For the past few years, the Cannes Film Festival has become not only the most chic venue to launch a new film, but also the premiere place to revitalize a career post-cancellation. Kevin Spacey was all over the fest last year, and this year, there are at least two former personae non gratae strolling the Croisette.
But aside from the attempted career relaunches across the pond, a host of other happenings went down yesterday as the movie world turns its cinema-hungry eyes to the south of France, including a major reunion ahead of a midnight screening, and a few highly anticipated premieres.
Here’s a quick rundown of the major events out of Cannes Day 2.
What’s French for “family”?
Celebrating the 25th anniversary of the original, nitro-boosted hit, the cast of The Fast and the Furious, including Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, and Jordana Brewster, were joined by producer Neal H. Moritz and Paul Walker’s daughter, Meadow, at a photo call ahead of a midnight screening of the film.
The appearance came days after Diesel appeared during the NBCUniversal upfront presentation, where he describe television as a format “that [Jimmy] Fallon has mastered” and announced “four shows from the Fast and Furious universe,” which officially is only one show.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma premieres
The new film from I Saw the TV Glow writer-director Jane Schoenbrun bowed during Day 2 of Un Certain Regard, earning early praise for the filmmaker and their leading ladies, Hacks‘ Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson.
“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma will certainly not be to everyone’s liking,” wrote Richard Lawson for The Hollywood Reporter. “It isn’t a quirky, movie-nerd paean to B-movie horror. Nor is it strictly a tete-a-tete between two lesbian icons (Anderson is not gay, but she has been an idol of the community since her X-Files days). It is a far less definable film than that, and difficult to get a satisfying hold on. But it makes an impact nonetheless; one leaves the theater once again awed by Schoenbrun’s willingness to bare so much of themselves (albeit in oddball allegory).”
Butterfly Jam continues Barry Keoghan’s weirdo streak
The latest from Beanpole writer-director Kantemir Balagov made for one of the more interesting early premieres of the festival. IndieWire’s David Ehrlich responded positively to the film, which stars Riley Keough, Harry Melling, and Barry Keoghan as as a Circassian diner chef who serves insect-infused preserves.
“And yet, it’s only once Butterfly Jam seems doomed to repeat the same dark fatalism of Balagov’s earlier work that it suddenly affirms itself as the bittersweet fable that it’s been all along,” Ehrlich writes, praising the film’s subversion. “It’s only then, after sh-t has gone bad enough that the film seems like it’s about to steer into self-parody, that this seemingly unclassifiable whatsit assumes its final form as a half-formed (and highly bizarre) fairy tale about the magic that’s baked into even the most anguished of family histories.”
Un Cancel Regard
Once again proving that perhaps handwringing over cancel culture may be a bit overblown for the sake excusing some genuinely harmful behavior, both James Franco and Karla Sofía Gascón were out and about promoting new film projects.
Franco told Deadline that he’s got a “big studio movie” in the pipeline, in addition to the new thriller Foster, which screened at the film market.
Meanwhile, Gascón dismissed the outrage around her old tweets in an interview with The Hollywood Report as a “childish” “fabrication,” created”to prevent an actress from winning an award because of what she represents.” OK, Karla.
