Stay Through the Credits

Film forty-four of the festival and Ira Sachs' The Man I Love is the finest AIDS film in years precisely because it refuses to be an AIDS film. Rami Malek, Tom Sturridge, a ruinous love triangle in 1980s New York, and a dance floor scene shot in midnight blue that is one of the most alive things at this Cannes. We talk about what Sachs does that no one else does, and why this film will stay with us. 

Film forty-three of the festival and Emmanuel Marre's A Man of His Time is the most uncomfortable film we've seen at Cannes. His own great-grandfather collaborated with the Nazis. Not out of evil. Out of ambition and cowardice and a need to belong. Swann Arlaud gives the best performance of the festival. The 80s soundtrack is intentional and correct. This film is a warning addressed directly to the present. 

Film forty-two of the festival and Andy Garcia's Diamond has one of the best setups at Cannes this year: a 1940s gumshoe nearly flattened by a self-driving car in modern LA. It's a perfect image. The next 118 minutes can't match it. We talk about what great noir requires that this film was too fond of its own protagonist to provide, and why this cast deserved a sharper script. 

We open day nine with Clio Barnard's I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning, an ensemble drama about five working-class friends from Birmingham hitting thirty with no dreams fulfilled. It starts humbly and earns everything it arrives at. Daryl McCormack, Joe Cole and the whole cast all but follow you out of the theater. We talk about friendship, disappointment, and one image of lights on water that broke us completely. 

Film forty of the festival and Almodóvar arrives in competition with Bitter Christmas, a Möbius strip of autofiction about a filmmaker who feeds on the lives of those closest to him. Three writer-directors, one screenplay, no apology. We talk about what makes this ticklingly complex and where it falls short of his greatest work, and why its abrupt ending is the most honest thing in it. 

Film thirty-nine of the festival and Zvyagintsev returns after nine years with Minotaur, a domestic thriller set in Russia in 2022 as the war in Ukraine begins. A jealous husband, a dead body, a country with no rules left to tether anyone. The greatest living Russian director has not softened. We talk about his return, the Chabrol source material, and what it means to make a film like this from exile. 

We open day eight with Nicolas Winding Refn's Her Private Hell, a neo-giallo nightmare set in a futuristic city where a diamond-knuckled demon stalks young women in the fog. Half the audience walked out. We stayed. Pino Donaggio's score is extraordinary, the neon is relentless, and the plot is absolutely not the point. We talk about what Refn is and isn't doing here, and whether staying was worth it. 

Film thirty-seven of the festival and Sandra Wollner's Everytime is the one that broke us today. A teenager falls from a rooftop and the film spends two hours in the wreckage of what remains. Birgit Minichmayr gives one of the festival's finest performances. And the final act does something impossible that the film has completely earned. We needed a few minutes outside before we could talk. 

Film thirty-six of the festival and Cristian Mungiu's Fjord is the Palme d'Or contender we did not see coming. A Romanian family, a Norwegian village, a child abuse case that refuses to resolve into heroes and villains, and Sebastian Stan giving the most deliberately unsympathetic performance of his career. We talk about why this is the film we will still be arguing about when we get home. 

We open day seven with Arthur Harari's The Unknown, a body-swap thriller about identity, transformation, and the idea that who we are is ultimately a memory we share with ourselves. Léa Seydoux plays a man in her own body. It is stranger and more honest than it sounds. We talk about the trans readings, the Antonioni influence, and why this film's ambiguity feels like a feature rather than a bug.