“Kinds Of Kindness”
Greek Weird Wave filmmaker Yórgos Lanthimos is on a tear. Less than nine months after premiering his Frankenstein-esque fairytale, “Poor Things,” which won Emma Stone an Oscar for Best Actress and was nominated for eleven Academy Awards in total, the director returns with a new anthology film/triptych fable that tells three separate stories that center around control and lack thereof. The film also reunites with writer Efthimis Filippou, who co-wrote all his early films, including “Dogtooth” (2009), “The Lobster (2015), and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” (2017). Also teaming up with Emma Stone again, the sprawling cast includes Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie, and Hunter Schafer. “Kinds Of Kindness” is Lanthimos’ third film in Competition at Cannes, taking a break at Venice for his last two films.
“Limonov: The Ballad”
Also sometimes known as “Limonov: The Ballad of Eddie” is the latest film from Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov, known for Cannes titles like “Leto” (2018), “Petrov’s Flu” (2021) and “Tchaikovsky’s Wife” (2022). An ambitious adaptation of French author Emmanuele Carrere’s novelized biography of radical Russian poet and political dissident Eduard Limonov, the film stars Ben Whishaw “Passages”) in the title role. Additionally, Tomas Arana, Sandrine Bonnaire, Viktoria Miroshnichenko, Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, Maria Mashkova, and more co-star.
“Parthenope”
A mainstay at Cannes, Italian writer-director Paolo Sorrentino returns with his seventh in-Competition title at the Croisette. The drama is about a woman named Partenope who bears the name of her city but is neither a siren nor a myth, and the film is about the long journey of her life from 1950 until today. Cannes describes the film as “a feminine epic,” devoid of heroism but brimming with an inexorable passion for freedom, Naples, and the faces of love—all those true, pointless, and unspeakable loves. Sorrentino’s beloved bewitching Naples home is, of course, always bubbling in the background and, in many ways, another character in the story, not unlike his last film, “The Hand of God” (shot by the same DP too, Daria D’Antonio). Celeste Dalla Porta plays the young Parthenope, and veteran Italian actress Stefania Sandrelli— known for the early films of Italiano auteur Pietro Germi and Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Conformist” (1970) and “1900” (1976)—portrays the adult version of the character. The film also features Gary Oldman, Isabella Ferrari, Peppe Lanzetta, Silvio Orlando, and Luisa Ranieri as various characters who move in and out of her memorable life. A24 has already required rights for North America.
“C’est Pas Moi”/”It’s Not Me”
Also known by its English title, “It’s Not Me,” celebrated French enfante terrible filmmaker Leos Carax follows up his Cannes musical “Annette” with something more meta-sounding or navel-gazing, depending on your point of view. A quasi-filmic self-portrait written in the first person, described as “free-form” and “cut-up,” the movie will see Carax rediscovering the figures from his oeuvre in the movie. The film is apparently set in an imaginary Pompidou Museum exhibition for the filmmaker that never took place, and the famous gallery asks the director to “reply in pictures” and explain who he is. The filmmaker attempts an answer — full of questions about himself and “his” world. Whether he recreates his own past films or not is unclear, but previous Carax actors like Denis Lavant, repairing his infamous Monsieur Merde character from “Holy Motors” (2012), appear in the film as well as Kateryna Yuspina, and Loreta Juodkaite. It almost sounds a little Godard-ian in its ambitious and wild experimentation, or hell, even Dylan-ish, if you consider the similarities to the Todd Haynes title. And note that it screens as a Cannes Premiere, but it’s only 40 minutes long.
“Beating Hearts”
The latest from French actor and director Gilles Lellouche, best known for his César Award-nominated acting turn in “Little White Lies,” the filmmaker is also known for directing “Sink or Swim,” which played out of competition at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for three César’s including Best Film and Best Director. His latest is set in 1980s Northern France and spans 20 years, telling the story of two star-crossed teenagers from different walks of life, she—upper class, he working class—how they madly fall in love and how life tries to keep pulling them apart. French/Lebanese “Happening” Gold Lion winner filmmaker Audrey Diwan co-wrote the script, and the film stars Adèle Exarchopoulos and François Civil as the two lovers, plus Malik Frikah, Mallory Wanecque, Alain Chabat, Anthony Bajon, Vincent Lacoste, Élodie Bouchez, and many more. Lellouche has cited Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, and “West Side Story” as key influences on the movie.
“Oh, Canada”
Based on the 2021 novel “Foregone” by Canadian author Russell Banks (“The Sweet Hereafter”), button-pushing filmmaker Paul Schrader breaks from his man-in-a-room trilogy to tell the tale of a famed Canadian documentary filmmaker who gives a final interview to one of his former students to tell the whole truth about his life. And it’s confession filmed right in front of his wife. And it’s the story of an aging Canadian-American leftist who fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War draft. Richard Gere stars as the older, more tormented version of the character, Uma Thurman plays his wife, and up-and-coming superstar Jacob Elordi (“Euphoria,” “Salburn”) plays the much younger version. The film also stars Victoria Hill, Michael Imperioli, Penelope Mitchell, and Kristine Froseth. Alt-country/Americana singer-songwriter Matthew Houck, aka Phosphorescent, wrote the score.
