Cannes best moments, Scarlett Johansson misses Paper Tiger premiere

Tigers, sheep, and Beatles… oh my! All kinds of critters were hopping on the Croisette during the first weekend of the 79th Cannes Film Festival. The first of the only two American titles competing for the Palme d’Or — James Gray‘s Paper Tiger — had its first screening for festival-goers with one of its stars notably absent for work reasons.

Another prominent U.S. director, Steven Soderbergh, debuted his new AI-assisted documentary, John Lennon: The Last Interview, which features previously unreleased audio from the late singer-songwriter’s final conversation, which was recorded hours before his assassination in 1980. Meanwhile, former Palme d’Or winner and Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda premiered his latest work, Sheep in the Box, to a mixed response, and Barbra Streisand announced that she would have to miss a planned celebration for her life and career to be held during the closing ceremony.

Read on for all the Cannes weekend highlights.

Tiger burns bright

A late addition to this year’s Cannes lineup, Paper Tiger joins Ira Sachs’ The Man I Love as the two competition titles hailing from the American indie film scene as opposed to any of the major studios, which are sitting this year’s festival out. But Gray still brought some Hollywood star power to promote the Saturday premiere of the Neon-distributed film, arriving in Cannes with his leading men Adam Driver and Miles Teller, who play a pair of New York brothers that unwisely get caught up in a scheme involving the Russian mob. It marks the director’s return to the world of crime dramas like Little Odessa, We Own the Night, and The Yards, which thrilled some critics, but left others cold.

But the film’s biggest star wasn’t able to be present for the premiere. Reigning box-office champ Scarlett Johansson replaced the super-busy Anne Hathaway in the role of Teller’s wife, which reportedly allows her to experiment with the kind of broad Tri-State area-accent that she adopted for the 2013 comedy Don Jon. In a viral video, Gray tried to FaceTime the actress while the Cannes crowd gave his film an extensive standing ovation, but she didn’t pick up the call. To be fair, Johansson has a good excuse for absenting herself; she’s currently shooting Mike Flanagan’s Exorcist reboot, which is sure to add more coin to her record box office grosses.

And she made up for that missed call at the premiere by sending a letter that Gray read aloud during the Sunday press conference. “Working with James and this extraordinary cast was one of the great pleasures of my career,” Johansson wrote. “I feel so fortunate to have been part of a story so deeply rooted in what matters most: human connection, identity and the way our values evolve across generations.”

The Lennon tapes

It has been 15 years since Steven Soderbergh ventured into the documentary world, but the Best Director winner has said that he couldn’t turn down the chance to bring John Lennon’s last-ever audio interview to life. While Soderbergh relies on traditional non-fiction techniques like archival footage as well as new interviews with the journalists that conducted the conversation, he also employed Meta’s AI tools to create images that could accompany the more free-flowing portions of the 1980 recording. That choice has proved divisive in early reviews, with some critics describing the AI imagery as “technologically trendy clip art,” while others have characterized it as “organic and involving.”

But everyone agrees that Lennon’s words are gripping, as well as eerily prescient. “I consider that my work won’t be finished until I’m dead and buried and I hope that’s a long, long time,” the ex-Beatle remarks early on in the interview, which also covers his relationship with his partner and collaborator, Yoko Ono, and his post-Beatles solo work. The Last Interview is currently seeking distribution, but expect it to land with a streaming service, if not a theatrical label.

Feeling Sheep-ish

It has been a rough festival for international auteurs like Asghar Farhadi and Rodrigo Sorogoyen, whose latest movies haven’t exactly wowed the global press corps. Add Hirokazu Kore-eda to that list, who brought his sci-fi laced feature Sheep in the Box to Cannes eight years after winning the Palme d’Or for 2018’s Shoplifters. Following its Saturday premiere — where the film received a modest 3.5-minute standing ovation — Sheep promptly sank towards the bottom of Screen Daily’s handy jury grid, which tracks how the different competition titles are playing.

“The Japanese director has no shortage of ideas,” The Hollywood Reporter‘s David Rooney wrote in his pan. “But too few of those ideas yield satisfying conclusions, resulting in a drama that becomes treacly and insubstantial, reaching for a profundity that remains elusive.” Even the more positive takes admit that Sheep won’t net Kore-eda another Palme, leaving his countryman, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, as the current front-runner for All of a Sudden, which boasts the festival’s best reviews — and longest standing ovation — so far.

The Streisand effect

Good things come in threes, which is why the heads of Cannes planned to hand out a trio of honorary Palme d’Or’s during this year’s festival. The first went to Peter Jackson, the second to John Travolta, and the third is bookmarked for global screen and singing icon, Barbra Streisand. The Funny Girl star was scheduled to accept the honor in person at the festival’s closing ceremony on July 23, but Streisand announced on Sunday that a knee injury will make that trip impossible.

“While I regret that I can’t be there in person, I want to extend my warmest congratulations to all of the filmmakers from around the world whose extraordinary talent and creative vision are being celebrated this year,” Streisand wrote in a statement that the festival released to the press. “My heartfelt thanks to the Festival, and to everyone who continues to support and champion the art of cinema.” Streisand will still receive the Palme d’Or in absentia next Saturday.

Updated Standing-O Scoreboard

*averaged from published reports