Did an Oscar Winner Premiere at Cannes?

By Rebecca Ford and Richard Lawson

That's a wrap on the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, but which of its many films will we be talking about later this year and into 2024? Triangle of Sadness, Top Gun: Maverick, and Elvis all went from Cannes to the Oscars last year, but it's usually difficult to predict exactly which ones will remain in the conversation.

The festival's awards sometimes give us a clue—Parasite and Triangle of Sadness both won the Palme d’Or. But other years, the jury's taste doesn't align with the Academy's in any way. This year's winner—Justine Triet's courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall—was the talk of the festival after its premiere and was swiftly acquired by Neon for release in the US. It's likely Neon will give it an awards-season run, and it could most likely play in the international-feature category (while the film is in French, there are also scenes in English, so it would only qualify if more than 50% of the dialogue is in a foreign language). With critical acclaim and a Palme, Anatomy of a Fall will be one to keep an eye on later this year.

But what of the rest of the films that premiered during the fest? With the awards now given out and the Palais's glamorous red carpet wrapped up for another year, Rebecca Ford and Richard Lawson reveal six of the films they enjoyed the most—and weigh in on their chances for Oscar season.

The Zone of Interest

Jonathan Glazer's mesmerizingly grim film was one of the best-reviewed, most-buzzed-about competition entries at the festival. (Many were surprised when it did not win the Palme, instead garnering the Grand Prix, or second place prize.) Zone of Interest will no doubt land on many top 10 lists at the end of the year, and will almost certainly be well honored by various critics groups. The Oscars could be a different matter, though. While Ben Kingsley was nominated in supporting actor for Sexy Beast, Glazer's debut feature, his more than deserving follow-up films, Birth and Under the Skin, didn't get any kind of Academy attention. And yet, The Zone of Interest seems, at this point anyway, to be one of the defining movies of the year, formally daring and topically urgent. We’d hope that at the very least the German-language film will end up in the international-feature category. We could also see Glazer getting into best director, as that branch sometimes ventures further into the foreign art house than most other groups within the Academy. A movie like The Zone of Interest was certainly not made to win Academy Awards, and its legacy will not suffer should it be blanked. But a new and improving Academy would do well to keep Glazer's film in mind, a singular work of art that seized Cannes in a mighty death grip. —Richard Lawson

Killers of the Flower Moon

Martin Scorsese's out-of-competition feature is an ambitious film that spans three and a half hours, full of incredible visuals and strong performances from Scorsese regulars Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. The film, based on David Grann's book, chronicles the murders of Osage people in 1920s Oklahoma. DiCaprio and De Niro play two white men who move into Osage territory hoping to glean off the wealth the Native American tribe has amassed due to the oil on their land. What's really exciting about the film is the performance of Lily Gladstone, who plays Mollie, one of the Osage women whose family and friends are murdered. A confident and charismatic performance left me hopeful that perhaps Gladstone—known for starring in Kelly Reichardt's Certain Women—could be a part of the acting Oscar conversation along with DiCaprio and De Niro. With the film's long run time, most people are able to find something to gripe about, but overall, it's an epic tale told with Scorsese's confident abilities. I imagine that Apple will make it a priority for awards season, where it could compete both above and below the line, as well as for best picture. Time will tell if it fares better than Scorsese's last film, The Irishman (which earned 10 nominations but zero wins), but Killers of the Flower Moon is arguably a story that feels more impactful and significant, especially for a community so rarely represented in Hollywood. —Rebecca Ford

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By Joy Press

By Chris Murphy

Asteroid City

Wes Anderson is back! Well, so say some critics, anyway. The idiosyncratic director's latest is a funny, melancholy pleasure, full of lovely visuals and great performances. They’re awfully brief performances, though. While Anderson uses his large ensemble well, I don't think any of the actors involved have quite enough screen time to pop for real awards consideration. (No actor has ever received an Oscar nomination for an Anderson film.) But other aspects of the movie—its script, its production design, its costumes—ought to be in the mix. Perhaps there is even a chance that Asteroid City will catch the fancy of voters as The Grand Budapest Hotel did nearly 10 years ago, earning screenplay and director nominations for Anderson along with best picture. Asteroid City is maybe not quite as sweeping as that film (well, sweeping for one of Anderson's movies), but it is at least well positioned at the moment, buoyed by mostly positive reviews and giving off the tantalizing whiff of a comeback. —RL

May December

When we caught the very first screening of Todd Haynes's May December, Richard and I were both surprised—pleasantly—to discover that this movie is funny. It's a high-wire act of tone as a story centered on Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), an actor who visits a small town to study the character she’ll portray in her next film, a woman named Gracie (Julianne Moore) who was a tabloid sensation years ago. Both characters are rich and layered, and you’re never quite sure what they’ll do next. Years earlier, Gracie, a grown woman, had a sexual affair with a seventh-grade boy, and got pregnant by him. When Elizabeth meets them, Gracie is married to that man (Charles Melton) who is now 36. It doesn't exactly seem like the sort of story that would allow for laughter, but Haynes imbues it with moments of camp and melodrama as he explores the thin line between exploration and exploitation. Portman and Moore both deliver knockout performances, including a monologue by Portman that's eerie and mesmerizing. And Melton is a true discovery, as the innocent young man at the heart of the story. This twisty story was bought by Netflix in a huge $11 million deal, and I’d expect we can see a strong campaign come the fall. —RF

The Pot-au-Feu

Catching many people by surprise at Cannes was Tran Anh Hung's delicate French drama about food and romance. A handsomely filmed period piece about the master of a manor (Benoît Magimel) and his talented cook (Juliette Binoche) who is also his lover, The Pot-au-Feu had audiences swooning—at the sumptuous and thorough food photography, yes, but also at the film's tender emotional currents, its sadness and its sweetness. Was it enough of a Cannes hit, best-director win and all, to convince the French government to select it as their international-feature choice? It's got some competition in that, maybe most notably in the form of the highly praised legal thriller Anatomy of a Fall. Hung is also now a distinct contender in best director. And what of Binoche, so radiant and warm as this almost otherworldly master of cuisine? It's been a long time since she's gotten any kind of Oscar attention, but maybe if this movie is somehow a sleeper art house hit (do such things exist anymore?) this understated but certainly accessible and winsome Cannes surprise will bring her back into the fold. —RL

A Strange Way of Life

Pedro Almodóvar's short film starring Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke as former lovers now on opposite sides is an engrossing watch, a Western that uses extreme close-ups to pull us in. While I may have wished it was a feature film instead, I expect it to be a real contender for a short-film nomination. Almodóvar's last short, The Human Voice, starring Tilda Swinton, surprisingly did not get a nomination, but it does feel like A Strange Way of Life—which is backed by Saint Laurent—is perhaps very close to Almodóvar's heart, and the Academy may pay attention to it as much as the enthusiastic Cannes crowd did. —RF

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