Remember last week when Tilda Swinton and Timothee Chalamet kept wearing all those hot suits in France? That was because a film festival was happening, and it was Cannes—the 74th annual Cannes Film Festival, to be precise. Back in-person after COVID-19 scuttled last year’s event (if I had a Euro for every time I’ve had to type that…), there was lots to see besides the cast of The French Dispatch. Jodie Foster speaking French, Adam Driver smoking inside, Bella Hadid’s chest. And also films!
It’ll likely be a while before many of the films the debuted at Cannes make it to American theaters—or, you know, streaming services—but the festival gave us a preview of the most notable releases coming our way over the next year or so. Here’s a list of this year’s Cannes films to watch for.
Titane
Director Julia Ducournau’s follow-up to her 2016 horror film Raw won this year’s Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize, making her the first woman to win the award on her own. Like that cannibalistic flick, Titane is another lurid, fascinating tale, a shocker that reviewers are comparing to the work of provocateurs like Nicolas Winding Refn and David Cronenberg. The film follows Alexia (Agathe Rousselle), a young car model with a metal plate in her head, a lust for hot rods and a homicidal impulse—all of which lead her to impersonate the missing son of a hypermasculine fire fighter (Vincent Lindon). “It’s hard to tell if you’re watching the most f-cked up movie ever made about the idea of found family, or the sweetest movie ever made about a serial killer who has sex with a car,” IndieWire’s David Ehrlich writes. Still, he continues, “Titane is the work of a demented visionary in full command of her wild mind.”
Annette
This wild musical fantasia from director Leos Carax opened Cannes, receiving a five-minute standing ovation. Adam Driver stars as a noxious stand-up comic who falls for a world-renowned opera singer (Marion Cotillard). Fame makes their already mismatched pairing even more tempestuous. And then there’s their baby daughter, Annette, a role performed by a puppet, who exhibits vocal abilities to rival her mother’s. Reviews have been more mixed than the initial rapturous Cannes reception might suggest. Most of the praise has been heaped on Driver’s performance and the film’s general audacity. But you won’t have to wait long to see this one for yourself. Annette arrives in theaters August 6 and on Amazon Prime on August 20.
Red Rocket
Remember Simon Rex? Former MTV VJ, model, rapper and occasional actor? It looks like he’s getting a comeback courtesy of Tangerine and The Florida Project director Sean Baker. Red Rocket finds former porn actor Mikey Saber (Rex) returning to his hometown on Texas’s Gulf Coast and trying to rebuild his life after his adult film career burns out. Much is being made of Baker’s meta casting of Rex, who got his start in blue movies in the early ’90s. Baker is a reliably empathetic director whose work shows us people living on the margins of American life, and in his hands, Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson points out, “Rex’s performance is fleet and nimble, gregarious and shaded in darkness.”
The French Dispatch
You’ve seen the photos of the cast looking cooler mere mortals could ever hope to be. You’ve experienced the resulting memes. And if the name Wes Anderson means anything to you, chances are you have an idea of what you’re getting with The French Dispatch. Which is not to say that it doesn’t look truly delightful. Inspired by The New Yorker, the film is an anthology of sorts, depicting three tales reported by journalists at the titular (fictional) publication. Anjelica Houston narrates, and every actor who matters makes at least a cameo. Watch the trailer and try not to be charmed.
Benedette
Paul Verhoeven’s French-language film about lesbian nuns in Renaissance Italy has provoked the kind of reception you’d probably expect of a film from the director of Showgirls and Basic Instinct. There’s been pearl clutching at the blasphemous sex and violence, accusations of misogyny. “The unlikely trajectory of Benedetta Carlini [Virginie Efira] is certainly viewed through a male gaze, and a shameless one at that,” Jordan Mintzer writes for The Hollywood Reporter, “and yet to consider this tale of faith and acumen triumphing over false virtue as a mere case of exploitation is to write it off too easily.” Benedette is clearly polarizing, but along with Charlotte Rampling’s performance, we’re dying to see what all the fuss is about.
