Ioncinema

Things to Come: Bourgeois-Tacquet Explores an Affair to Remember

Crimes of the heart are afoot once more in Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s A Woman’s Life (La Vie d’une femme), a film which feels a lot less generic than its title suggests (and is no relation to the 2016 Guy de Maupassant adaptation from Stephane Brize, which wielded it ironically). Led by the effortless Léa Drucker, the intensely paced life of a high profile surgeon is suddenly rejuvenated by a surprise affair with a writer shadowing her work at a state-run French hospital, fortuitously when it seems everything else around her seems to be eroding.… Read the rest

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Only the Lonely: Fukada Explores Constructions of Identity

Japanese auteur Kôji Fukada often favors narratives wherein tenuous but comfortable rhythms are suddenly upended by a confrontation with unresolved issues instigated by relationships with new acquaintances or old reunions. Often, these result in drastic, dramatic emotional shifts, such as in Harmonium (2016) or A Girl Missing (2019), or lead to a divine sense of catharsis in 2022’s Love Life (read review). For his latest feature, Nagi Notes, Fukada is perhaps at his most elegantly demure as he juxtaposes two developing relationships rapidly progressing during one week in the titular rural area located in Okayama Prefecture.… Read the rest

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We’re two for two. After nailing both Sundance’s top winner and the Golden Bear with our YouBETcha! predictions, we now turn to the Palme d’Or horse race kicking off today. Out of the 22 Competition titles, two former winners—Cristian Mungiu and Hirokazu Kore-eda—return in pursuit of a rare double Palme, a feat only achieved by greats such as Francis Ford Coppola, Bille August, Emir Kusturica, Shohei Imamura, the Dardenne brothers, Michael Haneke, Ken Loach and Ruben Östlund (he’ll attempt his 3-peat next year). Meanwhile, exactly half the lineup are first-timers stepping into competition for the very first time, many of whom will now forever associate their Croisette debut with Saint-Saëns’ Aquarium from Le Carnaval des animaux, the festival’s lingering, almost hypnotic sonic signature.… Read the rest

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Since 2011, IONCINEMA.com has kept its finger firmly on the pulse of the Palme d’Or competition. We first dove into the waters back when trades like Screen Daily and Le Film Français still published their jury grids exclusively in print — often a full day after the fact. Today, timely scorecards are everywhere, but we’ve always approached the exercise a little differently here. Delivered twice daily (and sometimes even three times a day), our Cannes Critics’ Panel has remained a steadfast source for readers craving the electric buzz of the Croisette. Four new members join us in Janina, Hosam, Jenny and Eva.… Read the rest

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For a Few Delens More: Balagov Congeals in the Garden State

Kantemir Balagov brings his native Nalchik to New Jersey with his English language debut Butterfly Jam, the title a MacGuffin meant to represent a fantasy world of tall tales and out of reach dreams for a failed father figure grappling with masculine inadequacies. In comparison to his exceptional 2017 debut Closeness and the equally assured follow-up in 2019’s Beanpole (read review), Balagov and co-scribe Maria Stepnova get a bit lost in translation with a questionably cast odyssey of struggling first generation siblings who remain trapped and adrift while operating their nascent family business.… Read the rest

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The Liar of Your Desire: Salvadori Sputters with Low Voltage Rom Com

To some, love might indeed mean never having to say you’re sorry, but the universe (or at least the audience) demands evidence of how complicated formulas lead to the simplest outcomes. Insufficient romantic energy is one of the major issues apparent in the latest lark from Pierre Salvadori, The Electric Kiss (aka La Vénus électrique), a period romcom sent against a carnivalesque backdrop in 1928 Paris. Time and place suggest potential homage to Pagnol or Chaplin, but a strained production design makes this suspension of disbelief iffy, and so we’re left to depend on the strength of a script by Benoit Graffin (who penned Salvadori’s previous rom com con gem Priceless, 2006) and Rebecca Zlotowski (who has a penchant for the supernatural milieu of mediums, evidenced in her underrated Planetarium, 2016).… Read the rest

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Nabbing one of only four non-competition slots in this year’s Critics’ Week selections, French filmmaker Pierre Le Gall will be making his second trip to the Croisette — two years after showcasing his short Les belles cicatrices (2024). Flesh and Fuel (aka Du fioul dans les artères – which translates to Fuel in the Veins) is a queer melodrama set in the world of long-haul truck drivers. His cinema is rooted in themes of movement, masculinity, emotional restraint and working-class solitude, and Le Gall has mentioned that he was fascinated by passing traffic and the idea of the road as both escape and destiny – and here in his feature debut he explores emotionally isolated men searching for connection.… Read the rest

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With her body of work, Franco-Costa Rican filmmaker Valentina Maurel has explored adolescence, female desire, social alienation and fractured family dynamics through a raw, darkly comic lens, and with Forever Your Maternal Animal further digs into the malaise of who and where are the grown-ups in the room. After showcasing a pair of of short films in Cannes with Lucía en el limbo (2019) and Les Chenilles (2023), she returns to the Croisette a short time after launching her feature debut I Have Electric Dreams at 2022’s Locarno Film Festival. In the sequence, Elsa (the older sister) quasi reprimands her sister Amalia for being fiscally irresponsible and in a way represents the emotional debits and withdrawals when she faxes her fractured family.… Read the rest

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Lightning strikes twice today – earlier we premiered the poster one sheet, and now we have the full trailer to Bruno Santamaría Razo’s Six Months in a Pink and Blue Building – an official Critics’ Week competition selection. Filmed on 16mm film, set in 90s Mexico City, the day Bruno turns 11, his growing feelings for his best friend Vladimir clash with the sudden announcement that his father (Lázaro Gabino Rodríguez) has HIV. Like in salsa songs, his family tries to sing and dance their pain away. Thirty years later, Bruno films and reimagines the memory of what he could not quite perceive as a child.… Read the rest

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Lightning strikes twice today – earlier we premiered the poster one sheet, and now we have the full trailer to Bruno Santamaría Razo’s Six Months in a Pink and Blue Building – an official Critics’ Week competition selection. Filmed on 16mm film, set in 90s Mexico City, the day Bruno turns 11, his growing feelings for his best friend Vladimir clash with the sudden announcement that his father (Lázaro Gabino Rodríguez) has HIV. Like in salsa songs, his family tries to sing and dance their pain away. Thirty years later, Bruno films and reimagines the memory of what he could not quite perceive as a child.… Read the rest

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