2023 Cannes Film Festival

Tim Grierson: Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel make an appetising combination in Tran Anh Hung’s food-themed Competition entry

Jason Gorber: Absolutely exquisite tale of love through food, the near pronographic seduction showcasing French cuisine as a means of expression. If action can be dialogue, we see meal prep here as salacious and sensual as any embrace.

Guy Lodge: The pace is luxuriantly slow but methodical, akin to slow-cooking a boeuf bourguignon, and quickened by the gradual rewards of process: the calming satisfaction that comes from watching supremely skilled people at work.

Iana Murray: juliette binoche and benoit magimel cooking the most beautiful meals you’ve ever laid your eyes on needs to win the palme i’m so serious

Matt Neglia: I ate up everything THE POT-AU-FEU was serving. A tender romance between two cooks where their love can only be matched by their skills in the kitchen. Had me in the opening 20 minutes where you see a meticulously luscious meal prepared. A comfort food movie with exquisite taste.

Robbie Collin: Tran Anh Hung’s culinary romance is so vividly and lovingly made, you’ll swear you can smell and taste every shot.

John Bleasdale: The Pot au Feu by Trần Anh Hùng was just what I needed. A feast in more senses than one with Benoît Magimel giving another magnificent performance. In a festival of vomit and fear it’s good to have a little love and nosh.

Alexis Roux: The air of nothing, LA PASSION DE DODIN BOUFFANT brilliantly succeeds in capturing the magic of culinary art and the fragile beauty of the feeling of love that its many rituals reveal. Extraordinary Magimel and Binoche.

Matthieu Touvet: It’s anti-Club Zero. A daring but successful bet to base an entire film on the art of French cuisine. The dialogues sometimes border on the grotesque but Binoche and Magimel are doing wonderfully. Not to be seen when hungry.

Charles Bramesco: contains the single most important match cut since those apes threw the bone in the air. Foodliness is next to godliness, and godliness is next to Binocheliness

Fabiana Lima: La Passion by Dodin Bouffant is a romantic period drama in which an initially gastronomic story turns into a novel worthy of Jane Austen. It’s not my type of film, but the direction gets it right in provoking hunger lol – and printing passion. Juliette Binoche shines.

Stephen Miller: This doc/narrative hybrid out of Tunisia was such a lovely experience. Impossible to be objective when I’m watching this family re-enact their lives on screen while they sit across the aisle from me and audibly react: so many emotional layers!

Mark Asch: Cannes loves an Arab film affirming Euro critiques of Islamic misogyny but this re-enactment doc, about two sisters who became Daesh war brides & two sisters left behind, is no HOLY SPIDER—trauma handed down from mom to daughter is a universal subject.

Ali Benzekri: If you want something different, you will be served. It’s hard to see this exercise in style and stay indifferent. However, there is a certain questionable impudence to its messy and invasive approach.

Madeleine Probst: Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters digs deep beyond the headlines of young girls’ radicalisation to reveal the life story of mother Olfa and her four daughters in an almost Brechtian docu-drama that shifts effortlessly between pain, joy and even some hope

Peter Bradshaw: Ben Hania seems to have embarked on this process with an open mind, having no clear idea what light this approach would shed on the case. However, these women have such a presence on screen that their sympathy drives the movie.

Ankit Jhunjhunwala: Bracing, stunning re-enactment of a Tunisian family losing 2 daughters to ISIS radicalization. Extraordinary use of the doc form -gripping, revealing, candid insight from people who were right on the brink. Def earns Comp slot.(3.5/5)

Ilana Oliveira: I left Four Daughters with the feeling that I had committed a crime, because the film makes me an accomplice in the abuse it inflicts on the image and history of this family

Victor Russo: The proposal to reenact real events is not new, but it would even be interesting if the film did not explore so much the pain of people who are already fragile and because in practice the documentary is much more traditional than you think, almost non-existent scenes

Marie Serale: A hybrid documentary, Les Filles d’Olfa shows precious moments, deconstructing a family with the loss of two daughters. The game device proposed by Kaouther Ben Hania reinforces the accuracy of the film, without ever tipping towards a superficial fiction.

Martyn Conterio: Virginie Efira on fire again! She plays a mum trying to get her kid out of foster care. Less social realism more character study of a woman finding her inner rebellion against a system. When she head butts the social worker, the entire room cheered

Stephen Miller: An empathetic film about a woman losing her son to the foster system; filled with rage at bureaucracy, like something Loach would make. A simple story told simply, but Virginia Efira shines in the best UCR performance I’ve seen this year.

Bethany Lola: A film that merits as big of an audience as possible, starring the sensational Virginie Efira! Director and writer Delphine Deloget hasn’t come to play with her first fiction feature film.

Jean-Baptiste Morel: Another Efira movie, Rien à Perdre is less strong than L’Amour Et Les Forêts, the fault of an ambiguity in the writing, which in fact gives the film a more disjointed than intriguing aspect. The ovation to the headbutt to the girl from the children’s aid in Debussy, it bothered me a lot

Victor Russo: The exploration of the pain of a single mother who suffers to take care of her children and loses one of them due to an absurdity of justice. We were restricted to seeing Efira crying, screaming and despairing. Couldn’t be more generic.

Ankit Jhunjhunwala: Tale of older woman sleeping with her underage stepson is deeply engrossing & well made bt doesn’t add to canon of similar films. Todd Haynes’ MAY DECEMBER more provocative with more to say. Starts well, by the end it’s 🤷‍♂️.(3/5)

Stephanie Bunbury: Catherine Breillat certainly hasn’t pulled back from her vocation to dumbfound the bourgeoisie, but it would be a mistake to think of her as merely a cinematic shock jock, going for effect over substance. Outrage is her weapon. In Last Summer, every shot finds its target.

Victor Russo: Addicted to teasing, Breillat creates a soft p*rnô far less subversive than she thinks

Ali Benzekri: Problematic Breillat remakes a recent Danish film because she needed to include all the enablers in her twisted take on child protection. One of the most good looking films this year and that ending.. Chills!

Emilio Diaz: The Catherine Breillat, Last Summer is genuinely tough to watch in a good way? You aren’t at a film festival unless you spend 90 minutes watching a French movie before maybe realising it was supposed to be funny

Peter Bradshaw: Breillat seems to have retreated from the uncompromising approach to sexuality that she showed in famous films like Á Ma Soeur!

Stephen Miller: Clearly made by a gifted filmmaker: the mood, composition, it’s all well crafted. But considering the topic—a forbidden affair between a woman and her stepson—this has surprisingly little to say. Rings as a hollow exercise, with lazy plot mechanics to boot.

Donald Clarke: Look, I know Catherine Breillat’s LAST SUMMER is based on a Danish film. But it still plays like generic sexy stepmom French flick 654A (circa 1978).

Matteu Maestracci: Very mixed feelings about “Last Summer”, Léa Drucker’s performance, often excellent, is breathtaking here. But the story is a bit linear, and this bourgeois setting – often chloroformed and sluggish – does not seem to interest Breillat more than that.

Tim Grierson: : If nothing else, an excellent excuse to hear Sonic Youth’s “Dirty Boots” loud in a theater. And, come to think of it, Lea Drucker would be a great Kim Gordon.

Pascal Gavillet: Great transgressive film on desire and fear, carried by a perfect Léa Drucker. Divisive and not intended to please, the film advances beyond moralism, supported by a sunny setting without fuss.

Matt Neglia: THE OLD OAK is your typical Ken Loach social commentary film about the strength of a community coming together to overcome hardship, loss & tragedy. Tackles the Syrian refugee crisis with good intentions & a pure heart. Two solid, tender performances from Dave Turner & Ebla Mari.

Nikki Fowler: Ken Loach and Paul Laverty’s ‘The Old Oak’ is simply beautiful. You’ll be incredibly moved with this story on family, humanity, friendship, loss and political turmoil right down to the end, with stellar performances by Dave Turner and Ebla Mari, as Syrian refugees appear suddenly in an old mining town in Northeastern England

Luke Hearfield: Once again Ken Loach has left me a blubbering mess 😭 The Old Oak is a powerful and beautiful film about overcoming racial division and embracing solidarity and hope.
There’s also two dignified performances from Dave Turner and Ebla Mari. One of my fav’s of Cannes 2023 for sure.

Devika Girish: Yes, it’s broad & a bit corny, but Ken Loach’s THE OLD OAK is the only Cannes film to make me cry. To see rage, compassion, & hope represented w/such impassioned directness—esp after 2 wks of watching filmmakers do formal backflips to get somewhere vaguely political—is bracing.

Ankit Jhunjhunwala: Tone-deaf, reductive racism drama sets cinema back 80 years. School play level plotting & characterization. At what point do naiveté & good intentions become offensive. Oof. As bad as R.M.N. Please stop with these movies at Cannes. (0/5)

Anaïs Bordages: It’s obvious that there are still people who are moved by Ken Loach’s cinema. Unfortunately I am not one of them because my heart is dead and full of brambles.

Julien Lada: If we must undoubtedly resign ourselves to thinking that Ken Loach has reached the end of his cinema and that his inspiration has dried up, at least there is a little more cinema in The Old Oak than in his previous efforts. It’s not enough, but that’s it.

Alexandre Jowiak: Unsurprisingly, The Old Oak is yet another flat social (television) film in which Ken Loach (with the complicity of Paul Laverty) mixes everything with annoying opportunism in a great demago and simplistic recital ready to do anything to make you shed tears.

Ali Naderzad: THE OLD OAK is Ken Loach’s most somber film in memory (we’re a ways away from THE ANGELS’ SHARE here), a somber film that’s nevertheless rewarding for its justness and its humanity. Enjoyable!

Charles Bosson: THE OLD OAK, a very tired little Ken Loach, who only plays the pathos card and delivers a simplistic vision of the world and a terribly predictable plot. We could have done without this nice Friday sermon…

Victor Russo: In an unstable situation in the second phase of life, locals point to immigrants as responsible. I like how Loach still finds some optimism and hope for unity, not so much in how heavy the hand in manipulation.

Palme d’Or: Anatomy of a Fall by Justine Triet

Grand Prix: The Zone of Interest by Jonathan Glazer

Jury Prize: Fallen Leaves by Aki Kaurismäki

Director: Tran Anh Hung for The Pot-au-Feu

Actor: Kōji Yakusho for Perfect Days

Actress: Merve Dizdar for About Dry Grasses

Screenplay: Yûji Sakamoto for Monster

Camera d’Or for Best Debut Film: Thien An Pham, Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell