Stumbling for smart things to say about this year’s Cannes Film Festival? Fear not. We’ve put together a cheat sheet to get you through any and all conversations about the all the talk-worthy films presented at the festival 70th anniversary.
Once the fun in France comes to an end of 28th May, these are the ones to look out for guys. Bookmark the page, take notes, and set a reminder to go and actually watch a couple of them when they hit the cinema, okay?
The Beguiled
Starring Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman (who you’ll spot in three other films at Cannes this year, btw), Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning, Sofia Coppola’s film The Beguiled is a remake of Clint Eastwood’s civil war drama that came out in the 70s. It’s is about a soldier who is taken in by a female boarding school in the American south. The story is also originally based on a book so the plot might be a tad familiar to you if you're into this sort of thing. It’s standout and a good shout for intelligent conversation around it’s female focused casting, storyline and director.
Wonderstruck
It’s always helpful to start with a director you’ll probably already recognise. This year the director of Carol (the super popular film that came out in 2015 with Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara) premiered Wonderstruck. It’s all about two 12-year-old children in two different time periods who both make their way to the mythical location of New York. It’s based on a book by Brian Selznick by the same name, stars Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams and earned itself a three-minute standing ovation from the audience in Cannes. Imagine clapping for the entirety of your favourite song. It was that well received.
Okja and The Meyweowitz
If there’s one thing hot on everyone's lips that’s come out of Cannes’ 2017 programming, it’s the Netflix issue. In what scenario could Netflix ever be a problem, you ask? As in, outside of that unbreakable cycle of binging into the early hours, falling asleep at work and then picking up your TV series of choice where you left off when you get home? Well, Netflix got two films into Cannes this year – Okja by Bong Joon Hoo starring Tilda Swinton and Jake Gyllenhaal, and The Meyerouwitz by Noah Baumbach starring Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman.
It’s the first time that Netflix has shown at Cannes and French distributors really weren’t happy with its inclusion largely because, traditionally, films at the festival have to open in cinemas first. Neither of the Netflix films were put forward to be shown in French theatres when asked following complaints so Cannes changed their existing rules around the entrance of films streamed online to essentially mean that next year, Netflix can't show.
Cannes said in a statement: ‘Any film that wishes to compete in competition at Cannes will have to commit itself to being distributed in French movie theatres. This new measure will apply from the 2018 edition of the Festival International du Film de Cannes onwards’.
Nevertheless, according to the Independent Okja earned itself a four-minute standing ovation after being initially met with boos at an earlier screening (but that was apparently more to do with technical issues than the entrance of the film itself).
Happy End
Australian director Michael Haneke has already gone home with two Palme d’Ors (top prize over at Cannes) in the past and if he wins this year for Happy End, we’ll have ourselves a new record on our hands. The film is about a wealthy French family in Calais against the backdrop of the migrant crisis. Technology is a big theme, as is the icy, uncomfortable topic of family dysfunction. Elle star Isabelle Hupert stars and if you’re after a fun fact to throw in, the very end of the film, which we shan’t go into because obvs you’ll want to go see it, apparently took a whole three days to shoot.
Come Swim
Everyone loves a directorial debut, and when that debut come from Kristen Stewart you’re pretty much guaranteed to find a buzzy trail of chatter following closely behind. Come Swim is a short film – just 17 minutes long – about heartbreak and a man with an (unexplained) unquenchable thirst. Intriguing, right? The soundtrack is courtesy of St Vincent too, btw.
Apparently, the idea came from an image of ‘a person sleeping contently on the bottom of the ocean floor, and getting such satisfaction from the isolation’, she told* The Guardian.* ‘I thought “Wow, that’s pretty dark.” You want to know the situation that would put someone so deep’.
Twin Peaks
The revival of Twin Peaks is also up for the Cannes treatment which was a bit controversial with the festival’s sacred reputation being for promoting excellence in film, specifically film, as opposed to well, television dramas. For context, Director Davin Lynch previously won the Palme d’Or back in 1990 for the film Wild At Heart, returned in 1992 to premier Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (which didn’t go down well at all back then) and to now be back with a TV series for the festival’s 70th anniversary is a pretty big deal.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.