Cannes Film Festival 2023: All Of Deadline’s Movie Reviews

May 18, 2023
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UPDATED with latest: The Cannes Film Festival kicked off this year with opening-night movie Jeanne du Barry, with Deadline on the ground to watch all the key films. Here is a compilation of our reviews from the fest, which last year saw Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness win the coveted Palme d’Or on its way to an Oscar Best Picture nomination.

Check out the reviews below, click on the titles to read them in full, and keep checking back as we add more.

‘The Animal Kingdom’

Section: Un Certain Regard

Director: Thomas Cailley

Screenwriters: Thomas Cailley, Pauline Munier

Cast: Romain Duris, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Paul Kircher

Deadline’s takeaway: It’s certainly a testament to Cailley’s spellbinding magic-realist fable that The Animal Kingdom can be enjoyed at face value without being battered over the head by subtext. Dig a bit deeper, though, and its rich and strange barrage of images and ideas just becomes more and more remarkable and compelling over time.

‘Anselm’ Hanway

Section: Special Screening

Director: Wim Wenders

Cast: Anselm Kiefer, Daniel Kiefer, Anton Wenders

Deadline’s takeaway: It’s hard to imagine seeing Anselm in any format other than 3D, and if it fails in broadening the reputation of its already internationally known subject, it’s an extraordinary post-pandemic endeavor that succeeds in reminding viewers of the thrill of being in the presence of great art.

‘Homecoming’ (Le Retour) Playtime

Section: Competition

Director: Catherine Corsini

Cast: Esther Gohourou, Suzy Bemba, Aissatou Diallo Sagna, Lomane De Dietrich

Deadline’s takeaway: There is a brisker, tougher and more succinct story buried just out of sight in Homecoming, somewhere on the beach where the jet-skis blast through the waves. Not that there isn’t plenty here to enjoy, but too much time where we feel like Farah, running sand through her fingers and wondering if there’s anything to do in this village.

‘Jeanne du Barry’ Stéphanie Branchu / Why Not Productions

Section: Out of Competition

Director: Maïwenn

Screenwriter: Teddy Lussi-Modeste

Cast: Maiwenn, Johnny Depp, Benjamin Lavernhe, Pierre Richard, Melvil Poupaud, Pascal Greggory, India Hair

Deadline’s takeaway: The film’s pageantry can’t quite cover up the fact that there isn’t much glue to the story, which unfolds as a series of vignettes, and feels more like we’re looking at scenes from a life in retrospect than being invested in watching a wild life being lived to the fullest.

‘Monster’ ©️2023 Monster Film Committee

Section: Competition

Director: Hirokazu Kore-Eda

Screenwriter: Sakamoto Yuji

Cast: Ando Sakura, Nagayama Eita, Kurokawa Soya, Hiiragi Hinata, Tanaka Yuko

Deadline’s takeaway: Monster represents Kore-Eda’s first movie since his 1995 debut feature Maborosi that the director has not had a screenplay credit on, but clearly with its humanist family-centered themes is right in this master craftsman’s wheelhouse.

‘Occupied City’ A24/New Regency

Section: Special Screenings

Director: Steve McQueen

Text: Bianca Stigter

Narrator: Melanie Hyams

Deadline’s takeaway: We are entering a new era when few people with direct experience of the atrocities of WWII and the Holocaust remain alive. This era calls for a new kind of film about that time – a new way of preserving memory and cautioning us against a repetition of crimes against humanity driven by a racist ideology. Occupied City is that film.

‘Strange Way of Life’ Sony Pictures Classics

Section: Special Screening

Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Director-screenwriter: Pedro Almodóvar

Cast: Pedro Pascal, Ethan Hawke

Deadline’s takeaway: The ghosts of John Ford, Howard Hawks, John Sturges, Anthony Mann, Raoul Walsh and Sam Peckinpah may be surprised at the twist that this 73-year-old fanboy has given Strange Way of Life. That is because though the work of those directors is liberally addressed and tributed in different ways, the plot here is something you would never find in any of their classics.

Source: Deadline