COMPETITION

The audacious latest from Ryusuke Hamaguchi, the Oscar-winning director of Drive My Car, is set primarily in a Paris elder-care facility run by a woman (Virginie Efira) whose progressive treatment approach clashes with the realities of chronic understaffing and bottom-line-driven management. Audiences with the patience to get through a leisurely paced and very talky first hour will be richly rewarded by a moving and at times transcendently beautiful affirmation of the basic human rights of respect and dignity. — DAVID ROONEY

UN CERTAIN REGARD

Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo’s debut feature, the first from a Rwandan director to screen in Cannes’ official selection, is a searing and intimate portrait of a nation’s reckoning. At the center of a cast of mostly non-pro actors, Clémentine U. Nyirinkindi plays a woman confronting the man accused of murdering her siblings and other relatives — though it’s through the character’s complex, often tense relationships with her daughter, sister and mother that this simultaneously emblematic and achingly specific story comes to life. — SHERI LINDEN

COMPETITION

A triptych gay epic that spans decades and tangles with a particularly grim time in modern Spanish history, this film from Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo delivers the heady satisfaction of seeing something ambitious land its nervy attempt. With three thematically converging plotlines — and tiny but juicy roles for Glenn Close and Penélope Cruz — the movie earns its high drama by fully immersing us in its world and its ideas, grabbing us with its paean to those who have lived fully in even the most dire war-torn circumstances. — RICHARD LAWSON

DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT

Arie and Chuko Esiri’s sharp, stirring film transposes Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway from 1920s London to present-day Lagos. The titular protagonist is played with terrific restraint by Sophie Okonedo, while Fortune Nwafor is a revelation as the haunted soldier Septimus. Just as the novel sought to reveal how Britain abandoned veterans, this dreamy and compelling interpretation gestures at the collateral damage of Nigeria’s military. Ayo Edebiri and David Oyelowo are among the fine supporting cast. — LOVIA GYARKYE

UN CERTAIN REGARD

This winsome and clever debut feature from the divisive Jordan Firstman trades the queer provocation of his past work for a cozy fable about a drug-happy New York party promoter (played by Firstman) who learns he has a 10-year-old son. Though the movie contains some Hollywood airbrushing and convenient exculpatory psychology, it’s a confident, exciting directorial bow — stylish in an unobtrusive way, agreeably paced, with a disarming ensemble orbiting around Firstman’s charming lead turn. — R.L.

DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT

Prolific Romanian auteur Radu Jude’s first French-language feature is a caustic modern-day take on the turn-of-the-19th century book by Octave Mirbeau. Transforming the tale of an exploited maid into one of a Romanian immigrant working as a nanny for two passive-aggressive French intellectuals, Jude lambasts the current social order, making room for digressions on communism, Maoism and Nicolae Ceausescu. But he also fills his film with a sense of longing — of being far from loved ones in a country that’s not always welcoming. — JORDAN MINTZER

COMPETITION

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika (the stellar Sandra Hüller) go on an unsentimental journey in 1949 through West and East Germany in Pawel Pawlikowski’s damn-near perfect period road movie. Exactingly restrained yet exquisitely layered, it forms a loose triptych with Pawlikowski’s last two features, Ida and Cold War, both set at least partly behind the Iron Curtain. This is a masterful exploration of family, history and angst. — LESLIE FELPERIN

COMPETITION

Romanian New Waver Cristian Mungiu (winner of the 2007 Palme d’Or for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) brings his needling focus and unvarnished realism to a knotty drama in which a suspicion of child abuse in a Norwegian village escalates into a full inquisition. Starring Renate Reinsve and an unrecognizable Sebastian Stan as the couple at the center of the storm, the film is a nuanced reflection on otherness and how anyone failing to conform to the values of a community invites distrust. — D.R.

COMPETITION

Korean action maestro Na Hong-jin’s rip-roaring sci-fi creature feature — about rural villagers fending off a violent invasion — is a superbly sustained pedal-to-the-metal experience that’s almost dizzying in its bravura. It’s a long sit at two hours and 40 minutes, but one that never allows your attention to wander, pausing for breathing space only intermittently and lacing those brief spells of downtime with invigorating shots of off-kilter humor. Even with messy CG touches, this is a crazy good time. — D.R.

CRITICS’ WEEK

Phuong Mai Nguyen’s animated adaptation of a graphic novel by AJ Dungo is distinguished by elegant hand-drawn simplicity and a strong emotional throughline. The love story — spirited and wrenching — begins with the meet-cute in a Los Angeles high school of introverted skateboarder AJ and gutsy surfer Kristen. They’re brought to life by the superb voice turns of Will Sharpe and Stephanie Hsu in a chronicle of two young people weathering some of life’s harshest storms. — S.L.

UN CERTAIN REGARD

The first feature from Louis Clichy, who worked on Pixar hits Wall-E and Up, is a graceful and moving coming-of-age cartoon that follows an 11-year-old boy whose life in rural France gets tougher when he has to wear a back brace. Contrasting hard-knock rustic realism with poetic flights of fancy, Clichy captures the anxieties of a working-class household, but also those eureka moments you have as a kid when your world is suddenly opened up by beauty. — J.M.

CRITICS’ WEEK

For her stunning feature debut, cinematographer turned director Marine Atlan tackles the coming-of-age genre in the most French way possible, delivering a rich, sprawling chronicle of teenage angst that starts off as a laid-back class trip to Italy and gradually turns into a devastating tale of loss. Featuring an impressive cast of unknowns and a fluid style that captures them with both lyricism and verisimilitude, this winner of the Cannes Critics’ Week Grand Prize announces the arrival of a formidable new talent. — J.M.

COMPETITION

Rami Malek does career-best work as an unapologetically narcissistic performance artist with AIDS in Ira Sachs’ achingly observed portrait of art, love, desire and mortality in 1980s New York City. Following Passages and last year’s Peter Hujar’s Day, it’s the filmmaker’s third consecutive feature digging into the complex inner life of gay men, reaffirming his position among the preeminent movie chroniclers of queer experience. Tom Sturridge, Rebecca Hall, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and newcomer Luther Ford co-star in this elegy defiantly tethered to life. — D.R.

COMPETITION

This rivetingly hard-to-categorize French epic is about a Nazi collaborator — an author and engineer working for the fascist Vichy regime, played by Anatomy of a Fall‘s Swann Arlaud — who happens to be the great-grandfather of the film’s writer-director, Emmanuel Marre. Fresh and off-the-cuff, it’s a period piece that feels utterly contemporary, as if someone traveled back to 1940 with an iPhone and hit record. Chronicles of far-right obedience and moral decadence don’t get much more scathing than this. — J.M.

COMPETITION

Andrey Zvyagintsev (The Return, Loveless) returns with his first film made entirely outside of Russia, a loose remake of Claude Chabrol’s The Unfaithful Wife. This rigorously well-made, grippy-as-a-live-squid, anguish-steeped work is both a masterful crime thriller and the filmmaker’s most openly critical commentary on the motherland’s current political, spiritual and moral malaise — a denunciation never said in so many words but expressed with intricate layers of irony. — L.F.

COMPETITION

James Gray follows Armageddon Time with a semi-fictionalized return to his family life during mid-1980s Queens, New York, this time recounting a terrifying brush with the Russian mob. It’s a riveting crime thriller, a domestic drama of almost overwhelming power, and a piercing account of the American dream in tatters, with Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller in blazing form. While obvious antecedents might be Coppola or Lumet or Scorsese or Mann, I kept thinking while watching of the early crime films of Akira Kurosawa. — D.R.

SPECIAL SCREENINGS

Iranian actress turned director Pegah Ahangarani uses archive footage and home movies to craft a powerful autobiographical account of the political turmoil that has wracked her homeland from 1979 until now. It’s a gripping first-person cautionary tale about speaking up in a place where rebellion can cost you your life, and a despairing portrait of a family that lost several loved ones to a regime they initially supported only to find their affinities betrayed by despotism. — J.M.

UN CERTAIN REGARD

A droll, peppery Hannah Einbinder stars as an up-and-coming filmmaker on a blood-spattered journey of self-discovery involving a mostly forgotten actress (Gillian Anderson, having a lark) in the latest from Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow). Employing a fictional slasher movie of yesteryear as the portal into a conversation about self and desire, this is heady, strange stuff, frustrating at times but captivating in both its confusion and its honesty. — R.L.

DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT

Set in the lush forests and fields of northeastern France, this excitingly offbeat first feature from Sarah Arnold depicts a gory factional war between hunters and farmers, haves and have-nots, with one depressed fish-out-of-water gendarme caught in the middle. Finding clever new ways to tell a familiar story of crooked cops and small-town corruption, the movie calls to mind both the deadpan thrillers of the Coen brothers and the downbeat ’70s crime flicks of French helmer Alain Corneau. — J.M.

COMPETITION

A spellbinding body-swap puzzler led by a typically fearless performance from Léa Seydoux, this third feature from Oscar-winning Anatomy of a Fall co-writer Arthur Harari fuses existential horror with naturalistic drama. There’s a surface kinship here with films like It Follows and especially Under the Skin, in which post-coital afterglow sours fast. But this is a sui generis freakout, as mesmerizingly unsettling as it is elusive. I can’t wait to see it again and keep sifting through its mysteries. — D.R.

A version of this story appeared in the May 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

You don’t have to have seen the 2018 French film on which it’s based to predict exactly where Ladies First is going every step of the way. This comic tale of an arrogant, sexist male executive who gets his comeuppance when he hits his head and wakes up to find himself in a world dominated by women hits every satirical note you’d expect but provides more knowing chuckles than genuine laughs. An almost ridiculously overqualified cast of notable British thespians does their best to elevate the material of this Netflix comedy directed by Thea Sharrock (Wicked Little Letters, Me Before You), but it’s heavy lifting.

Sacha Baron Cohen, unusually not relying on changing his vocal and physical attributes for comic effect, plays Damien, an advertising company executive who revels in his misogynistic attitudes and playboy lifestyle. He’s looking forward to an upcoming promotion at the hands of his boss (Charles Dance), swaggering through the office to the strains of “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” (one of far too many on-the-nose soundtrack selections).

Most egregiously, he treats fellow executive Alex (Rosamund Pike) horribly condescendingly during company meetings strategizing over an ad campaign for their latest client, Guinness. He treats her so badly, in fact, that she quits. But during their subsequent angry encounter out on the street, Damien runs smack into a pole and knocks himself out.

It’s not hard to guess what happens next, as he wakes up in a topsy-turvy world where the agency’s receptionist (Fiona Shaw) is now the CEO and the cleaning woman (Kathryn Hunter) a top executive. Alex is very much in charge, and the men at the agency, including Damien and his former boss, are treated derisively, the sexism very much in reverse.

Things are equally akilter in his family’s home, with his mother now sitting on the couch watching TV while his father slaves away in the kitchen. And his accomplished dentist sister (Emily Mortimer) amuses herself greatly with fart jokes.

Damien attempts to get things back to normal by slamming his head again, to no avail. So now, fueled by advice from an eccentric street person (Richard E. Grant) who has multiple pigeons perched on his head, he attempts to rise up the corporate ranks again using masculine wiles. It’s not easy, since when he attempts to make suggestions at a corporate strategy mission, he’s told such things as “You need to relax” and “Don’t get too emotional.” 

Screenwriters Natalie Krinsky, Cinco Paul and Katie Silberman clearly seem to have enjoyed reversing every sexist stereotype they could think of with such gags as female construction workers ogling Damien on the street; his attempting to become “fuckable” for career advancement through such things as a “testicle bra” and body waxing (cue The 40-Year-Old Virgin-style screams of pain); and, of course, ordering a plain salad for dinner instead of steak.

And when Damien and Alex do wind up in bed together even though she’s now his boss, they engage in a wrestling match over which one of them will be on top.

It’s mildly amusing but all so obvious, including the sexual reversals evident on such book titles as “Harriet Potter” and “Donna Quixote” and retail outlets like “Burger Queen” and “Victor’s Secret.” Not to mention the female Pope Beatrice.

The film moves swiftly enough, with the gags coming at such a consistent pace, that inevitably some of them land. And the performers certainly know how to sell the material, with Cohen amusingly leaning into his character’s humiliations, Pike appealingly reveling in her character’s dominance, and the top-notch supporting cast going through their paces like the pros they are.

But long before Alex inverts the stereotypical male/female dynamic by showing no interest in a relationship after she and Damien have their one-night stand, you realize that despite its high concept, Ladies First is hopelessly old-fashioned in its satirical conceit. No points for guessing that Damien will have seen the past error of his ways by the film’s conclusion.

The roar erupting from the capacity audience inside the Ed Sullivan Theater when Stephen Colbert stepped on the stage of his “Late Show” for the last time made it clear that they did not want him to say goodbye.

Colbert took his final bow as his beloved late-night show came to an end Thursday. The episode was so crammed with top celebrities who showed up to share a last moment with the comedian that it extended nearly 30 minutes beyond its usual one-hour run time.

Before the official start, Colbert addressed the audience as he thanked the staff, calling the show “The Joy Machine”: “We call it the Joy Machine because to do this many shows, it has to be a machine. But the thing is, if you choose to do it with joy, it doesn’t hurt as much when your fingers get caught in the gears, and I cannot adequately explain to you what the people who work here have done for each other, and how much we mean to each other.”

In his opening monologue, Colbert downplayed the event‘s status, rolling a series of jokes about news stories in New York and New Jersey. But he was repeatedly interrupted by audience members Bryan Cranston, Paul Rudd, Tim Meadows and Ryan Reynolds, who all became irritated — except for Tig Notaro — when Colbert informed each of them that they would not be his last guest.

When the show’s supposed scheduled last guest, Pope Leo XIV, refused to leave his dressing room, Paul McCartney popped on stage to a rapturous ovation. The legendary musician presented Colbert with a framed photo of the Beatles when they appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964.

One of the few subtle references to President Trump came when McCartney relayed a story how the Beatles, before their Sullivan appearance, got their faces covered with bright orange makeup. “That’s pretty popular in certain circles these days,” Colbert quipped.

Later in the show, a pre-taped segment that revolved around a wormhole that was threatening to consume Colbert featured several celebrities, including “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Elijah Wood and fellow late-night hosts Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers and John Oliver. The show ended with “The Late Show” band, led by Louis Cato, who accompanied Colbert, Elvis Costello and former “Late Show” band leader Jon Batiste in singing with McCartney on the Beatles’ “Hello, Goodbye.”

The final scene after almost 90 minutes featured Colbert and McCartney going to the light box of the theater and pulling the lever to “off.” The theater vanished into the green wormhole, disintegrating into a snow globe with the theater inside.

The episode marked the finale of Colbert’s 11-year run on CBS’ late-night show, which he has been counting down since July of last year, when CBS said it was canceling the show because of financial difficulties. “The Late Show” franchise, which Colbert inherited in 2015 from David Letterman, was the top-ranked late-night show, but it faced challenges due to dramatic declines in viewership and a drop in advertising revenue.

However, industry observers also contended the move was tied to Colbert’s relentless criticism of Trump. The decision was announced after Paramount, the parent company of CBS, had settled a lawsuit filed by Trump over a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. The company agreed to pay $16 million to settle the suit, which came as Paramount was attempting to get regulatory approval for its merger with Skydance Media, which Colbert called “a big fat bribe.” Trump made no secret of his disdain for Colbert and other late-night hosts who have skewered him and his administration over the years.

Colbert, his guests and others continued to blast Trump in this final week. In his introduction Wednesday of his performance of “Streets of Minneapolis,” Bruce Springsteen said: “I’m here in support tonight for Stephen, because you’re the first guy in America who has lost his show because we got a president who can’t take a joke.”

Colbert, left, was visited by fellow late-night hosts John Oliver, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon in a segment on Thursday’s show.

(Scott Kowalchyk/CBS)

And Kimmel on his ABC late-night series “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” said Wednesday, “I will be watching tomorrow night. I hope that those of you who watch will also tune in to CBS for the last time. Don’t ever watch it again.”

In a tribute to Colbert, Kimmel, another target of Trump, and Fallon said their respective shows would not air new episodes during Colbert’s finale.

But the overall vibe on “The Late Show” this week has centered on celebration and spotlighting the show’s comedic formula. Several celebrities who have a special connection with the show made appearances, including Stewart and filmmaker Steven Spielberg.

In one of the more arguably iconic sequences, David Byrne and his band — all attired in bright blue uniforms — appeared Tuesday to perform the Talking Heads anthem “Burning Down the House.” Colbert joined in at the end, dancing in his matching blue outfit.

The “Late Show” time slot will be occupied starting Friday by Byron Allen and his “Comics Unleashed” syndicated show. CBS executives have said they hope to develop a new original late-night series in the future.