It feels like we say it every year around the time the Cannes Film Festival lineup is unveiled, but this year we really really mean it: wow! There’s an embarrassment of riches across the whole selection, especially if you factor in the not-quite-so-official Directors’ Fortnight sidebar, which is where many of the more under-the-radar breakouts have bowed in recent years. It seems hard to believe we’re already going to be in the thick of it this time next week, but here are the 25 titles (plus copious honorable mentions) that we’ve circled most heavily in our program during our increasingly frazzled and giddy pre-Cannes research.
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“American Honey”
Director: Andrea Arnold
Synopsis: A teenage tearaway falls in with a group of misfits and criss-crosses the Midwest in a ongoing road trip blur of hard partying, law breaking and lovemaking.
What You Need To Know: There are few enough female directors at work today, but even fewer women who could be termed “auteurs.” And yet Arnold, with just three features under her belt and an Oscar-winning short (the brilliant “Wasp“) can definitely be termed as such, with all her films demonstrating a unique sensibility and an innate directorial confidence. She’s also gratifyingly interested in stories about women —whether it’s with the teenage protagonist of “Fish Tank,” the policewoman involved in surveillance duty in “Red Road” or the famously willful Cathy in “Wuthering Heights,” she has a way with complex, fascinating, truthful feeling female characters. She’s also notable for casting relative unknowns like Katie Jarvis, Kate Dickie and Kaya Scodelario respectively in her features to date. And in this, her first American film, she’s cast first-timer Sasha Lane as her lead, with Arielle Holmes, star and subject of drugged-up love story “Heaven Knows What” also appearing. And if Shia LaBeouf‘s presence is off-putting, just remember Arnold cast Danny Dyer in “Wasp” and still delivered a gem. Danny Dyer.
“The BFG”
Director: Steven Spielberg
Synopsis: A little orphan girl is taken from her bed by a dream-distributing giant who turns out to be friendly, unlike most of his man-eating kind. Together, they embark on a perilous quest to inform the Queen of England of the existence of the evil giants.
What You Need To Know: It may have been over 4 decades since he competed in Cannes (his second film “The Sugarland Express” was his only to contend for the Palme), but Spielberg is Cannes royalty anyway and presided over the jury in 2013. He gets a gala slot for his adaptation of Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s classic “The BFG” from a script by his “E.T.” collaborator Melissa Mathison (it’s sadly her last before she passed away last year). There are a few things that gave us pause initially: the book is very British and, as was Dahl’s wont, gets pretty grisly at times —would Spielberg be tempted to tone those qualities down? And then there’s the matter of the mo-cap giants. However, the trailer has laid some of those fears to rest, and though Mark Rylance‘s eponymous CG character seems firmly embedded in the uncanny, even the small glimpse we get of him suggests the 2016 Oscar winner is going to break our bloody hearts anyway.
“Cafe Society”
Director: Woody Allen
Synopsis: A young man arrives in 1930s Hollywood with dreams of making it in the movie business, and soon falls in love while experiencing the heady highs and lows of life in classic tinseltown.
What You Need To Know: In 2015, “Irrational Man” became the 13th Woody Allen feature to screen out of competition in Cannes. Sadly, we hated it, but his latest, a sort of glamorous flipside story to his wonderful “Purple Rose of Cairo,” is already making us forget that misfire. “Cafe Society” will see Allen take the record for most Cannes openers ever (the tally will actually be 4 if you count anthology film “New York Stories,” alongside “Hollywood Ending” and “Midnight in Paris“) and looks from the early trailer to be an effervescent period comedy boasting an engaging cast fronted by Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Blake Lively and Steve Carell, with voiceover narration from Allen himself. But perhaps even better, there are sure to be cherishable turns found in a supporting cast that features Anna Camp (who is so wonderful in season 2 of “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” that we’d be first in line just for her), Corey Stoll, Judy Davis and Parker Posey (MVP in “Irrational Man”).
“Dog Eat Dog”
Director: Paul Schrader
Synopsis: Three ex-cons, each on their last strike before facing a lifetime behind bars, team up for a final job that goes smoothly but starts quickly to unravel in the aftermath as the law closes in.
What You Need To Know: Schrader’s place in any respectable hall of fame is assured as the writer of “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull,” but as a director (our Retrospective is here ), he’s never quite attained such dizzy heights. But that’s not to say he hasn’t got some terrific titles like “Mishima,” “Affliction,” and “Blue Collar,” and some neglected gems like “Patty Hearst,” “Hardcore” and “The Walker” amongst the outright stinkers like “Dominion,” the ‘Exorcist‘ prequel and “The Canyons.” His new film, which plays in Directors’ Fortnight (“Patty Hearst” and “Mishima” both received main competition slots) sounds resolutely generic, but with two leads taken by Nicolas Cage and Willem Dafoe, well, he’s got our attention. Of course, his last film”The Dying of the Light,” which also starred Cage, did not work out so well, but if the stories of that film’s troubled gestation (all principals more or less disowned it) are even half true, it will be fascinating to see what Schrader can do with Cage in a less compromised movie, especially with Cage’s eternally watchable “Wild at Heart” co-star Dafoe on board.
“Elle”
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Synopsis: A high-powered, ruthless businesswoman embarks on a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with her assailants after being the victim of a home invasion.
What You Need To Know: In terms of sheer, guilty-pleasure enjoyment, we’re not sure there’s any Cannes title apart from maybe “The Nice Guys” that we’re more looking forward to than Verhoeven’s “Elle.” Thank heavens that with the respectability that comes with the passage of years (and casting Isabelle Huppert didn’t hurt) the Dutch mainstream provocateur is in Cannes with his first feature in 10 years and only his second ever in the festival competition (“Basic Instinct,” amazingly enough, gained a slot in 1992). And it sounds like it’s exactly the kind of borderline exploitation, salacious thriller that should be in his wheelhouse. Verhoeven has been persona non grata in Hollywood for a long time now as regards getting financing for any one of his long-gestating projects, and while his name has occasionally come up in connection with films that have gone on to be made by other directors (notably with “The Paperboy” —the mind boggles), it’s been far too long an absence for such a spiky, mischievous, wickedly smart filmmaker. Welcome back.