Slowly, but surely, the lineup for the 77th Cannes Film Festival is being revealed. Last month, Cannes announced that George Miller’s “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” will be an early world premiere on la Croisette on May 15. Today, the festival announced that Quentin Dupieux’s “Le Deuxième Acte (The Second Act)” will kick off the proceedings on May 14.
Premiering out of competition, the official synopsis for the comedy is as follows: “Florence wants to introduce David, the man she’s madly in love with, to her father Guillaume. But David isn’t attracted to Florence and wants to throw her into the arms of his friend Willy. The four characters meet in a restaurant in the middle of nowhere.”
The movie stars Léa Seydoux, Vincent Lindon, Louis Garrel, and Raphaël Quenard. As is the tradition with many opening night films, it will debut in French theaters on the same day.
Dupieux‘s previous film, “Smoking Causes Coughing,” debuted at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival also out of competition.
In recent years, being selected as the opening night film is not always a ringing endorsement. Previous selections include Woody Allen‘s bumpy “Cafe Society” (2016), the unintentional camp of “Grace of Monaco” (2014), “Jeanne du Barry” (2023) with Johnny Depp, Jim Jarmusch’s zombie misfire “Dead Don’t Die” (2019), and Michel Hazanavicius’s “Final Cut” (2022), didn’t set the world on fire. A rare exception this past decade was Leos Carax’s “Annette” which found its fans in 2021.
The rest of the highly anticipated lineup for this year’s edition of the festival will be revealed bright and early on Thursday morning, April 11. Rumored titles include Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Kinds of Kindness,” Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis,” Audrey Diwan’s “Emmanuelle,” Andrea Arnold’s “Bird,” Edward Berger’s “Conclave,” and David Cronenenberg’s “The Shrouds,” among others.
The 2024 Cannes Film Festival runs from Tuesday, May 14 through Saturday, May 25. Look for complete coverage on The Playlist and sign up for our daily newsletter to get all the reviews and news.