Screening Room

May 19, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Jacques Audiard (Rust & Bone, A Prophet, Dheepan, The Sister Brothers) has always confounded expectations, his films a wide range of tones, genres and subject matters. His latest – a tempestuous, glorious musical crime dramedy is no different and an absolute triumph.

Emilia Pérez is a moniker assumed by a Mexico City kingpin after the first reel – introduced via Rita (Zoë Saldaña), a defence lawyer tired of the corruption and lack of real justice in the system she works for. As she finishes up getting yet another violent man out of prosecution, she’s made an offer she can’t refuse. Fearsome drugs cartel overlord Manitas wants her help in disappearing. For this service he’ll make her rich and he intrigues her with a twist on the demand. Manitas has always longed to become his true self, a woman, and he wants to protect the two young children he has with his wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez). When Rita takes the job to help Manitas get reassignment surgery and hide his family, her life transforms from one of a powerless, invisible woman to one of agency and might. And Emilia (Karla Sofía Gascón, who also plays Manitas with prosthetics) will also discover her true calling in her new life…

And did we mention that amongst the gangland violence and body bags there’s singing and dancing? Operatic in every way, Audiard has plastic surgeons trilling about penises vs vaginas while bandaged client spin on hospital beds, Gomez burn up a disco with a banger about self love, Emilia’s unknowing child singing that her ‘auntie’ smells like Papa and – in a show stopping number – Saldaña dancing on fundraiser tables in a red velvet suit, spitting lyrics at corrupt officials.

On paper it probably shouldn’t work as a concept, but the musical interludes written by Camille bring real pathos and emotional heft to a complex story with moral grey areas. Manitas is a stone cold killer and gangbanger, yet in the hands of Spanish actress Gascón the beast becomes an empathetic beauty, making Rita – and audiences – care despite prior transgressions. And when you’ve got performers like Gomez and Saldaña committing to musical numbers choreographed by Damien Jalet, Emilia Pérez soars. It’s like watching Moulin Rouge! crossed with Narcos. And though this story might begin with the needs of an alpha male, it’s ultimately about the experiences of women; overlooked at work, beaten at home, yearning for lost children, in love, insane with jealousy, forgiving themselves. The standout though is Saldaña, charting the arc of Rita from poor, disenfranchised minion to magnificent matriarch (in all manner of ways), she is the beating heart of the piece and our emotional way into connecting so fully with the characters.

In the official competition at Cannes, this is a salty/sweet, ultimately uplifting crowd pleaser (Cannes’ audiences gave it a deserved 6-minute ovation) has a good chance of winning gold on the Riviera before being a contender in the race for awards.

Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez starring Zoë Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Karla Sofía Gascón premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival. Now available on Netflix

OH, CANADA

May 18, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

After Quintin Dupieux and Francis Ford Coppola’s cinematic essays on their relationships with art, Paul Schrader offers his own at Cannes this week. Dedicated to the late author Russell Banks, Schrader explores mortality, legacy and fraudulence in art as he tracks an irascible dying documentary-maker, Leonard Fife (Richard Gere) giving a deathbed career interview to two of his former students (Michael Imperioli and Victoria Hill). A fated artist who has spent his career being lauded for his anti-Vietnam war stance when he fled to Canada as a young man, and his liberal, game-changing documentaries, Leonard demands his wife, Emma (Uma Thurman) be his witness to his last confession. Riddled with cancer and befuddled by Fentanyl, Leonard recalls the true story of his rise to success – one that may be more self serving than selfless.

Leonard is played in flashback by Jacob Elordi who, though a more rangy version of Gere, manages to embody his recognisable strut and his cadence. A studious young man heading for a teaching job in Vermont in 1968, he’s married, father to a toddler (with another on the way) and offered the opportunity of being a CEO with his father-in-law’s business. Given a week to decide as the shadow of Vietnam looms, Leonard takes off to New England with a banker’s cheque to buy a house and put down roots for his family. His odyssey takes a different turn…

Using multiple narratives (Gere and Elordi alternate as Leonard in flashbacks, Leonard and his grown son narrate), B&W and colour, mixed ratios and Thurman in a duel role – she plays Emma and also the hippy wife of a painter in 1968 who pleasures Leonard in a farmhouse – Schrader’s film is a jigsaw puzzle that requires patient assembly by viewers. Is the jumbled and ultimately meaningless last interview of the great Leonard Fife the last firing synapses of a dying, confused man conflating reality and fiction? Or is the film merely a hollow mess?

While Gere eschews any charm to play Fife as a self-obsessed deserter (politically and romantically), the film belongs to Elordi. Continuing to show his range and savvy choices, the Euphoria and Priscilla star puts flesh on the bones of seemingly callow youth, giving Leonard the humanity he denies himself in the retelling. In Elordi’s hands, Leonard is, if not necessarily commendable, understandable. Schrader lenses him beautifully and he’s missed whenever he’s not on screen.

Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada starring Richard Gere, Uma Thurman and Jacob Elordi is screening at the 77th Cannes Film Festival. Release date TBC

Screening Room

BIRD

May 17, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

British filmmaker Andrea Arnold is beloved by the Cannes Film Festival. She has won the Jury prize three times for her movies Red Road, Fish Tank and American Honey, the 2016 film that makes her last fiction feature. Now she’s back in Cannes competition with Bird, a quietly moving tale that might best be described as a mix of social realism and fable. The setting is North Kent, in an area where poverty is rife but the human spirit has not been dented.

The focus is 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams), a rebellious youngster whose parents have long since split. Her young father, Bug (Barry Keoghan) is getting married again to Kayleigh (Frankie Box), and has a hair-brained scheme to pay for the wedding costs by selling hallucinogenic drugs secreted from a toad. Meanwhile, Bailey’s mother Peyton (Top Boy’s Jasmine Jobson) has hooked up with Skate (James Nelson-Joyce), a nasty piece of work, as violent as he is foul-mouthed.

barry keoghan, bird, andrea arnold, cannes, hollywood authentic

With folks like these, it’s no surprise Bailey is heading off the rails, and even accompanies her brother Hunter (Jason Buda) when he and his fellow gang members go and slice up a kid who they feel deserves some vigilante justice. At this point, Bird feels like a peek into a working-class subculture, oft seen before. But Arnold takes an unusual turn with the introduction of Bird, played by German actor Franz Rogowski (Passages).

Befriending Bailey, the mysterious Bird becomes a soulmate of sorts, although the less said the better. Rogowski carries this off perfectly, building an intimate friendship with Bailey. Is he real? The film toys with this idea, at points making the film feel like a blend of Kes and Birdman. Throughout all of this, Adams anchors the film with a forceful, star-making turn. Once again, Arnold shows just how good she is working with young performers, as well as capturing a gritty milieu.

For fans of Barry Keoghan, they’ll more than get their fill – amusingly, there’s a reference to ‘Murder on the Dance Floor’ being “shit”, the Sophie Ellis Bextor song that the actor helped revive in the recent Saltburn. This time we get sincere karaoke-crooning to Blur’s ‘The Universal’, a touching moment in a film that works hard for its emotional payoffs. By the end, Bird will leave a tear in the eye, as Bailey finds solace in the arms of another.

Andrea Arnold’s Bird starring Barry Keoghan, Franz Rogowski and Nykiya Adams is in cinemas now

Screening Room

MEGALOPOLIS

May 17, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Megalon is a futurist building material developed by an architectural planning czar, Cesar (Adam Driver), in New Rome – New York with toga-esque clothes and a bacchanalian social scene – where a fight for power and ideology kicks off as Cesar defies the laws of physics and stops time, drops his ambitious gold-digging mistress, Wow (Audrey Plaza), for Mayor Cicero’s ‘wild’ daughter (Nathalie Emmanuel) and clashes with a political father/son opponents Crassus (Jon Voight) and Clodio (Shia LaBeouf). Throw into the mix psychedelic visuals, lush costumes, musical numbers, a theatrical tone and philosophical musings on Marcus Aurelius tracts, string theory and whether art freezes time… and Francis Ford Coppola’s self-funded passion project is certainly a big cinematic swing. In the Cannes screening, an actor walked in front of the stage mid–film to interact directly with Driver onscreen in a moment of multi-media bravado that begs the question of if it will be repeated at showings globally. For anyone complaining of algorithm-defined and IP-reliant entertainment, this is a major creative flex by one of cinema’s defining auteurs – refusing to bend to market positioning or easy interpretation.

By the same token, Megalopolis has the potential to bemuse and confound. The narrative is labyrinthine, the dialogue rich and the tone straddling a line of high camp (LaBeouf, Plaza and Voight having got that memo) and earnest pomp that prompted titters. Cesar’s trajectory could be a trippy study of Robert Moses’ controversial planning of New York or a nod to Caligula, a fever dream, a comment on our cyclical mistakes as a human society, a deeply personal reflection on the creator’s own relationship with art – or indeed, all of these. Coppola offers no easy answers. What he does offer is LaBeouf with resplendent mullet and crackling energy, Plaza in fabulous vamp mode and some CGI dream-like visuals that pop on an IMAX screen. This is certainly not a The Godfather retread.

Expensive folly or artistic shot across the bows of cookie cutter, factory movies? An experience to be loved or loathed (there’s certainly no middle ground)? Whatever it is, Megalopolis shows a storied director at the height of his powers operating without a safety net.

Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis starring Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanel, Shia LaBeouf, Aubrey Plaza and Jon Voight is out in cinemas now

Screening Room

KINDS OF KINDNESS

May 17, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Yorgos Lanthimos re-teams with his favourites (Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Joe Alwyn) and returns to the nihilist roots of Dogtooth in a bold, challenging triptych of tales that, in opposition to the title, explores the weird cruelties of humans. Each story is 45 minutes long and reconfigures his cast to different characters; in the first, ‘The Death Of RMF’, Robert (new collaborator Jesse Plemons), an executive, adheres to the specific rules of his boss (Dafoe), in living his life with his wife (Hong Chau). With every aspect of his existence determined – from how he dresses and eats to whether he has children and demands that he crash his car – Robert decides to flex his own autonomy and runs into a stranger (Stone). In the second, ‘RMF Is Flying’, a cop (Plemons) mourns his MIA wife (Stone) who disappeared on a boating trip with the comfort of friends (Margaret Qualley and Mamadou Athie) but questions whether she’s truly his spouse when she reappears. And in the third, ‘RMF Eats A Sandwich’, Stone and Plemons play the acolytes of a cult led by Dafoe’s sexually liberated lachrymose leader as they search for an individual who is destined to be the group’s messiah and bring people back from the dead.

Aside from repeated casts, there’s little to link the fables apart from a darkly humorous tone, plot points that show self-harm, control within relationships and a bleak outlook on the obsessions of humanity. Lanthimos invited audiences to find common threads themselves, taking reactions and feelings from one tale into the watching of another. It’s willfully and entirely subjective what each audience member may take from the process.

With a fully committed cast leaning into their roles and unafraid to court dislike (Stone, in particular is all guns blazing complicated in all her different guises), Lanthimos and his co-writer Efthimis Filippou scratch at the unpleasant and uncomfortable elements of relationships (romantic and otherwise) and society, making for some wince-inducing moments as characters make unreasonable demands on each other.

Like all of Lanthimos’ work, it defies easy categorisation or interpretation but fans of the more linear Poor Things may find Kinds Of Kindness a bewildering ride. Avant-garde, uncompromising and proudly opaque, it’s the sort of big-swing cinema that challenges audiences, is entirely unique and will provide much to discuss once the lights go up.

kinds of kindness, cannes dispatch, emma stone

Yorgos Lanthimos’s Kinds of Kindness staring Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe and Jesse Plemons is screening at the 77th Cannes Film Festival and will release in cinemas 28 June

Screening Room

TWILIGHT OF THE WARRIORS: WALLED IN

May 17, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Adapted from cult Manga series City Of Darkness and boasting a who’s-who of Hong Kong talent, this Cannes midnight screening actioner brings the heat in dazzling set-pieces, inventive fisticuffs and a visceral evocation of Kowloon – the so-called Walled City that was a real-life hive of criminality and industry during the 80s. A stacked slum near Hong Kong’s airport, it’s a crepuscular warren of decrepit alleyways and mish-mashed materials that houses thousands of workers and a fearsome gang led by Cyclone (Louis Koo). It’s also the place that refugee Lok (Raymond Lam) runs to after double-crossed Mr Big (Sammo Hung) and his Triad goons. Penniless but tasty with his fists, Lok is taken under the wing of Cyclone – his shelter, protection and work unspoken training to becoming one of the overlord’s trusted men. As Lok rises the ranks via dust up with various assailants and household items, Mr Big attempts to storm the city, Kowloon landlord Chau (Richie Ren) seeks vengeance and psychotic enforcer King (Philip Ng) is out for blood. Kowloon is now a lethal powder keg and Lok will need to fight for his life…

Reputedly one of Hong Kong’s most expensive films ever made (budget: $40 miilion), Twilight Of The Warriors leaves everything out on the field in terms of inventive choreography, detailed production design and 80s-styled bang for your buck. Director Soi Cheang gives audiences a guided tour of the labyrinthine vertical slum (to the turn of Walking In The Air) so visceral one can almost taste the street food and smell the sewers – and gives each martial arts set-up room to breathe (while breaking everything in the room it’s happening in). Glass smashes into flesh, metal shards puncture guts, walls collapse, furniture is annihilated… and dropped cigarettes are caught in slo-mo during a roundhouse kick.

While Lam is the infatigable star, he’s nearly eclipsed by his nemesis, Philip Ng’s King – a giggling, seemingly indestructible sadist with a majestic mullet, Rayban sunglasses and a wardrobe like an extra from the Thriller video. As choreographer of the cavalcade of inventive martial arts moments, Ng pulls double duty as MVP.

Ferocious, impressive dust-up (particularly one on a double decker bus) drive the action more than actual narrative but there’s a reason TOTW:WI has been a huge hit at the Hong Kong box office. As an action crowdpleaser it combines universal themes with a nostalgic specificity for Hong Kong during a key moment in its history. And at its core, it lauds community – wherever anyone might find it.

Soi Cheang’s Twilight Of The Warriors: Walled In starring Raymond Lam is screening at the 77th Cannes Film Festival. Out in cinemas 24 May

Screening Room

WILD DIAMOND

May 16, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Debut writer-director Agathe Riedinger’s sharply observed and slyly feminist drama is a Cinderella story for the influencer generation – a tale of good girls and dreams dressed up in boob jobs, stripper heels and TikTok dances. It focuses on 19 year-old Liane (Malou Khebizi, luminous) from Frejus who is manifesting being ‘the French Kim Kardashian’ via an audition for a scripted reality show that could boost her from her hard-scrabble existence living with a callous mother and bankrolling her club trips and cosmetic surgery with shoplifting. A self-assured hot mess who can handle the lascivious advances of passing men and sprint miles in her vertiginous diamante heels, Liane is aware that her self image and reality do not marry up. Having treated herself to breast enlargements, her carefully curated look of hair-extensions, heavy brows, glossy lips and provocative clothing put her on the short list for joining a dating reality show as well as being slut-shamed on public transport. But though she seems as hard as a diamond, this vulnerable teen has been in foster care, regularly prays, is a virgin and has high self-worth.

It’s this dichotomy that fascinates Riedinger as her lens lingers on Liane’s body, her unwavering takes on the emotions fluttering across her lead’s face as Liane attends a clinical audition (and is made to strip to her underwear while being asked questions about standing up for herself), flirts with a local boy (who inevitably and disappointingly asks to see her breasts) and, in a seeming act of dangerous self-sabotage, crashes a wealthy party and offers to dance for a group of older men who literally stroke their thighs while watching her. As viewers we constantly worry for her as we watch her negotiate a world that is cruel and patriarchal, constantly waiting for the other (high heeled) shoe to drop.

That Riedinger keeps us guessing as to whether Liane will transform into an insta princess is one of the intrigues of the film, but so is Khebizi, a first-time screen actor who inhabits the role so thoroughly and messily it’s impossible to not want the best for her. It’s also an empowering experience that feels like a fresh take on the madonna/whore complex. As Liane says defiantly; “if girls want to wear mini skirts and twerk in clubs they don’t deserve your scorn.” This one certainly doesn’t.

An impressive debut from both director and star – Wild Diamond marks two fledgling careers worth watching

Screening Room

FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA

May 15, 2024

Words by JAMES MOTTRAM

For years, George Miller’s post-apocalyptic saga has been all about Max Rockatansky. The Road Warrior – first played by Mel Gibson and, in 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, by Tom Hardy – has been the iconic lone wolf at the heart of these films. But his latest chapter Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga flips it, brilliantly, switching focus to the breakout character from Fury Road.

Played originally by Charlize Theron, Furiosa was every bit the equal to Max, as she led a posse of female escapees from The Citadel, the impregnable fortress ruled by the foul-looking Immortan Joe. Miller now backtracks fifteen years, giving us Furiosa’s origin story, in this thrilling blockbuster, packed to the rafters with insane action set-pieces perfectly tailored for the big screen.

Across five chapters, the film begins with Furiosa as a girl (Alyla Browne, who also featured in Miller’s Three Thousands Years of Longing). She falls into the hands of Dementus (Chris Hemsworth, ditching his Thor persona for some villainous fun), the leader of a gang of marauders who has designs on The Citadel and finding the “place of abundance” where Furiosa comes from.

When Dementus tortures and kills her mother in front of her, Furiosa’s fury rises, inspiring a quest for revenge that will stay with her for years, even after she is taken by Immortan Joe for his baby-producing harem. As she grows into a young woman (The Northman’s Anya Taylor-Joy), she learns how to cultivate her warrior skills, thanks in part to Tom Burke’s Praetorian Jack, a highly skilled driver for Immortan Joe who has completed more runs on Fury Road than anyone else. This all leads to the film’s staggering central sequence, an aerial attack on the armoured War Rig that includes predators on flying motorbikes. In one jaw-on-the-floor moment, a car even flips up onto the bonnet on the War Rig as it’s in full motion. If The Fall Guy, the recent movie with Ryan Gosling, suggests stunt men deserve an Oscar, the stunt team – led by Guy Norris – deserve every award going.

Likewise, the sheer craft on Furiosa – the costumes, the sets, the cinematography – astounds. And whether it’s a moody Burke or a menacing Hemsworth, the performances ace it. At its heart, Browne and Taylor-Joy shoulder the burden of bringing Furiosa to the screen with aplomb and, in their hands, she’s one of the great modern heroines of Hollywood action cinema.

George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga staring Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth and Alyla Browne is screening at the 77th Cannes Film Festival and will release in cinemas 24 May

Screening Room

THE SECOND ACT

May 15, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Archly meta and reflexive, Quentin Dupieux’s cheeky comedy is precisely the sort of movie to open a film festival – with its fourth wall breaks, mid-scene appeals to film buffs and discussion on the purpose of art. Audiences for Cannes’ opening night film ate up a self-described indie that has plenty to say as its scatty characters seem to say nothing at all.

The Second Act of the title is a remote restaurant where a trembling, anxious waiter opens up and nervously flicks on the lights. On their way to his eaterie are two sets of characters – besties Willy (Raphaël Quenard) and David (Louis Garrel) who discuss the annoying girlfriend that David is trying to jettison as they stride down the road. That girlfriend, Florence (Lea Seydoux), is driving to meet them at the titular rendezvous with her Papa (Vincent Lindon), convinced David is ‘the one’. But before any sort of narrative can form, David and Willy discuss trans women and bisexuality and address the camera directly as they worry about their opinions having the potential to cancel them. Meanwhile, in the car, Florence’s father quits the film production we are watching and argues that acting and filmmaker are ridiculous artifice, pointless in a violent world of war and poverty. That waiter at the restaurant awaits their arrival, his anxiety rising for his big break as a featured background artist, and the ‘director’ is an AI app…

Like a cinematic onion, The Second Act continually sheds its artistic layers, keeping audiences on their toes in questioning what’s ‘real’ and the value of the seventh art. Even if you don’t like this, Dupieux seems to be saying, cinema is vital; ‘movies are cool!’ Seydoux argues at one point and a dolly track is lensed with love. The device of constantly upending expectation with cast/characters spatting about semantics and talking in circles is simultaneously self-indulgent and self-aware but makes some spiky points about the disenfranchisement of artists, the rise of algorithms and the value of acting (Seydoux’s actress calls her mother at one point to blub about her day while her heart surgeon mum saves lives). And despite some dextrous physical comedy from Manuel Guillot as the waiter with serious pouring issues, the film ends with a violent, bleak act that is open to interpretation.

Brisk at under 90 minutes, The Second Act is a slight concoction that plays like a successor to Woody Allen and asks viewers to take nothing too seriously. Unless it’s a call from Paul Thomas Anderson…

Quentin Dupieux’s The Second Act starring Lea Seydoux, Louis Garrel, Raphaël Quenard and Vincent Lindon is screening at the 77th Cannes Film Festival. Release date TBC

Screening Room

EMILIA PÉREZ

May 19, 2024

Screening Room

OH, CANADA

May 18, 2024

Screening Room

BIRD

May 17, 2024

Screening Room

MEGALOPOLIS

May 17, 2024

Screening Room

KINDS OF KINDNESS

May 17, 2024

Screening Room

TWILIGHT OF THE WARRIORS: WALLED IN

May 17, 2024

Screening Room

WILD DIAMOND

May 16, 2024

Screening Room

FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA

May 15, 2024

Screening Room

THE SECOND ACT

May 15, 2024

All photographs by Greg Williams

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