![‘Moulin’ Review: László Nemes’ Quick Follow-Up To ‘Orphan’ Is A Vapid Biopic With The Bitter Taste Of Gratuitousness [Cannes]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/20092143/%E2%80%98Moulin-Review-Laszlo-Nemes-Quick-Follow-Up-To-%E2%80%98Orphan-Is-A-Vapid-Biopic-With-The-Bitter-Taste-Of-Gratuitousness-Cannes.jpg "‘Moulin’ Review: László Nemes’ Quick Follow-Up To ‘Orphan’ Is A Vapid Biopic With The Bitter Taste Of Gratuitousness [Cannes]")
It took Hungarian director László Nemes seven years to return to filmmaking after 2018’s “Sunset,” while only a few months separate his Venice-selected “Orphan” from his newest Cannes competition affair, “Moulin.” These cinematic Irish twins also share a marked hollowness that desperately tries to hide beneath the sheen of polished craft, resulting in works that look painstakingly beautiful but wobble on their way toward the substantial.
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With “Moulin,” Nemes directs the first-ever biopic of the revered civil servant-turned-French Resistance leader Jean Moulin, played here by veteran Gilles Lellouche. The director splits his epic into two well-defined halves that come after a brief introductory clip of colorized footage of the Nazi occupation of France, which establishes both the historical period and the sense of urgency of a rapidly unfolding conflict. The film’s first hour unspools as a classic noir as Moulin goes from spearheading inflamed, densely populated meetings to whispering carefully coded words to potential allies at art exhibits and dimly lit soirées.
The slick-haired Lellouche, fashioned in pristinely tailored suits, is the personification of refinement, a leader presented not as the passionate finger-wagging rebel of Victor Hugo but as a fiercely intelligent and carefully strategic mastermind. That demeanor is not entirely appreciated by his followers, who quietly confabulate against their representative through double-entendres that further muddle the flow of this setup. This reticence to dwell on the details of Moulin’s great mission—to unify the main resistance networks under Charles de Gaulle to curb the German invasion of France—edges “Moulin” away from the enrapturing waters of a historical thriller and into the dreary realm of a convoluted post-graduate history class.
![‘Moulin’ Review: László Nemes’ Quick Follow-Up To ‘Orphan’ Is A Vapid Biopic With The Bitter Taste Of Gratuitousness [Cannes]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/20092142/%E2%80%98Moulin-Review-Laszlo-Nemes-Quick-Follow-Up-To-%E2%80%98Orphan-Is-A-Vapid-Biopic-With-The-Bitter-Taste-Of-Gratuitousness-Cannes-1-1024x487.jpg)
The latter half of this languid affair at last introduces Nemes’ focal point: Moulin’s capture and subsequent torture at the hands of infamous Gestapo maven Klaus Barbie, played by Lars Eidinger. That rapid flip does away with the long evenings spent in a decorator’s dream of hand-stitched chaise longues, intricately carved rosewood cabinets, and candle-lit art exhibits to throw us alongside Moulin into the bowels of a German-ruled prison and captured during an underground Resistance meeting at a doctor’s office, Moulin at first benefits from the Gestapo’s ignorance as to his identity. Nemes overstretches this farce, ping-ponging Lellouche from the bare prison cell to lavish Gestapo offices as Barbie tightens his iron fist on his captive.
The teasing of this grand duel between Moulin and Barbie is the film’s one redeeming quality, thanks in large part to Eidinger’s seasoned villainy. The actor is at home in the embodiment of cruelty, widely known as one of Germany’s great screen scoundrels. This experience allows him to refine his Gestapo officer into a treacherous villain with the charm that often accompanies a great villain, a task made easier by the way Lellouche’s Moulin is written, without even a sliver of biting contradiction. As Eidinger prances around his vast quarters, piercingly degustating his scattering lines as if a sommelier, it is hard to continue to root for our supposed hero.
It is of little help that the production design that so painstakingly brings to life the inner worlds of the rich and powerful in the film’s first half seems to run out of steam when we enter the barren reality of Moulin’s captivity. The emptiness of the cell, which should land a punch when juxtaposed with the excess of the halls Moulin previously circulated in, results instead in the artificial, with the extended prison sequences clearly shot on a backlot. Nemes’ frequent collaborator Mátyás Erdély captures the imprisoned Lellouche under the heavy veil of darkness, his face oddly resembling a late-career Robert De Niro. The French actor doesn’t quite get at the core of Moulin’s ache, his performance constrained by the rigidity of the classic historical biopic.
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![‘Moulin’ Review: László Nemes’ Quick Follow-Up To ‘Orphan’ Is A Vapid Biopic With The Bitter Taste Of Gratuitousness [Cannes]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/20092140/%E2%80%98Moulin-Review-Laszlo-Nemes-Quick-Follow-Up-To-%E2%80%98Orphan-Is-A-Vapid-Biopic-With-The-Bitter-Taste-Of-Gratuitousness-Cannes-2-1024x666.jpg)
“Moulin” ramps up the violence in its final leg, with a handful of torture sequences that can rival the most harrowing moments of Nemes’ breakthrough Holocaust drama “Son of Saul.” That violence, so sparsely present for the two hours that precede it, feels too gimmicky to convey the horror of the very real episode it aims to portray and therefore leaves the bitter taste of gratuitousness in one’s mouth. It is a fitting mishap to wrap this frivolous affair that never quite leaves the realm of pretense. In disregarding the much more interesting machinations of the Resistance in favor of shrouding his protagonist in a thin cloak of importance, Nemes’ pompous drama ultimately loses sight of both the audience and its thesis, all while patting itself on its self-aggrandizing back. [D]
Rafa Sales Ross is a Brazilian film journalist, critic and programmer currently living in Scotland. She contributes to Variety, BBC Culture, Sight & Sound among others, and can often be seen writing about Latin American Cinema and explorations of death and desire.
