Film

It would be so easy to become swept up in the obvious, outward significance of Eva Husson’s Girls of the Sun. The first of only three films to play in this year’s Official Competition to be directed by a woman, the Saturday night premiere screening was preceded by a silent red-carpet protest, in which 82 female figures from within the film industry walked the steps of the Palais, led by Jury President Cate Blanchett. The number is significant, representing each...

As opening statements in a film career go, the pre-credits sequence of Menace II Society is a powerful one. Two young black men, Caine (Tyrin Turner) and O-Dog (Larenz Tate) are carefully watched by the Korean husband and wife owners as they buy themselves beers in a convenience store. They’re pissed off by the implication that they are planning to steal from these people, but it’s only when the husband says “I feel sorry for your mother” that things turn....

The need for there to be a greater diversity in the stories we see told through cinema is once again a hot-button topic of conversation at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. And the importance of such range is perfectly underscored here by Flemish filmmaker Lukas Dhont, who earnestly seeks to help right that filmic wrong with his extraordinary debut feature, Girl. It’s a story of inclusivity and isolation that centres on Lara (Victor Polster), a determined 15-year-old girl who’s committed...

“Time doesn’t matter when you’re in love.” In Pawel Pawlikowski’s skilfully assured Cannes Competition feature Cold War, however, the passing of time matters greatly. We can see the initial yearnings of an attraction from the moment Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and Zula (Joanna Kulig) first meet. He’s a composer, travelling around Poland in the hope of bringing together a troupe of folk musicians to perform authentic Polish song & dance in venues across the country, and beyond. She’s a singer, with...

After decades of male dominated action thrillers, both Breaking In and Revenge open this week with female leads. Whether this represents a wider shift within Hollywood is yet to be seen but the action heroics of Shaun Russell (Gabrielle Union) are refreshing and very welcome. Breaking In is set within Shaun’s childhood home, which she returns to with her children Jasmine (Ajiona Alexus) and Glover (Seth Carr) to settle the estate of her estranged father. Unbeknownst to her the house...

Never one to be bound by convention, Jean-Luc Godard decided to shun the customary post-premiere press conference for his new film, Image Book – playing in Cannes as part of the Official Competition – and instead opted to answer the questions due to be posed to him via a FaceTime video link. The actions of a visionary filmmaker making a wry joke about the evolving technologies now available across the media landscape, or of a narcissistic old buffer who desperately...

Mansfield 66/67 focuses on the last two years of the Hollywood bombshell’s life and the documentary presents a slightly odd portrayal with much of it focusing on the salacious newspaper column inches that surrounded Mansfield’s final days and her relationship with the founder of the Church of Satan, Anton Lavey. The documentary opens with a title card stating that the film is a “true story based on rumor and hearsay” which is true as there is a line of actual...

In the summer of 1976, two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, aided by 2 members of the West German Revolutionary Cells group, hijacked an Air France flight heading from Tel Aviv to Paris and took its 250 passengers hostages. The group then forced the plane’s mostly French crew to fly its passengers to Entebbe in Uganda, where it was met by the country’s self-proclaimed president for life, the notorious Idi Amin Dada, who then worked...

An audience will have a more involving experience watching That Good Night going in knowing that this was the last film of legendary actor John Hurt. Death is on the horizon throughout the film, as Hurt plays terminally ill screenwriter Ralph looking to reconcile with his estranged son (Max Brown) and his partner (Erin Richards) before heading off to the great beyond. What hobbles That Good Night is how uninvolving the whole venture feels. The score hammers home how twee...