‘The Silent Twins’ Review: Agnieszka Smoczynska’s Take On A Tragic True Story Is Imaginative, But Frustrating [Cannes]

French actress Léa Seydoux is having a big moment right now at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Not only is she set to star in the latest film from director David Cronenberg, “Crimes Of The Future” (read our review), but she is also the lead in Mia Hansen-Løve’s “One Fine Morning” (read our review) But there is another project she is opening up about that she almost did.

s’il vous plaît!Over at the French film festival on the Cote d’Azur, which wraps up this weekend, it’s long been popular to give comical and undeserved standing ovations to just about anything that could be feasibly called a film. Next year the Claudes and Claudettes will be hopping to their feet for a dancing toad on TikTok (more deserving, honestly, than Lars von Trier.)The trade publications time these performative participation prizes like they’re Olympic runners.

Directed by Louis Garrel, son of revered arthouse director Philippe, “The Innocent” is a quintessentially French comedy whose principle aim is to be a fun time. Though this may seem a relatively modest ambition, we all know it isn’t easy to do well, and Garrel certainly does not make things any simpler for himself as the film repeatedly leaves the realm of the bon mot to veer on the farcical.

“The Stars at Noon” finds the French filmmaker Claire Denis shooting in Panama doubling for Nicaragua; directing a cast of Yanks, Brits, and assorted Central Americans; and working from a script switching between Spanish and English. Internationally coproduced Towers of Babel such as this aren’t at all uncommon at the Cannes Film Festival, but the errors in translation all over this disappointing foreign-relations drama run deeper than simple differences of ethnicity or language.

Guy Lodge Film CriticAny number of directors could have shot Andrea Seigel’s straightforwardly moving screenplay for “The Silent Twins” and turned out a straightforwardly moving film in the process. It’s hard to imagine any of those movies looking, sounding or feeling quite like the one Agnieszka Smoczyńska has made, however.

Cristiano Ronaldo's girlfriend, Georgina Rodriguez, made her first public appearance since she and the Manchester United soccer star announced the death of their infant son. Rodriguez took to Instagram to share some snaps from the Cannes Film Festival in France.

2022 Cannes Film Festival, where Kaia Gerber and Austin Butler were in full PDA mode!The 20-year-old model and 30-year-old star walked the red carpet Wednesday for the world premiere of the Baz Luhrmann-directed biopic and didn't let the cameras deter them from showing their affection. In fact, it appears as if it was Gerber, looking stunning in a red gown, who grabbed Butler's face with both hands and planted a wet one on the budding actor.Once inside the theater, the audience got to enjoy the highly anticipated screening of the film set to be released June 24.

Anne Hathaway is being crowned the haute couture queen of the Cannes Film Festival. And fans of the brunette bombshell are digitally reveling over the early-2000s diva’s fashionable resurgence. “Can we all take a moment to appreciate Anne Hathaway looking like a goddess in Cannes,” tweeted an admirer of the Oscar winner, alongside a snapshot of her in a sequin, floral-print two-piece ensemble by Schiaparelli. “I love this Anne Hathaway renaissance we’re going through,” chimed another. Making her debut at the annual silver screen soirée over the weekend, Hathaway, 39, repeatedly turned heads in high-fashion finery for the premiere of her feature flick “Armageddon Time,” starring Anthony Hopkins, 84, and Jeremy Strong, 43. And immediately after touching down in France on Wednesday, the blockbuster beauty transformed the Nice Côte d’Azur Airport into a virtual runway, sashaying through in a chic, loose-fitting pantsuit.  From there, Hathaway ditched her trendy traveling togs to don a white strapless Armani Privé gown, reminiscent of her “Princess Diaries” glamor, on the film festival’s star-studded red carpet Thursday. The flawless fashion plate continued to outdo herself throughout the duration of the weekend, rocking a blue mini dress by Gucci Friday, stunning in a coffee-colored Louis Vuitton number Saturday and beaming in a hot pink piece by Valentino Sunday. And the luxe looks sent Hathaway enthusiasts into a full-on Twitter tizzy. “Anne Hathaway at the cannes film festival.

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.

Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Smoczynska (The Lure, Fugue) makes her english language debut with The Silent Twins, the strange and remarkable story of June and Jennifer Gibbons, twin sisters who only communicated with each other from 8 to later teen years when drugs and drinking led to petty theft and an arson charge that landed them in the tightly secured medical ward of Broadmoor  for 11 years before being released in the 1980’s. Creating their own puppetry and dolls, poems, and music which they only broadcast for each other on a fake radio program, the “twinies” as they were called by family fell into an odd void that became more pronounced, even when they were forced to go to separate schools at one point, and they carried on this way until becoming young women landing into legal troule  until incredibly being incarcerated for over a decade, five or six times as long as the longest sentence for the petty crimes of which they were accused.

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.

Carole Horst Anita Gou’s producing career focuses on helping filmmakers and creatives bring their personal passions and visions to the screen. With Focus Features’ Cannes Un Certain Regard entry “The Silent Twins” from director Agniezska Smoczynska, her streak producing singular visions — such as Lula Wang’s “The Farewell” and “Honeyboy,” the collaboration of writer-actor Shia LeBeouf and Alma Har’el — continues. She started in the business right out of school getting her feet wet in post-production on bigger studio films. “I kind of quickly realized through that experience — though very fruitful and eye-opening — that my passion was really about more independently driven films, more idiosyncratic storytelling, storytellers and stories.

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.

“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.

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.

French writer/director Alice Winocour was interested in the connection between the body and the mind before it was cool. Her feature debut “Augustine” (2012) told the story of a supposedly “hysterical” woman and her doctor in 19th century France, while “Disorder” (2015) centered on a soldier-turned bodyguard suffering from PTSD.

“When you want to film a fire, you need to be in the place where the first flame is produced.” So says the disembodied voice of Patricio Guzmán as he recalls a piece of advice received early in his filmmaking career by his mentor, French multimedia artist Chris Marker. In this case, the fire is the Estallido Social, a series of colossal protests and riots that started in the capital city of Santiago and rapidly spread across Chile at the end of 2019.