Cannes at Home: A Polarizing Pandemonium

by Cláudio Alves

Adèle Exarchopoulos won a César for Jeanne Herry's ALL YOUR FACES. Will her new collaboration with the director, presently at Cannes, produce similar results?

The 2026 Cannes Film Festival is drawing to a close, so I should probably hurry up with this corresponding Cannes at Home program. In the past few days, a number of titles have come and gone on the Croisette, most of them eliciting wildly divisive reactions. Nobody seems to agree on the merits of Na Hong-jin’s Hope, and Arthur Harari’s The Unknown has proven similarly polarizing. While some bet on Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord for the Palme, others are decrying it as a minor work, if not an outright failure. Elisa is a fan, for instance, but TFE’s old friend Nick Davis is a naysayer. In the middle of all this, László Némes’ historical Moulin and Jeanne Herry’s Garance have mostly slipped by under the radar, drawing little attention while also sparing themselves the lacerating putdowns their bolder, more ambitious competition has inspired in film critics and audiences alike.

For this lightning round of Cannes at Home, let’s run this gamut of filmmakers in capsule form. Their films are Nemes’ handsome Sunset, Herry’s actorly All Your Faces, Na’s go-for-broke bonkers The Wailing, Harari’s portrait of Onoda, and Mungiu’s first foray into the intolerance that can emerge in European communities beset by the arrival of outsiders, R.M.N...

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Cannes at Home: Masturbation, Motherhood and Melodrama

by Cláudio Alves

Long before he was selected for the Cannes Main Competition, Rodrigo Sorogoyen became an Oscar nominee with his MOTHER short film.

The race for the Palme is heating up… is what you’d assume we’d be saying by the time half the Main Competition had screened. However, this year isn’t like most years at Cannes. Or maybe, it’s an edition where issues that have prevailed for years are finally becoming too noticeable to politely ignore. Thierry Frémaux’s favorite auteurs aren’t bringing it, and most of the biggest critical darlings are showing in parallel sections – think La Gradiva, Kurosawa’s first jidaigeki, Clarissa’s transposition of Mrs. Dalloway to Nigeria and various others. Indeed, Hirokazu Koreeda is receiving the worst reviews of his illustrious career for Sheep in the Box, while Rodrigo Sorogoyen can’t stop drawing depreciative Sentimental Value comparisons because of his The Beloved. Finally, James Gray’s Paper Tiger is proving divisive, which is business as usual for the American auteur.

With those cineastes in mind, let’s revisit Koreeda’s Air Doll about a sex doll magically come to life, Sorogoyen’s agonizing Mother, and one of Gray’s best films, the fraternal melodrama We Own the Night…

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Cannes at Home: Big Names Before Their Big Break

by Cláudio Alves

Did the film student who directed PASSION dream he'd one day be a Palme d'Or frontrunner?

The 79th Cannes Film Festival continues to unfold on the French Riviera, and things aren’t looking great for Fremaux and his team of programmers. Some of the most acclaimed titles are premiering in parallel sections, while the Main Competition keeps delivering mixed stuff or provoking outright negative reactions. Asghar Farhadi has probably never received worse notices than the ones he’s getting for Parallel Tales, and even something like Pawel Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, which looked like a slam-dunk triumph going by pre-fest expectations, is struggling to gather the sort of universal critical praise most had predicted for it. Our own Elisa Giudicci loves it, but the consensus isn’t there yet. And let’s not even discuss Marie Kreutzer’s Gentle Monster, whose every element seems to be open for savage criticism apart from Léa Seydoux’s performance. Well, at least, we have Ryusuke Hamaguchi, whose All of a Sudden has inspired a fair amount of “masterpiece,” even though a few naysayers also have showered it with such epitaphs as “long, slow, boring.”

With that in mind, let’s look away from lackluster new works and consider these directors’ pasts, before their big breaks. Think Pawlikowski before Ida and his drift away from British cinema, Farhadi before A Separation and his European misadventures, Hamaguchi before Happy Hour and Drive My Car and the Oscar, Kreutzer before Corsage…

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Cannes at Home: Love in the time of COVID

by Cláudio Alves

Could Koji Fukada's THE REAL THING have been a Palme contender in 2020?

The second day at Cannes came and went, and the race for festival gold is on. Not just the prizes chosen by Park Chan-woo’s jury, mind you. In a rare move by the programmers, the Main Competition opened with two films that are also up for the Queer Palm. They are Koji Fukada’s Nagi Notes and Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s A Woman’s Life. Neither was effusively received, but there are pockets of praise, even love, here and there. The latter has been getting especially high praise for Léa Drucker’s performance. And yet, this Main Competition might mean even more to the Japanese auteur who was among those selected for the festival edition that never was in 2020. At the time, Fukada was included among the returning cineastes and would’ve likely experienced his first go at the Palme d’Or if not for the COVID lockdown.

So, it only seems appropriate to consider his film that would’ve played at the Croisette six years ago, a near four-hour epic love story named The Real Thing. And to keep things thematically cohesive, let’s also remember Bourgeois-Tacquet's 2021 Critics’ Week selection, Anaïs in Love…

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Cannes at Home: Let's Wrap This Up!

by Cláudio Alves

The heart yearns for Bi Gan's RESURRECTION.

So, while there may still be some Cannes-related articles to come at The Film Experience, it's time to say a belated goodbye to another edition of Cannes at Home. I hope you've enjoyed this look into past works from the batch of directors who just vied for the Palme. This year, Saeed Roustaee was one of the last auteurs to take their bow at the Croisette, presenting his Woman and Child to mixed reviews that still made sure to highlight the film's cast. Bi Gan brought experimental verve to the competition with Resurrection, which took home a Special Jury prize. I won't lie, despite Panahi's Palme, this genre-hopping Chinese epic about the senses of cinema is my most anticipated title from the fest. Then came the Dardennes' Young Mothers, winner of this year's Best Screenplay award. And as the last competition title, Thierry Fremaux programmed Kelly Reichardt's 70s-set heist drama The Mastermind, with Josh O'Connor in the lead. 

For our homebound festival, let's revisit Roustaee's Life and a Day, Bi Gan's Long Day's Journey Into Night, the Dardennes' Tori and Lokita, and Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff…

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