“The Second Act”
Fanciful French surrealist filmmaker Quentin Dupieux is always doing the unexpected, and yep, he’s taking another big swing again with his biggest cast to date. For his latest, “The Second Act,” playing out of Competition at Cannes, he creates a meta-comedy about actors in a doomed film production and specifically follows a young woman who brings her boyfriend to meet her father (though that might be part of the lousy film within the film’s plot, it’s unclear). Perhaps more importantly, it has a starry French cast, which includes Léa Seydoux, Vincent Lindon, Louis Garrel, Raphaël Quenard, and Manuel Guillot. Dupieux also wrote it and acts as the movie’s director of photography and editor, which puts him up there with the Sodeberghs of the do-it-all-yourself film world.
“The Balconettes”
César Awards-winning actress turned filmmaker Noémie Merlant, best known for “Portrait Of A Lady On Fire,” and her directing career was not a one-off. Following her 2021 feature directorial debut with “Mi Iubita, Mon Amour,” which premiered at Cannes in a special screening, Merlant returns with a comedic horror that follows three young women during a heatwave in the south of France. The trio, played by Souheila Yacoub, Merlant, and Sanda Codreanu, indulge in all sorts of fantasies about their mysterious neighbor from the safety of their balcony. However, an ordinary conflict turns much darker and more dangerous late into the night. Lucas Bravo also stars.
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point”
In the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar section, American indie filmmaker Tyler Taormina makes his third film with “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.” The feature stars Michael Cera, “Eight Grade” star Elsie Fisher, Maria Dizzia (“Louie”), Francesca Scorsese (daughter of Martin Scorsese), Sawyer Spielberg (son of Steven Spielberg), Ben Shenkman, and Gregg Turkington. The film chronicles the story of four generations of the Balsano family who come together for what could be the last Christmas in the ancestral family home; however, matters are complicated when two of the family’s young rebellious teenagers escape and make a break for it all.
“Marcello Mio”
From French veteran filmmaker Christophe Honoré (“Les Chansons D’Amour”), his latest project sounds rather cinematically meta and fascinating, and it stars cinema royalty Chiara Mastroianni, playing a version of her self who confronts living in the shadow of her real-life father, Italian icon Marcello Mastroianni’s legacy. Her real-life mother, French megastar Catherine Deneuve, also portrays herself, as do actors like Fabrice Luchini, Benjamin Biolay, Nicole Garcia, and Melvil Poupaud. No, really. The film centers on a summer where Chiara’s reality falls into disarray. In the fallout, she decides to live as her father, dressing as his splitting image, speaking like him, and behaving so similarly to him. friends begin to believe and call her “Marcello.” Wild.
“FilmLovers!”
A docu-fiction drama from venerable French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin (titled “Spectateurs!” in France), the film is one of the many inward-looking, cinematically meta movies at Cannes 2024 (the most prominent theme to emerge so far). The film stars Milo Machado-Graner, Mathieu Amalric, and Françoise Lebrun, and it’s the third in a trilogy of the filmmaker’s movies. The drama features the character of Paul Dédalus, who appeared in Desplechin’s earlier films “My Sex Life… or How I Got into an Argument” (played by Amalric, 1996) and “My Golden Days” (played by Quentin Dolmaire, 2015). This time, he is played by the 15-year-old Machado-Graner, the boy in the recent Oscar-nominated courtroom drama “Anatomy of a Fall.” Another love letter to cinema, it seems, the plot synopsis says, “a film lover celebrates the magic of cinema [as] memories, fiction, and discoveries intertwine in a rapid flow of cinematic images.”
Honorable Mention:
We could obviously be here all day. Other films to watch for include Greek-French actress Ariane Labed’s directorial debut, “September Says”; Karim Aïnouz’s erotic thriller “Motel Destino”; the latest by “Spring Fever” filmmaker Lou Ye; called “An Unfinished Film,” Judith Godrèche’s sure-to-be controversial documentary about the #MeToo movement called, “Me Too”; the Hong Kong action thriller, “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In,” from director Soi Cheang; documentarian Raoul Peck’s “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” ‘Yolande Zauberman’s “The Beauty of Gaza”; always political Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa returns with the hotly charged documentary “The Invasion”; Oliver Stone stays in his documentary lane with “Lula,” a portrait of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva;
Jessica Palud’s “Being Maria” about “Last Tango In Paris” actress Maria Schneider features Matt Dillon as Marlon Brando and Anamaria Vartolomei as Schneider; Cambodian documentarian Rithy Panh’s “Meeting with Pol Pot”; Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof’s competition title, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig”; Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke’s “Caught By The Tides”; Michel Hazanavicius’s animated film, “The Most Precious of Cargoes” features narration from the late Jean-Louis Trintignant; India Donaldson’s acclaimed Sundance film “Good One” starring Lily Collias, James Le Gros and Danny McCarthy, and Thomas Martin’s “The Surfer,” starring Nicolas Cage. Over 100 films will be screened if you count every section, so clearly, there is something for everyone.
Cannes 2024 runs Tuesday, May 14, through Saturday, May 2024.
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