Festival Round-up - Best Of The Fest

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL - The seven must-see films from this year’s prestigious world cinema showcase…

- Jordan Farley

Once the first and last word in film festivals, Cannes has lost ground in recent years to Venice and TIFF – both better placed to launch major awards-season fare in the autumn – while continued friction with Netflix has cost Cannes some big hitters. But this year’s festival de cinéma proved Cannes is in no danger of losing its crown, as the Croisette played host to a sublime selection of features from around the world.

THE LIGHTHOUSE

Robert Eggers’ follow-up to The Witch didn’t play in competition but was, by a stretch, the best film at this year’s Cannes. An oppressively nightmarish two-hander starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe as a pair of lighthouse keepers who lose the plot after a devastating storm strands them on their temporary island home, it does for lighthouses what The Shining did for five-star hotels. Shot in exquisite, full-frame monochrome – an antiquated aspect ratio that adds to both the squirming claustrophobia and period aesthetics – with a custom orthochromatic filter bringing every pore, blemish and twitch of insanity on the faces of Pattinson and Dafoe to the fore, it’s powered by poetic, period-authentic dialogue that the pair roll around their mouths like chewing tobacco. The gliding camerawork and painterly compositions are full of ominous portent in the first half but, as the storm intensifies, Eggers ratchets up the film’s ferocity like Darren Aronofsky at the height of his powers. As a portrait of total isolation in the harshest of environments, it’s difficult to imagine it being done much better. Peerless filmmaking from a director who’s emerging as one of contemporary horror’s true greats.

A) ATLANTIQUE