Horror and Fantasy: 4 Pieces That Prove Cannes 2023 Loves the Genre Too

Drama reigns at the Cannes Film Festival. It is enough to be sure of this, how well it is represented in the competition. Or how they get rare comedies and see their presence on the Croisette questioning the courage to want to entertain audiences when they once again bring us a breath of fresh air this year from the wonderful explosions. Laughter (yes, you are talking about the book of solutions).

What about after genre cinema? Long dedicated only to the midnight session, he is increasingly putting his foot in the door of various departments, where he regularly invites himself and inspires genuine enthusiasm. For example, the fortunes of The Army of the Dead, Grave and Last Train to Busan began at Cannes, Titan won the Palme d’Or, and four nuggets charmed us this year.

Animal Kingdom (in some ways)

From man to beast is sometimes just a matter of mutation. This is the theme of the Thomas Keel movie, Animal Kingdom. Nine years after Les Combattants, the director signed – along with screenwriter Pauline Meunier – this work at the crossroads of drama and science fiction, in which a strange virus transforms people into animals.

The idea is quirky, ambitious and it shows on screen. This feature film tells the story of a father (Romain Dury) who, accompanied by his son (Paul Kircher), goes in search of his missing wife. Thomas Cale develops a truly cinematic show that focuses as much on the intimate bonds that unite the two characters as it does on the brilliance of the watches.

animal kingdom There is a very big French fantasy film that should surprise more than one when it comes out – expected on October 4th. The special effects work, more practical than digital, is impressive. Undoubtedly, one of the most beautiful surprises of this 76th festival.

Vincent Must Die (Critics’ Week)

This is a completely insane movie that does a lot of good. Vincent Must Die has Kareem Leclerc – Flawless – in the shoes of the unfortunately named Vincent, who overnight becomes the privileged target of the rest of the population. This Mr. Everyman is attacked by people for no reason who try to kill him. He tries to continue his normal life, but when the phenomenon becomes stronger, he must run away and completely change his lifestyle…

And from the very stylized credits, we know that we are going to watch a unique and innovative film. Stéphane Castang’s first feature film, from the world of theater, takes his band – which also includes Vimala Pons, François Chattot and Karoline Rose Sun – on a rhythmic adventure enhanced by an explosive soundtrack that goes beyond the limit.

A film full of references that avoids excess and that allows itself to be guided by its sincerity and madness, Vincent Must Die navigates between paranoid survival, romantic comedy, psychological thriller and humanistic tale to question our relationship with the banality of violence. A nugget to watch and enjoy on the big screen.

Conan (Filmmakers’ Fortnight)

Genres are plural in Bertrand Mandico. Because it’s as cinematic as it is sexual for the man who moved into 2018 with full-length Les Garçons Sauvage, a metaphor for transcendence that shifts colors and sublime black and white. Like Conan, his new opus was featured in the Quinzaine des Cinéastes.

Directed by Robert E. Howard’s fantasy novels have already been adapted into films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. A hero he transforms here into a woman, played by six different actors based on moments in his life, and who tells the story of the underworld dog Rainer, the canine reincarnation of German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

A queer epic that takes into account the artificiality of its settings and recalls Bertrand Mandico’s taste for liquids, love and death (which still go together just as well, even with less nudity than in the past), Conan may be his most refined opus. Focused less on metaphor than on cinematic references and political messages, in a story that talks about the murder of youth or a character called Europe, as well as pointing the finger at the barbarism of our society.

A real alien, presented to the audience devoted to the director’s work, and whose eyes often sparkled like sequins that regularly cross the screen.

Sleep (Critics’ Week)

“The most unique and clever first film I’ve seen in ten years.” These words do not belong to the author of these lines, but to Bong Joon-ho. Not a fellow, but a Weber and an Oscar-winning director thanks to Parasite, who is now helping one of his bees go off the deep end. Because Jason Yu, the director of sleep, is none other than his former assistant.

So who signs his first feature film with this story of a young couple whose lives are turned upside down when the husband becomes a sleepwalker and turns into a different person at nightfall. Fearing for their new baby, his wife can’t sleep. Finding a film like this at a festival where the nights are short isn’t without its salt, but it knows how to wake us up with a big build-up of tension (and a bit of jumpiness).

If we can see a bit of humor in the first minutes, when sleepwalking leads to pleasant comic situations, sleep remains serious most of the time. And the shocking scene shows that we can expect everything, in the second part, which is more effective than the first, where it is difficult to see what direction the story will take.

You have to be patient at first, but then the pace picks up, with some particularly successful shots, and the script and the story of the sleeper can be interpreted in different ways, according to everyone’s sensibilities. Jason Yoo may not be the new Bong Joon-ho yet, but the promise is there. And one of Kahn’s sleep sessions was clearly particularly memorable.

The feature film does not yet have a release date in France.