It’s that time of year when cinephiles salivate over who’ll claim the Palme d’Or, the Cannes Film Festival’s coveted top prize, and wonder which critical darlings berthing there will swoop from a standing ovation into Australian cinemas. If you cannot wait, get your fix of Cannes cream in this SBS On Demand collection of previous hits that gleamed on the glamorous Côte d’Azur.
Samson & Delilah
One of Australia’s brightest voices, presents his latest film, The New Boy, in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section. Starring Cate Blanchett (Carol) as a rebellious nun who takes in newcomer Aswan Reid’s abandoned orphan, it appears 14 years after his searing debut Samson & Delilah was nominated in the same category. It won the Caméra d’Or for best first feature, and no wonder. You’ll never forget the astounding performances of Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson as lovelorn First Nations teenagers spiralling out of control.
Parasite
For all its bleakly comic brilliance, few folks could have predicted just how huge a global box-office hit South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho’s searing social satire would become. Sure, it started strong, scooping up the Palme d’Or in 2019, but wowzas did it build and build, scoring four Oscars the following year, including Best Picture. Spend time with the impoverished Kim clan as they execute their jaw-dropping usurpation of a filthy rich family and you’ll get why. As bonkers and midnight dark as searing social satire gets, it’s also uproariously funny.
Memoria
Tilda Swinton has cultivated a reputation for embracing intriguing roles. That’s certainly true of her turn in this aurally immersive English-language debut from Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Cemetery of Splendour). She plays a Scotswoman and flower trader who travels to the Colombian capital of Bogota to check on her hospitalised sister. But what is the startling booming sound that only she can hear, and is this somehow connected to her sister’s health trials? That’s the mesmeric mystery at the heart of this slow-burn dream. Nominated for the Palme d’Or in 2021, it took home the Jury Prize instead.
Portrait Of A Lady On Fire
Fantastique French filmmaker Céline Sciamma delivers swooning romance with this gloriously queer seaside crush. Working once again with the inimitable Adèle Haenel, who lit up Sciamma’s Waterlilies, she plays a well-to-do lady suffocated by her impending marriage to a man she’s never met – a man who was betrothed to her now dead sister. Then Tár star Noémie Merlant shows up as the working-class artist tasked with painting her likeness for him. Their stolen moments together, destined to be lost in time, are ethereal. Bowing at Cannes, it took our breath away, going home with both the Queer Palm and Best Screenplay.
Volver
You can always rely on Spanish stalwart Pedro Almodóvar for sexy melodrama, especially when regular collaborator and incomparable talent Penélope Cruz is on board. Here she plays a doting mother who has to clean up a mighty mess, both figuratively and literally, when her beloved daughter (Yohana Cobo) puts a stop to her abusive father’s grotesque assaults once and for all. With a hint of Hitchcock and a splash of Days of Our Lives, you can throw ghostly matriarchal appearances into the mix of this marvellously colourful creation. The Cannes jury was so taken they awarded Best Actress Award to all the women in the ensemble, plus Best Screenplay for Almodóvar.
You Were Never Really Here
Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay shared Cannes’ Best Screenplay Award with Yorgos Lanthimos for The Killing of A Sacred Deer for her propulsive action movie with a world-weary heart. Casting Joaquin Phoenix as a military veteran-turned-hammer-wielding-merc-for-hire, he also picked up Best Actor for his bruised and battered turn as a lost soul on one last mission, trying to set things right by rescuing a kidnapped girl at all costs. The price is high indeed. For all this is a fast and furious throwdown set to a pounding score from Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, it’s also an intriguingly cerebral one that teases out what lies beneath this damaged man.
The Lunchbox
Fair warning, head into Indian filmmaker Ritesh Batra’s Hindi language debut feature even a tiny bit hungry and you’ll be blooming ravenous by the time it’s done. Irrfan Khan plays a widowed accountant about to retire who accidentally receives a tasty feed via Mumbai’s dabbawalla delivery system. Sent by Nimrat Kaur’s much younger woman and intended for her husband, it’s something of a scandal that it keeps winding up in the wrong place. The mix-up at the heart of this luminous movie leads to unexpected emotional connections in a tender musing on love and loneliness that picked up the Grand Golden Rail award during Cannes’ critics week.
The Motorcycle Diaries
The dreamy Gael García Bernal straddles a motorbike to inhabit the spirit of a young Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, not yet the man who will adorn innumerable student bedroom walls, in this big-screen adaptation of the one-day revolutionary’s 20-something diaries. Published posthumously as the memoir of the same name in 1995, the diary entries detailed the then medical student’s travels around South America on La Poderosa (The Mighty One) beside his bestie Alberto Granado, here played by Rodrigo de la Serna. The making of a legend, this vision quest revved home with three Cannes trophies, including the François Chalais Award dedicated to the affirmation of journalism.
Drive
Before Ryan Gosling’s pretty-in-pink Barbie jacket became the must-have accoutrement of the season, everyone wanted a piece of his scorpion-adorned bomber, playing a stuntman-turned-getaway driver in Nicolas Winding Refn’s neon-hued and electro-scored stylish ode to impossible love. Starring opposite the ever-excellent Carey Mulligan (), they set hearts racing in this noir-soaked crime drama that puts the pedal to the metal. It won Refn Best Director at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.
