The Cannes Film Festival always make a lot of noise, but this year’s edition has been especially rich with buzz for movies certain to stay in the conversation in the months ahead. Harrison Ford was celebrated with a lifetime achievement award ahead of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” and HBO’s edgy pop star series “The Idol” stirred debate. Todd Haynes’ “May December” unleashed a erotic thriller with Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore that sold to Netflix for $11 million, while Apple unveiled Martin Scorsese’s sprawling “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and Wes Anderson brought his huge ensemble to the festival for his colorful meta-fiction “Asteroid City.”
With so many higher-profile entries in play, it can be tricky to take the temperature on Cannes in real time, but IndieWire’s Eric Kohn and David Ehrlich did their best to make sense of the last few days during a live recording of our Screen Talk podcast from the American Pavilion.
They also touched on the hectic climate of Cannes and how it ends up informing the overall experience of the movies themselves, then juggled a series of audiences questions on subjects ranging from filmmaker relationships to the sudden impact of artificial intelligence.
During the podcast, Ehrlich previewed his response to “Asteroid City,” and later expanded on those thoughts in his review:
Like any movie by Wes Anderson, “Asteroid City” is the epitome of a Wes Anderson movie. A film about a television program about a play within a play “about infinity and I don’t know what else” (as one character describes it), this delightfully profound desert charmer — by far the director’s best effort since “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” and in some respects the most poignant thing he’s ever made — boasts all of his usual hallmarks and then some. A multi-tiered framing device, diorama-esque shot design, and Tilda Swinton affectlessly saying things like “I never had children, but sometimes I wonder if I wish I should have” are just some of the many signature flourishes that you might recognize from Anderson’s previous work and/or the endless parade of A.I.-generated TikToks that imitate his style.
Meanwhile, the Palme d’Or race has been loaded with possibilities. “It can be all too easy to make assumptions about jury preferences based on their own work,” Kohn wrote in his predictions piece. “At the same time, for this guessing game, Cannes obsessives need all the clues they can get.”
Watch the full episode above or listen to it below.
Screen Talk is produced by Azwan Badruzaman and available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify, and hosted by Megaphone. Browse previous installments here, subscribe here, and be sure to let us know if you’d like to hear the hosts address specific issues in upcoming editions of Screen Talk.
