- Words Louis Rabinowitz
The Cannes Film Festival has wrapped for another year, and it was a big occasion for the likes of Rubin Östlund, Tom Cruise and Baz Luhrmann.
The Cannes Film Festival returned for its first edition after the pandemic last summer, but it was a consciously scaled-down affair, with the organisers waiting for the truly big return of festivities. That return certainly came about with this year’s festival marking a blockbuster return to Cannes’ usual intensity.
The festival’s top honour, the Palme D’Or, was scooped by Ruben Östlund’s art-world satire, Triangle of Sadness, which beat features such as Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Broker in an intense competition. Östlund’s win marks his second victory in the grand prize, having picked it up for his previous feature, The Square, in 2017.
Plenty of other films lit up the Riviera during the cinematic fortnight. Baz Luhrmann’s glitzy biopic Elvis proved to be a late-game highlight, attracting fierce debate for its predictably maximalist style, while David Cronenberg’s body-horror return in Crimes of the Future received a surprisingly lukewarm reception. Meanwhile, the industry fêted Tom Cruise with a big red carpet premiere for Top Gun: Maverick, a crowning as the champion of the theatrical experience that feels well-earned after that film’s massive opening weekend.
Other big names featuring at the fest included Paul Mescal, who lit up audiences with star turns in both God’s Creatures and Aftersun, and French director Claire Denis, whose latest work, The Stars At Noon, attracted one of the most divided responses of the fest.