The Cannes Film Festival always makes a lot of noise, but this year’s edition was particularly filled with entries for films that are sure to stay in the conversation for months to come. Harrison Ford was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award ahead of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Fate,” and HBO’s pop star series “The Idol” sparked debate. Todd Haynes’ ‘May December’ sparked an erotic thriller starring 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 unveiled brought his massive ensemble to the festival for his colorful meta-fiction ‘Asteroid City’.
With so many high-profile rumors at stake, it can be difficult to measure Cannes’ temperature in real time, but IndieWire’s Eric Kohn and David Ehrlich did their best to make sense of the past few days during a live taping of our Screen Talk podcast from the American Pavilion.
They also touched on the busy Cannes climate and how it ends up affecting the overall experience of the films themselves, then juggled a series of audience questions on topics ranging from director relationships to the sudden impact of artificial intelligence.
During the podcast, Ehrlich previewed his response to “Asteroid City,” and later elaborated on those thoughts in his review:
Like any Wes Anderson film, ‘Asteroid City’ is the epitome of a Wes Anderson film. A film about a TV show about a play within a play “about infinity and I don’t know what else” (as one character describes it), this delightfully deep desert charmer – by far the best director’s effort since ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel,’ and in some ways the most poignant thing I’ve ever done—boasts all of its usual hallmarks and then some. A multi-layered framing device, diorama and Tilda Swinton affectionately saying things like “I’ve never had kids, but sometimes I wonder if I wish I had” are just a few of the many signature flourishes you might recognize from Anderson’s previous work and/or the endless parade of AI-generated TikToks that mimic his style.
Meanwhile, the race for the Palme d’Or was full of possibilities. “It can be all too easy to make assumptions about the jury’s preferences based on your own work,” Kohn wrote in his article on predictions. “At the same time, for this guessing game, the Cannes maniacs need all possible clues.”
Watch the full episode above or listen to it below.
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