After reading about these California beaches, can you blame me for thinking about the south of France right about now? And, you know, the movies at Cannes this year were pretty good too. In fact, we might have another best picture Oscar winner from the festival.
I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter, which is back in your inbox after a springtime sabbatical. Today, I’m looking at the news out of the Cannes Film Festival, wondering if Neon’s publicity team will be getting any rest this coming awards season.
The Cannes-to-Oscars pipeline is flowing
Last year’s Cannes Film Festival gave us a Demi Moore comeback (“The Substance”), an overstuffed, ambitious movie musical that everyone loved until they didn’t (“Emilia Pérez”) and a freewheeling Cinderella story that became the actual Cinderella story of the 2024-25 awards season (“Anora”).
Sean Baker’s “Anora” became just the fourth film to take the festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or, and then go on to win the Oscar for best picture. But it had been only five years since Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” pulled off that feat, so this would seem to be the direction that the academy is going. As the major Hollywood studios have doubled down on IP, indies like A24 and Neon have stepped up, delivering original, daring films that win the hearts of critics, awards voters and, sometimes, moviegoers.
Neon brought “Anora” to Cannes last year, confident that it would make an ideal launching pad. This year, the studio bought films at the festival — among them the taut, tart revenge thriller “It Was Just an Accident,” from dissident Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, and the anarchic political thriller “The Secret Agent” from Brazil’s Kleber Mendonça Filho.
Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi holds the Palme d’Or after winning the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize for “It Was Just an Accident.”
(Sameer Al-Doumy / AFP/Getty Images)
“It Was Just an Accident” won the Palme, making it the sixth consecutive time Neon has won the award. Despite being one of the world’s most celebrated and influential filmmakers for movies like “No Bears” and “The White Balloon,” Panahi has never received any recognition at the Oscars. That will change this coming year.
Another movie that might deliver the goods is a title Neon announced at Cannes last year, “Sentimental Value,” an intense family drama that earned a 15-minute standing ovation.
Or was it 17? Or 19? The audience at the Grand Théâtre Lumière might still be standing and applauding; who knows with these Cannes festivalgoers. I’d be long gone, heading to the nearest wine bar. The point is: People love this movie. It won the Grand Prix, Cannes’ second-highest honor.
“Sentimental Value” is a dysfunctional family dramedy focusing on the relationship between a flawed father (the great Stellan Skarsgård) and his actor daughter (Renate Reinsve, extraordinary), two people who are better at their jobs than they are at grappling with their emotions. They’re both sad and lonely, and the film circles a reconciliation, one that’s only possible through their artistic endeavors.
Norwegian director Joachim Trier directed and co-wrote “Sentimental Value,” and it’s his third collaboration with Reinsve, following her debut in the 2011 historical drama “Oslo, August 31st” and the brilliant “The Worst Person in the World,” for which she won Cannes’ best actress prize in 2021. Reinsve somehow failed to make the cut at the Oscars that year, an oversight that will likely be corrected several months from now.
Jennifer Lawrence in Lynne Ramsay’s “Die, My Love.”
(Festival de Cannes)
But it’s not just about the prix
Reinsve could well be joined in the category by a past Oscar winner, Jennifer Lawrence, who elicited rave reviews for her turn as a new mother coping with a raft of feelings after giving birth in Lynne Ramsay’s Cannes competition title “Die, My Love.” Critics have mostly been kind to the film, which Mubi bought at the festival for $24 million.
Just don’t label it a postpartum-depression drama, for which Ramsay pointedly chastised reviewers.
“This whole postpartum thing is just bull—,” she told film critic Elvis Mitchell. “It’s not about that. It’s about a relationship breaking down, it’s about love breaking down, and sex breaking down after having a baby. And it’s also about a creative block.”
However you want to read it, “Die, My Love” looks like a comeback for Lawrence, last seen onscreen two years ago, showing her comic chops in the sweetly raunchy “No Hard Feelings.” Lawrence won the lead actress Oscar for the 2012 film “Silver Linings Playbook” and has been nominated three other times — for “Winter’s Bone,” “American Hustle” and “Joy.”
With Ramsay’s movie, which co-stars Robert Pattinson as her husband, Lawrence may well have printed her return ticket to the ceremony, which would be welcome. The Oscars are always more fun when she’s in the room.