“I’m telling you I was in deep, we both were, it was a honeymoon, that whirligig of crashing nuances and dismal reconciliations, vistas of hope redeemed, endless milliseconds free of natural law.”
—Denis Johnson, The Stars at Noon
fter waiting 34 years to return to the Cannes Competition, Claire Denis deserved a warm welcome back. Instead, she got to be the chosen victim of the Brown Bunny Syndrome, the annually recurring compulsion among festival attendees to proclaim a film as the worst ever to compete for the Palme d’Or. Although she received some vindication from the jury, who awarded her the Grand Prix (ex aequo, but still…), the critical vitriol is baffling. may not be top-tier Denis but it’s also far from a trainwreck and, to be sure, this year’s slate wasn’t lacking in more deserving targets. In fact, one, a three-hour snore so incompetently edited, the endless group quarrels between the titular siblings recall the infamous pub scene from (2018).
