Cannes review: Bright Sunshine In (2017)
★★★★☆
Juliette Binoche stars in a rom-com departure for Claire Denis in Bright Sunshine In (Un Beau Soleil Interior).
France
Cannes review: Rodin (2017)
★★★★☆
Rodin is a ploddingly, inexplicably uninteresting biopic of the revolutionary sculptor by Jacques Doillon.
Cannes review: Happy End (2017)
★★★★☆
Michael Haneke’s Happy End deconstructs a wealthy bourgeois family living a life oblivious to the human beings around them with chilling results.
Cannes review: The Square (2017)
★★★★☆
Ruben Östlund’s The Square is a chilly satire on the pretensions of art and Sweden’s comfortable society.
Cannes review: 120 BPM (120 beats per minute) (2017)
★★★★★☆
In BPM director Robin Campillo turns his naturalistic documentary-style technique from The Class on a group of AIDS activists in the epidemic of the 1990s in a sober, moving, tender and compassionate film.
Cannes review: Ismaël’s Ghosts (2017)
★★★★☆
Arnaud Desplechin’s Ismaël’s Ghosts is an abstract, at times melodramatic interweaving of nightmare, filmmaking, fiction and reality.
Frantz (2016)
★★★★☆
François Ozon’s Frantz takes you on a haunting journey into the unexpected ramifications of grief, forgiveness and identity in the European aftermath of World War I.
Harmonium (2016)
★★★★★☆
In Koji Fukada’s Harmonium, the fragile harmony of a Japanese family is shattered by the arrival of a mysterious stranger.
Heal the Living (2016)
★★★★☆
As a heart intended for transplant passes from teenage accident victim to middle-aged-mother recipient, humanity, compassion and medical professionalism triumph in Katell Quillévéré’s moving Heal the Living.
Clash (2016)
★★★☆☆
In Clash director Mohamed Diab creates an intensely moving microcosm of Egyptian society in the confined space of a police van as riots erupt outside.
Neruda (2016)
★★★★☆
Aquarius (2016)
★★★★☆
Aquarius is Kleber Mendonça Filho’s unhurried portrait of a fascinatingly complicated woman, meticulously characterised in a career-best performance by Sonia Braga.
The Olive Tree (2016)
★★★☆☆
The Olive Tree is a heartwarming film scripted by Ken Loach’s collaborator Paul Laverty, directed by Icíar Bollaín, demonstrating the power of personal conviction and positive action.
Elle (2016)
★★★★☆
Isabelle Huppert is elegantly transgressive in Paul Verhoeven’s disturbing Elle.