
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.













