It was always going to be difficult for the 2024 Cannes Film Festival to compete with its previous edition, given that that instalment featured the premieres of everything from future Oscar winners Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest to May December, Killers of the Flower Moon and How to Have Sex. This time around, there were quite a few big, ambitious swings which – at least for me – didn’t quite hit the mark (Furiosa, Rumours, Emilia Pérez, The Apprentice) and a handful which proved to be absolute clangers (Parthenope, The Shrouds, Oh, Canada, Megalopolis).
But, thankfully, there were also several which knocked it out of the park – audacious horror movies, cryptic thrillers, and intimate, lyrical dramas, many of them directed by women. Below, find the seven best releases to have debuted on the Croisette which you need to add to your watchlist immediately.
The Substance
My favourite film from the festival is one that’s proved to be thrillingly divisive – a gore-filled, overblown, mile-a-minute body horror from Revenge’s Coralie Fargeat which casts Demi Moore as the host of a fitness show who, in her fifties, is deemed to be past her prime by her obnoxious boss (Dennis Quaid). Cue a mysterious invitation to try “The Substance”, a procedure that claims to unleash a younger, more beautiful version of yourself – one which causes our heroine’s spine to split open, and a radiant alter ego (Margaret Qualley) to emerge, ready to live out her wildest fantasies. (Yes, really.) Things go off the rails in spectacular fashion, with a finale that is so hilariously batshit that it demands to be experienced on the biggest screen you can find, surrounded by people who are gasping, shrieking, laughing and shaking their heads in disbelief right along with you.
Kinds of Kindness
A swerve back to potentially alienating strangeness from Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos following his comparatively more commercially-minded awards contenders Poor Things and The Favourite, this darkly funny and occasionally terrifying three-part fable follows the likes of Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie, Margaret Qualley and Hunter Schafer as they play an eccentric array of characters – from megalomaniacs and mystics to rogue police officers, cult members and nefarious husbands. Coming together to form a fascinating examination of controlling relationships and the notion of free will, the three stories are meticulously constructed, deeply unsettling, and crammed full of shocking twists and Easter eggs galore, enough to have you obsessively theorising for weeks and months to come.
Anora
Sean Baker’s charming screwball comedy starts as it means to go on: with a joyous sweeping shot of exotic dancers grinding to the tune of Take That’s “Greatest Day”, in fact. One of them is the vivacious Ani (a revelatory Mikey Madison), who entertains Ivan (Mark Eidelstein), a goofy 21-year-old who also happens to be the son of a Russian oligarch. A madcap romance ensues until they reach a Pretty Woman-esque agreement to spend a whirlwind week together. Before they know it, though, they’re exchanging vows in Vegas and Ivan’s furious parents are en route to retrieve their errant son. The laughs are copious, the extended final set piece a delight, and the ending deeply and profoundly moving.
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
On the way home from a fancy dress party in Zambia, the deliciously deadpan Shula (Susan Chardy) stumbles upon the corpse of her uncle on the side of the road in Rungano Nyoni’s taut and darkly funny thriller. It’s an incident which prompts an overblown performance of grief from all the older women in her family – including her mother, who literally collapses to the ground as she processes the news – but Shula and her two cousins, the sweet-natured young Bupe (Esther Singini) and the loose canon Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela), remain unmoved. As the narrative slowly unspools, we learn how their uncle manipulated and groomed the three of them – and we see how his extended family rushes to shore up his legacy. Nyoni has a mastery with the camera, creating shots that become seared into your brain – Shula turning away as she reveals the extent of the abuse, a tear rolling down the edge of her face; her walking back and forth as she decides whether or not to tell her father what really happened – resulting in a dazzling film which will leave you haunted.
Santosh
A gut punch of a thriller from Sandhya Suri, this intimately observed, north India-set police procedural tracks the titular young widow (Shahana Goswami) as she inherits her recently deceased husband’s job as a constable via a government scheme. Alienated by the insidious behaviour of her male colleagues, she finds a mentor – or so she thinks – in a more experienced, swaggering policewoman (Sunita Rajwar), just as the pair get drawn into a case involving the rape and murder of a low-caste teenager. Leads are chased down, the plot thickens, and the final revelation is excruciating to stomach. This is a restrained piece of work, certainly, but it’s also one which quietly subverts your expectations – in our lead’s increasing defiance in the face of misogyny; in the strange chemistry she has with her new friend and superior; and in the curiously ambiguous ending. When it does, it soars.
Bird
A characteristically lyrical study of drifters on the fringes of society, Andrea Arnold’s latest portrait of youthful discontent centres on the wonderful Nykiya Adams in the part of Bailey, a 12-year-old whose life with her father (a scenery-chewing Barry Keoghan) and brother (Jason Buda) is about to be disrupted by the former’s marriage to his new girlfriend (Frankie Box). Days before their wedding, Bailey spontaneously runs away from home and, somewhere in the rolling fields of Gravesend, encounters Bird (an impish Franz Rogowski), a traveller searching for his long lost parents. Their burgeoning friendship, and its intersection with his desperate pursuit of answers about his past, and her relationship with her estranged mother (Jasmine Jobson) and her abusive partner (James Nelson-Joyce), all build to a startling climax. At this point, the film takes a surreal turn that didn’t fully work for me, but with the incredible richness of everything we’re offered in Bird, from the painterly cinematography to the captivating performances, it more than deserves a place on this list.
The Balconettes
Noémie Merlant’s gleeful romp – which follows three women, as played by Souheila Yacoub, Sanda Codreanu and the director herself, who spy on a hot neighbour (Lucas Bravo) from the balcony of their Marseille apartment during a sweltering heatwave – is flawed, particularly in its later erasure of an initially crucial supporting player (Nadège Beausson-Diagne). Still, it won me over with its big laughs, sheer exuberance, deft handling of complex #MeToo-related themes and eye-popping, Euphoria-adjacent visual style, not to mention its triumphant liberation of the female body. As temperatures rise, and an impulsive murder needs covering up, most of their clothes come off, and by the end of the film’s hour-and-45-minute run the nudity is entirely and thrillingly normalised. On a festival line-up alongside far more serious, heavy and sometimes ponderous fare, it proved to be a welcome, galvanising shot in the arm.
