Over the last nine or ten days (5.12 to 5.21) I’ve seen more Cannes ’26 films than the ones I’ve written about. On paper HE’s policy has mostly been to hit the keyboard only about films that I’ve had strongly positive or negative reactions to, but I haven’t followed this regimen strictly.
But the biggies so far are, in this order, Fjord, Fatherland, The Man I Love, Paper Tiger, The Beloved, The Match and (in my estimation at least) Parallel Tales. Seven in all. Plus one high-expectation effort I’ll be seeing tonight, Coward, from Lukas Dhont.
There was one film — Pierre Salavdori‘s The Electric Kiss, which I caught on opening night (5.12) — that I wrote about without any special ardor or disfavor.
I felt generally positive about Kantemir Balagov‘s Butterfly Jam, and said as much.
I adored Juan Cabral and Santiago Franco‘s The Match. I comme ci comme ca‘ed about Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet‘s A Woman’s Life so I wrote nothing. I hated Jane Schoenbrun‘s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, and said as much. I saw Diego Luna‘s Ashes and felt next to nothing…couldn’t get it up so I let it go.
And then, two days after the festival began or on Thursday, 5.14, I saw the first masterpiece — Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Fatherland, I filed a rave review, and liked it so much that I caught a repeat showing the following morning (Friday, 5.15).
My approving response to Asghar Farhadi‘s Parallel Tales was a minority opinion, but I found it genuinely clever and intriguing and said so.
Radu Jude‘s The Diary of a Chambermaid wasn’t a negative, but for filing purposes a no-go. Somewhere between flat and unexceptional.
On Friday (5.15) I described Ryusuke Hamaguchi‘s All Of a Sudden (Soudain) as “a 196-minute film that is basically a slow-moving, didactic conversational instructional — a 21st Century counterpart to Jean-Luc Godard‘s Marxist instructional films (1967 to 1974).”
Later that day I endured Marie Kreutzer‘s Gentle Monster, but it seemed like another generically feminist “awful men” flick, this one concerned with a husband who’s been secretly earning extra income by sharing child-porn material. This comes to his wife’s attention via police investigation, but I didn’t find it dramatically persuasive, much less compelling.
The festival’s second big knockout, Rodrigo Sorogoyen‘s The Beloved, arrived on Saturday, 5.16. Javier Bardem‘s performance as a vaguely testy, emotionally simmering film director coping with a difficult if unacknowledged relationship with his 30something actress daughter (the excellent Victoria Luengo) struck me as brilliant. The film was my idea of a solid triple.
Later that evening the third serious triumph screened — James Gray‘s Paper Tiger. I filed a seriously ardent rave with an idea that it might win the Palme d’Or, or at least the Grand Prix award.
Later that evening I composed a generally pleasured response to Barnaby Thompson‘s Maverick: The Epic Adventures of David Lean….”wowed, massaged, comforted, reminded, elevated, amused…a career-profile doc that does everything you want it to do.”
And then came the festival’s fourth heavy hitter as well as the first (and so far only) grand slam — Cristian Mungiu‘s Fjord, which I called “a fascinating assault on socially progressive totalitarianism.” This has to be a major award winner, in my view a Palme d’Or slam dunk. Then again the denial-beset reactions from certain critics indicated that the jury might take a similar view so who knows?
The dual disappointments of Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Minotaur and Pedro Almodovar‘s Bitter Christmas arrived on Tuesday, 5.19. I was more impressed by the moaning man incident than the Almodovar…sorry.
I was fairly astounded by the flat tedium of Emmanuel Marre‘s Notre Salut, which certain French critics have been praising among themselves.
Yesterday (Wednesday, 5.20) ushered in Mike Mendez‘s entirely pleasant and nourishing Dernsie along with Ira Sach‘s The Man I Love, in my book the festival’s fifth knockout and another possible Palme d’Or winner…maybe.
The curtain goes up on Lukas Dhont‘s Coward this evening at 10:15 pm…great expectations.
That’s 18 or 19 films so far (I haven’t mentioned Garance and one other) with another three or four to go. These include Hope, Machine Gun Kelly, La Biola Negra and The Birthday Party.
Once again, the keepers are Fjord, Fatherland, The Man I Love, Paper Tiger, The Beloved, The Match and Parallel Tales.
HE’s Nice-to-Oslo flight leaves late Saturday afternoon. The Oslo-to-JFK departs just after noon on Sunday.
