Ethan Coen has earned the right to do what­ev­er the hell he wants when it comes to mak­ing art. Whether that trans­lates to what­ev­er the hell WE, the audi­ence, want is anoth­er mat­ter entire­ly, as this new one, co-cre­at­ed with part­ner and long-time edi­tor Tri­cia Cooke, is the blithe­ly incon­se­quen­tial mid­dle chap­ter of a pro­posed tril­o­gy that was kicked off in 2024 with the glibly amus­ing les­bian exploita­tion caper, Dri­ve-Away Dolls (née Dri­ve-Away Dykes).

Hon­ey Don’t! reteams with Dolls star Mar­garet Qual­ley who stars as pow­er-suit­ed pri­vate shamus Hon­ey O’Donahue. She’s inves­ti­gat­ing the strange death of a female parish­ioner from a local super­church run by Chris Evans’ kinky priest Dean. Mean­while, she strikes up a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship with Aubrey Plaza’s low-rank base­ment cop, MG, as the result of some non­cha­lant and covert fin­ger-bang­ing right in the mid­dle of a busy police drink­ing den.

There’s some neat hard­boiled pat­ter and a smat­ter­ing of humour that is nev­er quite able to elic­it more than a know­ing tit­ter. There’s also the nag­ging sense that Qual­ley is too youth­ful to be play­ing this world-weary detec­tive who claims to have seen all the angles before and is repulsed by the trans­gres­sions of absolute­ly no-one. The flip­pant tone also makes it very hard to take any of the more earnest­ly emo­tion­al rela­tion­ships seri­ous­ly, such as that between Honey’s way­ward emo niece who becomes embroiled in this seamy underworld.

The over­rid­ing feel­ing you glean from Hon­ey Don’t is that it’s an exam­ple of two for­mi­da­ble film­mak­ers work­ing in a reg­is­ter that almost punk­ish­ly rejects the intri­ca­cy and breath­tak­ing for­mal panache of their past work. From some­one with The Big Lebows­ki and Miller’s Cross­ing on their CV, this cheeky noir runaround is sad­ly miss­ing a few lay­ers of intrigue and almost any sat­is­fy­ing pay off, opt­ing for more of an eye-rolling, Colum­bo-esque reveal than any­thing with any last­ing impact. And a sex-pos­i­tive stance and a sur­feit of sass can only get you so far in this game.

Coen and Cooke already have the ear­ly pieces in place for the final chap­ter in their lil off-the-cuff tril­o­gy, so there’s still time for them to real­ly pull some­thing out of the bag.

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Death seems to be an omni­scient spec­tre and peren­ni­al fas­ci­na­tion for promis­ing film­mak­er Chie Hayakawa. In her debut Plan 75, Japan’s elder­ly are encour­aged to sign up for a euthani­sa­tion pro­gramme in an attempt to curb the country’s aging pop­u­la­tion. Dying is sold and com­mod­i­fied, and is as nor­malised as gro­ceries. Though not remote­ly as dystopi­an, there’s a through­line to Hayakawa’s fol­low-up in its rela­tion­ship with mor­tal­i­ty: that death has become so embed­ded in every­day life that it’s almost unremarkable.

For 11-year-old Fuki (Yui Suzu­ki), she’s lack­ing the road map for grief when time is run­ning out for her ter­mi­nal­ly ill father (a lit­tle-seen but always dev­as­tat­ing Lily Franky). Her moth­er (Hikari Ishi­da) is so occu­pied with her busy career dur­ing 1980s Japan’s eco­nom­ic boom that she approach­es funer­al arrange­ments with the casu­al­ness of a busi­ness call. In one qui­et­ly dev­as­tat­ing scene, Fuki’s father turns on the light of a clos­et to see mourn­ing clothes hang­ing by the door­way. It’s as if his fam­i­ly is already so pre­pared for his immi­nent pass­ing that he’s already gone.

Cru­cial­ly, Renoir is framed through Fuki’s per­spec­tive, car­ried by the rev­e­la­to­ry new­com­er Suzu­ki. Grief is a dif­fi­cult feel­ing to process, espe­cial­ly for a young child, and with­out any­one to lean on, she retreats to her own fan­tasies. Dreams col­lide with real­i­ty so fre­quent­ly that it’s hard to parse what’s real in Fuki’s world – and Hayakawa’s restrained mode of film­mak­ing doesn’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the two either. Inspired by a magi­cian on TV, Fuki even begins test­ing her abil­i­ties in telepa­thy and hyp­no­tism: per­haps mag­ic can make sense of her situation.

Fuki’s own feel­ings about death seem almost apa­thet­ic – her teacher alerts her moth­er that she’s writ­ten an essay titled ​“I Want to be an Orphan” – but even then, she doesn’t want to expe­ri­ence it alone. Left to her own devices almost every­day, Fuki search­es for con­nec­tion in ways that swing from inno­cent to dan­ger­ous. She looks to class­mates, neigh­bours, and art from the tit­u­lar French impres­sion­ist. Lat­er, she strikes up a con­ver­sa­tion with a groomer over a dat­ing phone line. Hayakawa treats it all with such a del­i­cate hand that it can verge on becom­ing too light a touch. The film’s heavy ideas can feel like they’re not being giv­en the weight they need, always keep­ing the emo­tion at a distance.

Still, few films have depict­ed com­ing of age quite like this. The first pro­mo­tion­al stills released in the lead-up to Cannes are a clever mis­di­rect: one fea­tures Fuki smil­ing and danc­ing against a clear blue sky, and you’d be for­giv­en for believ­ing you’re in for a sweet jour­ney of self dis­cov­ery. Renoir does retain that sum­mery bright colour palette, cre­at­ing a star­tling con­trast to the core dark­ness that per­me­ates Fuki’s iso­la­tion. It’s a strange and often­times bru­tal por­trait of a sin­gu­lar­ly curi­ous child, left to wres­tle with grief in her imag­i­na­tion when real life can’t pro­vide the answers.

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When we first meet the tiny mop­pet Adam (Jules Del­sart) he is lying in a hos­pi­tal bed with a feed­ing tube down his nose. At his side is his moth­er Rebec­ca (Ana­maria Var­tolomei) and head nurse Lucy (Léa Druck­er) who both have the boy’s best inter­ests at heart – right? The hos­pi­tal staff aren’t so sure. Despite Rebecca’s insis­tence that Adam has some sort of stom­ach con­di­tion that makes a reg­u­lar diet unfea­si­ble, Adam is mal­nour­ished with brit­tle bones. Rebec­ca won’t feed him a prop­er diet; if Rebec­ca isn’t present, Adam won’t eat at all. Lucy finds her­self in an impos­si­ble posi­tion, try­ing to act with­in the best inter­ests of her young patient while the hos­pi­tal staff breathe down her neck and the sin­gle moth­er becomes increas­ing­ly desperate.

The stark real­ism Wan­del demon­strat­ed in her har­row­ing debut Play­ground is on show again, with plen­ty of hand­held cam­eras track­ing Lucy as she buzzes around the cor­ri­dors of the hos­pi­tal, treat­ing not only Adam but her oth­er young patients, many of whom are in equal­ly per­ilous sit­u­a­tions. Fans of HBO Max’s 2025 med­ical dra­ma The Pitt might recog­nise the real-time anx­i­ety of Lucy’s shift, as she tries to pro­vide care under incred­i­ble bureau­crat­ic pres­sure and stretched resources with­in the health­care sys­tem. Léa Druck­er, a Cannes main­stay and depend­ably great screen pres­ence, brings a sense of poise and com­pe­tence to her role, even giv­en the dire cir­cum­stances, while Hap­pen­ing break­out Ana­maria Var­tolomei is sym­pa­thet­ic as the moth­er kick­ing against a restric­tive system.

Wan­del avoids easy answers – Adam’s Sake is decid­ed­ly with­hold­ing of the facts, nev­er quite reveal­ing if Rebec­ca is act­ing in her son’s best inter­ests or suf­fer­ing from a psy­cho­log­i­cal con­di­tion her­self. This is a strength, as it demon­strates the nuance of her sit­u­a­tion and indeed many real life cas­es for young at-risk chil­dren where there is no straight­for­ward hero or vil­lain. Yet its tight 76-minute run­time does leave us a lit­tle in the lurch – there’s a sense that some vital piece of the puz­zle here is miss­ing, while Rebecca’s fraught rela­tion­ship with her ex (Adam’s father) veers a lit­tle towards cul­tur­al clichés about absent fathers.

Yet there’s no ques­tion­ing Wandel’s can­dor, or her inter­est in approach­ing dif­fi­cult sub­jects with­out danc­ing around them. As in Play­ground, she cap­tures a remark­able per­for­mance from her young lead (here Jules Del­sart) while speak­ing truth to pow­er about the fun­da­men­tal fail­ings with­in the sys­tems designed to pro­tect the most vulnerable.