From dawn to after nightfall, a few hours in the life of Monsieur Oscar, a shadowy character who journeys from one life to the next. He is, in turn, captain of industry, assassin, beggar, monster, family man. He seems to be playing roles, plunging headlong into each part… but where are the cameras? Monsieur Oscar is alone, accompanied only by Céline, the slender blonde woman behind the wheel of the vast engine that transports him in and around Paris. He’s like a conscientious assassin moving from hit to hit. In pursuit of the purely beautiful act, the mysterious driving force, the women and ghosts of past lives. But where is his true home, his family, his rest?
InAnnette, a provocative comedian (Adam Driver) and renowned opera singer (Marion Cotillard) fall in love and have a gifted child. Written and composed by Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks, the singular rock band that formed in the early 1970s, the musical is directed by Leos Carax, making his long-awaited return with his first feature since Holy Motors in 2012. (The Maels reached out after Carax used one of their songs in that film.) And though a dyed-in-the-wool collaboration, it remains an unmistakably Caraxian film—not long after Sparks’ overture (“This is the start!” goes the refrain) does the director dip into his own back catalog: a motorbike, shot from low, tearing down an illuminated tunnel at night; glistening limousines; nods to Jean Vigo and Melville; eroticism; lots of cigarettes. It really has been too long.
Held over from last year, Annette was chosen to reopen Cannes as the first big premiere to grace the festival after suffering its longest hiatus since the Second World War. That kind of billing and hype almost demanded a sugar rush, yet Carax has delivered something gloriously gnarled and uncomfortable: a bludgeoning rock opera that takes aim at the entertainment industry and the dregs of toxic masculinity; that flourishes just as it drips with self-loathing; and that gestures toward such far-flung places as Dadaism, A Star is Born,Pinocchio,and even the director’s own life.
This masterful ode to death and dying is every bit as uncomfortable and unflinching as Michael Haneke’s sombre reputation suggests, but by adding a new found warmth to his repertoire, Amour is a film made remarkable in its simultaneously brutal and tender depiction of humanity.
2. The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest opus offers, among other things, an intensive study of men who lead and men looking to be led in post-war America. This cerebral approach to character makes for fascinating cinema, and although its mysteries may ultimately evade, The Master is as breathless a film as one would expect from America’s greatest showman.
3.Tiny Furniture (Lena Dunham)
Building on the already solid foundations of mumblecore with the wit of Woody Allen, Lena Dunham’s painfully frank film about life after graduation is a thoroughly modern and disturbingly relatable examination of alienated youth and wasted talent.
4.Rust and Bone (Jacques Audiard)
Jacques Audiard’s exquisite take on melodrama observes the blossoming relationship between a security guard and a whale trainer in the wake of a career-ending tragedy, but instead of descending into mawkishness, Audiard’s well judged restraint grounds the film in some kind of reality, allowing the central romance to develop in an organic, unsentimental way.
5.The Innkeepers (Ti West)
By combining the twin terrors of ghost stories and existential crises, Ti West has found the perfect home for the thematic concerns of the mumblecore movement with a film that not only functions as A grade horror, but also as a terrifying parable for the modern youth.
6.Alps (Yorgos Lanthimos)
The Hitchcockian idea of using doppelgangers to help appease grief is an inherently sick one, and Lanthimos’ steady, distant observations of how the frailties of such a process begin to surface are, while elusive, as morbidly fascinating as they are troubling.
7.Once Upon A Time In Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
With its long, glacial takes, stunning photography and startlingly calm approach to narrative and character, Once Upon A Time In Anatolia offers an unusually lyrical, thematically rich take on the police procedural sub-genre.
8.Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan)
The epitome of a hot mess, Xavier Dolan’s vivid dissection of transsexuality, romance and heartbreak is a gorgeously presented, decade spanning emotional epic reminiscent of the work of Pedro Almodovar, and although it lacks control, its bombastic style is more than enough to sustain its ambition.
9.Sightseers (Ben Wheatley)
Taking cues from Badlands and the films of Mike Leigh, Ben Wheatley’s third film in as many years is an unabashedly violent, romantic and hilarious romp through the English countryside, blending horror and comedy to wonderful, if wholly British effect.
10.Holy Motors (Leos Carax)
Leos Carax’s brazenly opaque oddity almost didn’t make this list, with its absurd, often hideous images serving to baffle rather than engage. But, for better or for worse, Holy Motors has stayed with me more than any other film this year, and that surely has to mean something.
