cutoff” depicted the unbearable burden of living off a hostile, unforgiving land; and “First Cow” presented the warm, but sad futility of two friends trying to sustain themselves under the grueling rigors of nascent American capitalism.

It’s a Cannes Film Festival legend. Supposedly, at the 1999 festival, when David Cronenberg headed the competition jury, he swayed his jury cohorts to award the Palme d’Or to the Dardennes’ “Rosetta” over Pedro Almodóvar‘s festival favorite, “All About My Mother.” Now, at this year’s festival, “Crimes Of The Future” star Viggo Mortensen put the myth to bed, stating that it’s a “bullshit” rumor and that the jury’s choice for “Rosetta” was unanimous.

In the late 19th century, two French psychiatrists coined the term “folie à deux,” literally translated as madness for two, to describe what is now widely referred to as shared psychotic disorder, or when two — or more — people transmit delusional beliefs and occasional hallucinations to one another. The condition is most common in people closely related, who live in intimate proximity, and has been lengthily dissected by academics.

As countries go, Iceland is probably one of the most fast-changing in terms of its biological make up, its intense volcanic activities reshaping its surface and contours at a speed fast enough to be perceived within a single generation. Paradoxically, it is also a place where time appears to stand still, with the sun omnipresent for half the year and absent for the rest.

Based on her own time spent in the acting school Les Amandiers, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s “Forever Young” aims to recreate a very specific time and place both in her life and in France, more than it cares to inform her audience about what, exactly, was so special about this school. Funded in the 1980s by Patrice Chéreau, a successful and daring director of theatre, opera and film, Les Amandiers did not last very long but for a few years it was considered to be one of the most exciting places in France and even Europe for young actors to develop their crafts, and for directors to find new talent.

Observed in isolation, detached from the body or in extreme close-ups, organs and other vital viscera resemble moist masses of soft tissue plucked from alien landscapes in the unflinchingly immersive medical documentary “De Humani Corporis Fabrica.” Alternating between footage from cameras inserted into patients for the purpose of treating ailments and grisly shots from the operating room, directors Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, the team behind the striking non-fiction film on fishing “Leviathan,” apply their fascination for uncanny imagery with relativist intent to the inner workings of French hospitals and, in turn, the human body.

“Tori and Lokita” opens on a tight close-up on the teenage Lokita (Joely Mbundu) as she struggles with the questions delivered by an immigration officer. She has fabricated a story about how she found her brother, Tori (Pablo Schils) in an orphanage, but no one believes her.

A balloon shaped like a heart flies from the open window of a taxi. It is late at night and the woman (Leila Hatami) who this gift was bestowed upon simply couldn’t care less about the useless trinket, far more interested in comparing the quality of the accompanying chocolate boxes dispensed by a handful of men who wish to have her as a Valentine.

sickened by horrific scenes in “Crimes of the Future” reportedly walked out of the premiere at Cannes Film Festival on Monday.The film — starring Kristen Stewart, Léa Seydoux and Viggo Mortensen — is filled with scenes of child autopsies, bloody intestines, body mutations and people orgasming while licking open wounds.  The majority of the exits reportedly occurred within the first five minutes of the film but a specifically grotesque scene of Seydoux licking an open wound sent others out the door further along in the film. Both Variety and the Daily Mail reported walkouts, but Entertainment Weekly claimed there were none.New York Times journalist Kyle Buchanan tweeted from the theatre that he counted 15 people who walked out of the cinema during the screening due to “notably gross plot developments.” Despite being too much for some, the movie directed by David Cronenberg received a seven-minute standing ovation from the remaining audience members at the end.

It’s the plight of the plightless: a kid from a comfortable, upper-middle-class background wants to be some manner of artist, except that he’s (and it does seem to be a he more often than not) bereft of the experience, grit, or outsider credibility that define the role models he hopes he could one-day call influences. He ventures out into the big bad world in search of something to put a bit of hair on his creative chest, only to face the spiny question of whether this effort to get real is just class tourism, a jaunt in the gutter that one phone call to Dad could prevent.

It’s the plight of the plightless: a kid from a comfortable, upper-middle-class background wants to be some manner of artist, except that he’s (and it does seem to be a he more often than not) bereft of the experience, grit, or outsider credibility that define the role models he hopes he could one-day call influences. He ventures out into the big bad world in search of something to put a bit of hair on his creative chest, only to face the spiny question of whether this effort to get real is just class tourism, a jaunt in the gutter that one phone call to Dad could prevent.

The great majority of us could only aspire, before “Moonage Daydream,” to step into the mind of David Bowie — the persona, the artist, the entity not yet proven terrestrial. Eclectic, unashamedly maximalist, and variously philosophical: all true of both the man himself and Brett Morgen’s feature-length docu-odyssey, which borrows its title from the 1976 hit, and just debuted as part of Cannes’ Midnight slate.

At a press conference for his new film “Crimes of the Future” at the Cannes Film Festival, Canadian director David Cronenberg was asked about the film’s politics and the abortion debate in America.

David Cronenberg has unfinished business with the future, which is tricky, seeing as it already constitutes a significant slice of his past. His new film — titled “Crimes of the Future,” as in committed by rather than during that span of time — finds the master on the other side of his extended sojourn in high-minded literary adaptation, biopic quasi-prestige, and Tinseltown satire, back to playing the body-horror hits on which he made his name.

A drastic departure from his prior films “Border” and “Shelley,” Ali Abbasi’s newest film, “Holy Spider,” draws inspiration from the 2000-2001 crimes and subsequent trial of Saeed Hanaei (played here by Mehdi Bajestani), a war veteran-turned-serial killer in the Iranian city of Mashhad who murdered 16 sex workers, claiming that he was cleansing the holy city of sinners and corruption in the name of Islam.

“The Five Devils,” from French director Léa Mysius, captivates from its very first seconds. We see Adèle Exarchopoulos in a sparkling gymnast outfit with other similarly dressed girls, all watching an enormous fire in the background; when she turns around, she is crying — fire, beauty, passion and death all conveyed in one image.

“Narcissists are the ones who make it…combined with talent, it’s a plus,” Signe (Kristine Kujath Thorp) coolly observes in the opening stages of the wickedly enjoyable “Sick of Myself.” For anyone who’s watched a partner realize their dreams, a trusted colleague get promoted, or a friend become famous, and curdled with jealousy and resentment, Kristoffer Borgli has made the film for you. The filmmaker’s tart and scabrously funny (both literally and figuratively) sophomore feature is a pointed portrait of a toxic relationship and a razor-sharp evisceration of those warped by a victim mentality.

The films of French filmmaker Quentin Dupieux are at their best when they combine his penchant for ludicrous but simple what-if scenarios, with his perceptive eye for humor in everyday life and banal interactions. He would probably hate his cinema to be pinned down in this way: though he has proven that he can subscribe to straightforward storytelling with “Deerskin” (which premieres at Cannes in 2019) and “Incredible But True” (Berlinale 2022), the French director and absurdist also enjoys leaving the demands of logical plot developments behind in favor of a freer style.