Ioncinema

From Austria, Marie Kreutzer breaks into the Palme d’Or competition for a very first time after having competed in the Un Certain Regard section (and winning) for 2022’s Corsage. Her previous works include The Fatherless (2011’s Berlinale), Gruber Is Leaving (2015’s TIFF), We Used to Be Cool (2016) and The Ground Beneath My Feet (2019’s Berlinale – Golden Bear comp). Starring Léa Seydoux and Catherine Deneuve, Gentle Monster centers on two women quietly eroding beneath the weight of caregiving and compromise. Lucy abandons her ambitions as a concert pianist after relocating to the countryside with her husband Philip, whose burnout has reshaped the family dynamic, while Elsa, a police investigator, struggles to balance the pressures of her work with caring for her aging father.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

The Children’s Hour: Kreutzer Poses Provocative Dilemmas

The complex trappings of denial are at the heart of Gentle Monster, the latest from Austrian director Marie Kreutzer, a narrative juxtaposing scenarios wherein two women are forced to confront potential complicity in how their expected kinship roles might play a part in permitting patterns of assault instigated by men in their lives. It’s a return to the blurred boundaries and indiscretions examined in Kreutzer’s corporate ethical dilemma drama The Ground Beneath My Feet (2019), where unprocessed familial dysfunction germinates toxic whirlwinds in the mind numbing sterility of a woman’s work life.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

Of Human Bondage: Hamaguchi Highlights Humanity in Quiet Drama

In the midst of what ends up being a transformative month for the principal players in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s latest film All of a Sudden, there’s an experimental play serving as a thematic catalyst called Up Close, No One is Normal. The statement is a central thesis regarding the necessary grace and patience required to keep civilization afloat, at least within the crumbling framework of capitalism, another major bullet point discussed quite avidly. Basically composed of a handful of lengthy conversations transpiring in June, 2025, Hamaguchi’s French language debut bears all the earmarks of the painstaking characterizations he’s celebrated for.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

The second Japanese filmmaker to premiere in the competition this year, Ryusuke Hamaguchi doesn’t have an extensive Cannes history with only Asako I & II competed in 2018 and 2021’s Best International Feature Film Oscar winner Drive My Car (Best Screenplay in Cannes) running in the comp. His latest comes after winning the Grand Jury Prize prize for 2023’s Evil Does Not Exist. His themes of communication as performance, chance encounters that transform identity, and the entire notion of loss and grief are also present here. All of a Sudden is about the director of a care facility in the Parisian suburbs who adopts the “Humanitude” method of care despite resistance from part of her staff.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

The Double Life of the Voyeurist: Farhadi Fails with Out of Touch Drama

Initially, it would seem Asghar Farhadi’s decision to present a contemporary world littered with anachronistic tendencies in Parallel Tales served some greater narrative purpose. Unfortunately, the end result feels as shockingly out of touch as a principal character’s devotion to a typewriter. Employing his signature elliptical touches to a plot loosely based on Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog: Six (which was also the basis of Kieślowski’s feature length A Short Film About Love, 1988), Farhadi assembles several titans of the French film industry who all feel a bit underwhelming in an exercise which eventually seems to be all about the power of suggestion.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

Every Mann for Themselves: Pawlikowski Remains Chilly with Cold War Permafrost

Two iconoclastic German writers are locked in a spiritual duel for relevance at the onset of a tenuous new world order in Pawel Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, arguably more frosty than his 1950s set Cold War (read review). Set across the span of several days in 1949, Nobel Prize Winning author Thomas Mann has returned to his homeland to attend two separate awards ceremonies to accept the Goethe prize. A controversial figure who left Germany in 1933 at the onset of Hitler’s rise to power, the rumbling drama underlying this return to his native country resides in where the ceremonies take place: Frankfurt and Weimar, West and East.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

After gaining international recognition with Berlinale entries in Silver Bear for Best Director About Elly (2009) and Golden Bear winning (plus Oscar winning) A Separation in 2011, Asghar Farhadi made the move to Cannes with 2013’s The Past (Bérénice Bejo won Best Actress), 2016’s The Salesman (Best Screenplay and Best Actor for Shahab Hosseini), out of competition Everybody Knows in 2018 and Grand Prix winning A Hero in 2021. His tenth feature in Parallel Tales is loosely based on Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog: Six and has the starry ensemble of Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Efira, Vincent Cassel, Pierre Niney and Adam Bessa. This follows Sylvie, a famous author seeking inspiration on the neighbors across the street, who hires the mysterious Adam as assistant, but he quickly turns her life upside down.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

Post My Summer of Love (2004) and The Woman in the Fifth (2011), it’s with his fourth feature where Paweł Pawlikowski become someone to factor as a Croisette conversation whatever future output after showcasing Ida – it garnered 70 international awards, including five European Film Awards and the 2015 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. So he would win Best Director Prize at Cannes in 2018 for Cold War (read our review) and so its been a long eight years (some squashed projects) until now. He tends to work on themes of identity and belonging in the wake of historical rupture; the weight of the past — political and personal — on intimate relationships; and a precise, elliptical visual style in which black-and-white images carry enormous moral weight.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

The Story of O: Schoenbrun Approaches the Horrific Desire Inside Us All

The inextricable union of victim, victimizer, and witness becomes a metatextual balancing act in Jane Schoenbrun’s formidable third film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, a gonzo pop art slice of catharsis which works as both a recovery and discovery of the queer gaze in horror cinema. Effortlessly droll in its satirization of the academic approach in our contemporary retrospective drive to cannibalize but correct the formative inspirations of the past as a means to satisfy the demands of an arguably more enlightened generation, there’s a delirious amount of analysis pulsating through every passage.… Read the rest

Continue reading…

With her sophomore feature, Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet made her first trip up the red carpet steps today as one of the several competition first-timers. Sshe unveiled her short Pauline asservie at Critics’ Week in 2018, then presented her debut feature Les Amours d’Anaïs as a special screening at the 60th Critics’ Week (read our glowing ★★★½ review). La Vie d’une femme aka A Woman’s Life features players Léa Drucker, Mélanie Thierry, Charles Berling and Laurent Capelluto and follows Gabrielle, 55, a highly dedicated head surgeon at a public hospital whose life is defined by relentless professional commitment, leaving little space for her personal world — including a devoted husband and an aging mother who depends on her care.… Read the rest

Continue reading…