Our 15 Favorite Movies From Cannes Film Festival 2019 – Vulture
This year’s Cannes Film Festival started a bit slowly, with some excellent, important, but relatively low profile films … and then basically lost its mind. There was a shocking new Quentin Tarantino movie, and then a predictably nutty press conference. There were competing standing ovations, each trying to be one minute longer than the previous. There were several masterpieces, some disappointments, and one straight-up pseudo-pornographic catastrophe that had the director apologizing and many viewers enraged. Here are our choices for the best films at the festival:
Atlantics
There’s no better feeling than walking into a movie and realizing, halfway through, that you have absolutely no idea where it’s going to go. That’s what happened to me during Atlantics, which begins as a tragic story about a young Senegalese woman named Ada (Mame Bineta Sane), who’s arranged to marry a rich fuckboi but is madly in love with a poor construction worker, Sulieman. Early on in the film, Sulieman and the rest of the men in the village take to the sea on a dangerous voyage searching for better work opportunities, and when their boat is discovered without any survivors, Ada is devastated. At first, it seems like the movie might play out rather predictably from here — but instead, a mysterious fever settles over Ada’s suburb, and her friends claim they’ve seen Sulieman wandering around town. I won’t spoil the surprises, but suffice to say that Atlantics is a beautiful, unsettling, completely surreal story — made even more exciting by the fact that it’s the feature debut of Mati Diop, the first black female filmmaker at Cannes. — Rachel Handler
Sorry We Missed You
Given that he’s an octogenarian who makes social-realist dramas about Britain’s working class, Ken Loach is not traditionally considered a horror filmmaker. And yet, with Sorry We Missed You, Uncle Ken’s take on the exploitation and indignity of the gig economy, it may be time to consider his debt to the genre. As in slasher films, his heroes make one mistake — here, signing up to make deliveries for a package service whose drivers are legally considered subcontractors — and find themselves haunted by a cruel, unforgiving villain. As a manager explains to Ricky (Kris Hitchen) that he’ll be able to set his own hours, be his own boss, and not be tied down by the usual protections of an employer-employee relationship, you want to scream at him, No, don’t go in there! That Ricky and his family are being assailed by capitalism, not a knife-wielding murderer, ultimately makes little difference: Either way, any false step means their doom. Complaining that Loach’s characters are constantly being tormented by a faceless, inhumane system (his last film, the Palme d’Or-winning I, Daniel Blake made similar points about the fraying social safety net) seems as pointless as carping about why there are so many serial killers at Camp Crystal Lake. That’s the genre! — NJ
The Wild Goose Lake
A criminal on the lam. The hooker with a heart of gold who helps him escape. The tenacious police captain and backstabbing gangsters after them both. Diao Yinan’s Chinese neo-noir doesn’t so much revamp tropes as it strips them down to their component parts. After an intra-gang dispute leads to capo Zhou Zenong (Hu Ge) accidentally killing a cop, he hightails it up to the titular lake, where he enlists the aid of “bathing beauty” Ai’ai (Gwei Lun-mei) in getting the reward money for his capture to his estranged wife. Noir has always been more about style than originality, and Diao infuses every scene with his utmost: There are rain-soaked train stations and lurid neon cityscapes, genius cutaways that had me laughing out loud, and some of the festival’s most gorgeously composed shots. Plus, the most audacious use of everyday objects as murder weapons since John Wick. Few movies at Cannes were more fun to watch — no wonder Tarantino (whose surprise appearance at the premiere made headlines) wanted to see it. — NJ
The Climb
Cannes is not necessarily the place you expect to find the next great American indie comedy. We have two other festivals for that, and besides, when it comes to U.S. efforts Cannes tends to prefer downbeat naturalistic dramas. But the film’s presence in this year’s Un Certain Regard slate was only the first surprise of The Climb. There’s also the shocking reveal of the movie’s opening minutes, as Mike (director Michael Angelo Covino) chooses a bike trip through the French Alps to reveal he’s been sleeping with best friend Kyle (co-writer Kyle Marvin)’s fiance. There’s the dawning realization that the entire conversation is playing out in one long take. Then every other scene in the movie turns out to be a single take, too, following the guys’ relationship through a funeral, a wedding, a bachelor party, two major holidays, and a hilariously uncomfortable ski trip that had the Cannes audience laughing and gasping in equal measure. It’s not only a thrilling technical achievement, but also a genuinely moving story of friendship and maturity. The Croisette never saw it coming. — NJ
Parasite
Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho’s nerve-racking masterpiece is an ostensibly symbolic tale of class and grift that becomes sadder, stranger, and even more demented as it proceeds. In telling the story of an impoverished family that insinuates itself into the lives of a far wealthier family, the director mixes allegory and humanism while working a longer, subtler game: He never forsakes his characters’ emotional through lines, so even their strangest, most catastrophic actions feel grounded in psychological reality. Meanwhile, he uses all the narrative and stylistic tricks in his playbook, mixing and matching black comedy and suspense, pointed symbolism and soul-crushing violence, to show how a world built on aspiration, expectation, and need keeps forcing us to change. He’s created a work that is itself in a state of constant, agitated transformation; you keep expecting the film to turn into one thing, but it keeps turning into something else. It mutates, like a real parasite trying to hang on to its host. — Bilge Ebiri
A Hidden Life
With this story of an Austrian farmer who refused to pledge loyalty to Adolf Hitler, Terrence Malick delivers what might be his most narratively-inclined film in years, as well as a surprisingly politically-inflected work. Although the movie opens with images from Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi agitprop documentary Triumph of the Will, Malick is less interested in the specifics of the period and more in exploring the conscience of a man who couldn’t reconcile his simple faith with the growing evil around him. The director remains unsurpassed in his ability to gauge the emotional valence of his imagery: a simple, seemingly happy shot of a family at play can strike the subtlest note of menace; a lone bicyclist disappearing into the horizon can portend deep melancholy. That ability lies at the heart of his collage-like style: He puts together fragments and glances and gestures and fleeting sights to create a sense of his characters’ interiority. Get on his wavelength and this movie will ruin you. — BE
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
A sprawling, dreamy re-creation of a moment in time when both Hollywood and America were changing irrevocably, Quentin Tarantino’s alt-Manson movie evokes the different textures and vernaculars of the director’s obsessions: classic and not-so-classic TV shows, dead-end Westerns and cop dramas, fast-talking showbiz backroom blather, the assorted psychedelia of the 1960s. It’s the most fun the director seems to have had in years, but it’s also, oddly, his most compassionate picture in more than a decade. There’s a lilting sadness at its heart, perfectly encapsulated by the way it intercuts between the world of Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), a leading man whose time has passed, and Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), a happening startlet for whom everything feels fresh and new. Meanwhile, as Rick’s loyal body double and best friend, Brad Pitt cuts a compellingly laconic figure. — BE
Portrait of a Young Girl on Fire
Céline Sciamma’s period romance about a young female artist who arrives on a desolate island in order to secretly paint the portrait of a headstrong woman — so that a prospective fiancée in Milan can see what this woman looks like — starts off as an austere, somewhat schematic deconstruction of the idea of gazes and representation. But then, love gets in the way, and the film starts to unravel before our eyes in the best possible way. As Heloise, the woman being painted, who of course winds up turning the tables on the eyes looking at her, the great Adèle Haenel is mysterious, melancholy, and ultimately rapturous. The film’s stunning final shot contains some of the best acting you’ll see in this or any other year. — BE
It Must Be Heaven
Palestinian director Elia Suleiman, playing a variation on himself, leaves his home in Nazareth for exile in Paris and New York, and discovers a world whose absurdities aren’t all that different from the one he left behind. Americans armed to the teeth; Parisians so in a rush that everybody seems to be on a Segway, bicycle, or even electrified wheelchair; a world where the chasm between wealth and poverty is so massive as to be ridiculous. Suleiman employs a style perched between deadpan bemusement and gentle slapstick — he choreographs his scenes precisely, and brilliantly — but also with a subtle sense of despair running through his comedy. In the end, the movie winds up being about a man falling back in love with his devastated homeland. — BE
The Unknown Saint
A thief on the run from the cops finds himself in a desolate stretch of nowhere, and digs a fake grave atop a hill to stash his loot. After years in prison, he returns to the site to claim his money — and discovers that a shrine has been built to the unknown saint buried there, and a whole town now stretches around it. Playing in the Critics’ Week section, this debut feature from Moroccan filmmaker Alaa Eddine Aljem starts off like a droll caper flick, and gradually becomes a tender comedy about home, identity, family, and belonging. — BE
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