We first meet Elio Solis (Yonas Kibreab) curled up beneath a booth table of a din­er inside a muse­um. He’s a bit younger than he will be for most of the film, painful­ly shy and still reel­ing from the recent loss of his par­ents. His Aunt Olga (Zoe Sal­daña), recent­ly and unex­pect­ed­ly appoint­ed as his guardian, is strug­gling to adjust to her new role. While she’s momen­tar­i­ly dis­tract­ed by a col­league, Elio slips away and stum­bles into an immer­sive exhi­bi­tion on the vast­ness of space – an oth­er­world­ly encounter that will alter the course of his life forever.

What fol­lows is a deep obses­sion with the exis­tence of alien life. Though Elio is no longer shy per se, he remains social­ly awk­ward and has dif­fi­cul­ty form­ing friend­ships, not nec­es­sar­i­ly because his peers dis­like him, but because he unin­ten­tion­al­ly dis­tances him­self from them. He har­bors the belief that one day aliens will abduct him, but he’s reluc­tant to share. Sev­er­al rea­sons under­lie Elio’s intense long­ing to leave Earth: a desire to escape the painful mem­o­ries of being orphaned; a hope to encounter beings who defy con­ven­tion­al norms, and a yearn­ing to dis­cov­er a life beyond the ordi­nary lim­i­ta­tions of Earth.

After get­ting into a fight, Elio is picked up by his Aunt Olga and reluc­tant­ly brought along to the mil­i­tary base where she works. Curi­ous and defi­ant, he fol­lows her into a restrict­ed meet­ing, only to dis­cov­er that aliens have sent a mes­sage to Earth. Hid­ing in a near­by rub­bish bin until the room clears out, Elio seizes the moment. In a burst of des­per­a­tion and hope, he records a mes­sage of his own, plead­ing to the life forms on the oth­er end and shar­ing his dream of one day join­ing their world.

Not only do the extrater­res­tri­als receive Elio’s mes­sage, but they also respond. Ful­fill­ing his wildest dreams, they abduct him and bring him to the Com­mu­ni­verse, a vast inter­plan­e­tary alliance home to count­less intel­li­gent species. But here’s the catch: because Elio was the one to answer their sig­nal, they mis­tak­en­ly believe he is the ruler of Earth. Eager to impress the coun­cil of ambas­sadors who gov­ern the Com­mu­ni­verse, Elio assumes the role and does his best to live up to the title. When Lord Grigon (Brad Gar­rett), a war­lord of the plan­et Hylurg, threat­ens the very exis­tence of the Com­mu­ni­verse and no one else dares to nego­ti­ate, Elio ris­es to the chal­lenge, deter­mined to pro­tect the one place he final­ly hopes to call home.

It’s no sur­prise that as a lit­er­al child, Elio would fum­ble the nego­ti­a­tions, only man­ag­ing to fur­ther enrage Lord Grigon. While secret­ly plot­ting his escape, he encoun­ters Glo­r­don (Remy Edger­ly), the silk-worm-like prince of Hylurg and Grigon’s son. Adorable, naïve, and impos­si­bly sweet, Glo­r­don is the polar oppo­site of his father. He agrees to return to the Com­mu­ni­verse, ini­tial­ly as a pawn in the larg­er diplo­mat­ic game that Elio refus­es to back down from, but what unfolds instead is a heart­warm­ing friend­ship between two young out­siders who, for the first time, begin to feel at home, by each other’s side.

There are moments when the film feels slight­ly clunky, as if cer­tain sto­ry ele­ments either need­ed more time to devel­op or should have been sim­pli­fied. This is most evi­dent in the mid­dle act, where the con­cept of the Com­mu­ni­verse, while imag­i­na­tive, begins to feel over­com­pli­cat­ed. The same applies to its visu­al design – some­times less tru­ly is more. The abun­dance of col­ors and shapes, though ambi­tious, ends up blend­ing into a styl­is­tic blur. That said, the ani­ma­tion remains as tech­ni­cal­ly impres­sive as audi­ences have come to expect from Pixar.

The first act of the film is excep­tion­al and joy­ous to watch. Just as com­pelling is any­thing involv­ing the friend­ship between Elio and Glo­r­don, which ulti­mate­ly becomes the emo­tion­al core of the sto­ry. What tru­ly makes the film spe­cial is the remark­able voice work from young actors Yonas Kibreab and Remy Edger­ly, who bring their char­ac­ters to life with strik­ing authen­tic­i­ty. Their per­for­mances are rich with pas­sion, vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, and emo­tion­al nuance, con­vey­ing every­thing from child­like curios­i­ty to pro­found long­ing. It’s through their voic­es that the film’s heart beats strongest, ground­ing its fan­tas­ti­cal world in some­thing deeply human and moving.

There’s an unde­ni­able charm to this film that makes it easy to be daz­zled by. From its deeply lov­able lead char­ac­ters, who you can’t help but root for, to delight­ful sur­pris­es like a per­fect­ly timed Talk­ing Heads nee­dle drop and effort­less moments of humor. But what makes it tru­ly spe­cial is its heart­felt explo­ration of uni­ver­sal themes like grief, lone­li­ness, and the deep human desire to belong. It’s the kind of sto­ry that stays with you, gen­tly remind­ing us that no mat­ter where we come from, we’re all just search­ing for connection.

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The open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of this year’s Cannes Film Fes­ti­val acknowl­edged the recent death, at just 43 years of age, of Émi­lie Dequenne, who won Best Actress for her role as the title char­ac­ter of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s Palme d’Or win­ner Roset­ta, a teenage girl claw­ing her way out of des­per­ate pover­ty with fer­al deter­mi­na­tion and heart­break­ing innocence. 

The broth­ers’ new film, Young Moth­ers, opens at a bus sta­tion, one of the unlove­ly and lim­i­nal spaces where their dra­mas, includ­ing Roset­ta, tend to unfold; we’re in the com­pa­ny of anoth­er young girl with baby-fat cheeks, rab­bity eyes, and coiled nerves, but soon, a slight down­ward tilt of the hand­held cam­era reveals that Jes­si­ca (Babette Ver­beek) is preg­nant, her bel­ly all out of pro­por­tion with her scrawny frame.

Jes­si­ca, whose lit­tle girl Alba is due in a few weeks, is the newest arrival at a group home for teenage moth­ers out­side the Dar­d­enne broth­ers’ native Liege. There, they change and wash and feed their infants under the watch­ful eye of nurs­es and social work­ers who step in when they become too flighty or fright­ened to let the mater­nal instinct take over; they take it in turn to cook group meals, and sign out at the front desk when they’re ready to return part-time to edu­ca­tion or trade school. 

They receive coun­selling and legal sup­port as they embark upon life as a moth­er, alone or with the sup­port of a boyfriend or extend­ed fam­i­ly, or else choose to place the baby in fos­ter care, as many of them are con­sid­er­ing — it’s this dilem­ma which shapes the nar­ra­tive arc of the Dar­d­ennes’ new film, and rhymes ear­li­er ones, par­tic­u­lar­ly their oth­er Palme win­ner L’Enfant, in which the puri­ty of parental love is test­ed against the cru­el­ties of a trans­ac­tion­al society. 

Jes­si­ca wants to meet her birth moth­er, who placed her into fos­ter care as a teenag­er; she’s wants to love her Alba, but fears she’s too dam­aged to do so. Julie (Elsa Houben), first seen as the home’s most expe­ri­enced res­i­dent and an exam­ple to the oth­er teens, is about to mar­ry her daughter’s dot­ing father Dylan (Jef Jacobs), but, as a recov­er­ing addict, the prospect of her impend­ing inde­pen­dence trig­gers pan­ic attacks and a fear of relapsing. 

Perla’s (Lucie Laru­elle) baby dad­dy is in the pic­ture, too, and she wants to play house with him, maybe more than she wants to be a moth­er, despite his evi­dent feck­less­ness. Both Per­la and Ari­ane (Janaina Hal­loy Fokan) are the daugh­ters of alco­holics; Ariane’s mom is in the pic­ture, and has made up a nurs­ery in her shab­by flat, but Ari­ane isn’t sure she wants to bring her baby into a home with mum’s abu­sive partner.

These sto­ries are all drip­ping with emo­tion — there are moth­er-daugh­ter fights with things said that can nev­er be tak­en back; there are moments of shock­ing cal­lous­ness when char­ac­ters sim­ply turn their back on a fam­i­ly mem­ber; equal­ly, there is great ten­der­ness or bound­less sad­ness pour­ing forth from the small­est moments, like when Julie, rid­ing on the back of Dylan’s moped, warms her hands in the pock­ets of his den­im jack­et, or when Jes­si­ca asks her birth moth­er for a pho­to­graph, so she can show it to her daugh­ter some day. This is what the Dar­d­ennes can do: over­whelm us with the enor­mi­ty of our oblig­a­tion to one another.

Any one of the young moth­ers, whose lives offer inti­mate and sym­pa­thet­ic views of pro­le­tari­at prob­lems, could have been the cen­tral fig­ure in a Dar­d­ennes film — the broth­ers had orig­i­nal­ly planned a movie around an ear­ly con­cep­tion of the Jes­si­ca char­ac­ter, but were so tak­en with what they found in their research that they con­ceived a sort of baton-pass nar­ra­tive to allow them to tell more stories. 

Alas, it’s a shame they did so. A clas­sic Dar­d­ennes film is first and fore­most a process, in which the ver­ité cam­era fol­lows a fig­ure tra­vers­ing a recog­nis­ably frayed and tat­ty mod­ern-day Bel­gium. They are in con­stant con­tact with the world, and each small step on their jour­ney, from shop­ping for their fam­i­ly to nego­ti­at­ing with a bureau­crat to caress­ing or curs­ing a friend, is an impres­sion left behind by it. 

In this way we see, with an uncom­mon par­tic­u­lar­i­ty, the social fac­tors and per­son­al foibles that con­tribute to strait­ened cir­cum­stances and des­per­ate choic­es. There’s too lit­tle of this in Young Moth­ers — we learn about appren­tice­ship schemes and deposits for land­lords, but not the com­pli­ca­tions that can bend a life off-course. 

There are few inter­ac­tions or dis­agree­ments reveal­ing dif­fer­ent class or life back­grounds between the moth­ers and the staff and admin­is­tra­tion of the home, the benev­o­lence of which is unques­tioned — unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly, the Dar­d­ennes find very few holes in the social safe­ty net. The sto­ries, each giv­en a quar­ter of the movie, are so com­pressed that sup­port­ing char­ac­ters are reduced to heroes and villains.

There’s pathos here — so much pathos — as these girls strug­gle to do right by them­selves and their babies, togeth­er or sep­a­rate­ly, with or with­out fam­i­ly sup­port. The film got me good in the final min­utes, as one of them writes a let­ter to her daugh­ter, to be opened when she turns 18 (“three years old­er than I am now”). With a pink pen, in a girl­ish­ly loop­ing cur­sive script, she writes the date of her daughter’s 18^th birth­day, paus­ing to do the math in her head before writ­ing the year: 2042. 

Then she runs off to catch the bus to school. It’s enor­mous­ly affect­ing — so much here is, and the Dar­d­ennes’ project, with its mate­r­i­al rigour and spir­i­tu­al con­science, remains impor­tant beyond the vagaries of fes­ti­val-cir­cuit fash­ion that seems to have moved on from their brand of human­ism. After so many pun­ish­ing sto­ries, most recent­ly 2022’s Tori and Loki­ta, it’s hard to begrudge them the raw sen­ti­ment and most­ly hap­py, hope­ful end­ings of their newest one. But it comes too easy, in a film so art­ful­ly and oppor­tunis­ti­cal­ly struc­tured, which jumps from dra­mat­ic peak to dra­mat­ic peak as if skip­ping tracks on an album.

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It’s no secret that the young stars of Japan­ese pop music are held to extreme­ly high stan­dards, both by fans and their labels. The mem­bers of upcom­ing J‑pop band Hap­py Fan­fare are acute­ly aware of what is expect­ed of them, drilled into them con­stant­ly by the suit­ed, seri­ous staff who stand just off to the side dur­ing their per­for­mances and fan sign­ings and tell them every­thing they’re doing wrong. Every moment of their time is account­ed for, and their days are long – they’re expect­ed to attend rehearsals before shows and livestream to their fans after they get home. It’s an awful lot of pres­sure to place on any­one, let alone a group of young women, and the restric­tions extend to their pri­vate lives as well. The girls are con­trac­tu­al­ly for­bid­den from hav­ing boyfriends despite being sex­u­alised by their legions of most­ly male fans, and have very lit­tle free time. Mai (for­mer idol Saito Kyoko) is the most pop­u­lar mem­ber of the group, but there’s stiff com­pe­ti­tion from band­mates, and as the label like to remind them, the rank­ing can change at any time.

Becom­ing increas­ing­ly dis­il­lu­sioned with her restric­tive life, Mai is elat­ed when she runs into an old class­mate, who’s work­ing as a street per­former. Kei (Yuki Kura) shares Mai’s artis­tic incli­na­tions but is both­er lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly free (he lives in his van). As the pair become firm friends, they also start to fall in love – at the same time, Hap­py Fan­fare faces back­lash when anoth­er band member’s secret rela­tion­ship with a pop­u­lar livestream­er is dis­cov­ered. Not only does this anger their label, the inci­dent sends their fans into a mael­strom and even threat­ens the girls’ safe­ty. It becomes increas­ing­ly clear to Mai that they’re only of us to the label as a prod­uct, rather than as people.

While the title of Fukada’s dra­ma sug­gests that the film’s focus will be the court case between Mai and her label that stems from her rela­tion­ship with Kei, the major­i­ty of the film actu­al­ly focus­es on the lead-up to this moment, care­ful­ly track­ing the girls as they nav­i­gate their first taste of pop star­dom. The wide angles keep us at the same dis­tance as the fans, but also cre­ate a sense of voyeurism as we linger dur­ing pri­vate moments. The deci­sion to focus on a band at the begin­ning of their star­dom might make them slight­ly more relat­able, and high­light that it’s not just stars at the top of their game who are sub­ject to strict con­tracts, but it does some­what reduce the ten­sion, as it’s unclear how much Mai will lose by walk­ing away from a career she doesn’t seem that wed­ded to in the first place.

It’s cer­tain­ly an intrigu­ing premise for a film, and Kyoko’s per­for­mance is sym­pa­thet­ic and charm­ing, but Love on Tri­al mean­ders along with all the dra­ma of a gen­tle boat ride, nev­er quite kick­ing into gear, and the lack of devel­op­ment afford­ed to the sup­port­ing char­ac­ters reduces Mai’s stu­dio oppo­si­tion to car­toon-like vil­lains. It also feels like Mai and Kei’s rela­tion­ship takes a back­seat once they final­ly get togeth­er, but with­out much explo­ration of how Mai’s court case impacts them beyond sud­den finan­cial wor­ries. It’s a sto­ry with a lot of poten­tial, but this iter­a­tion nev­er quite brings the dra­ma in the way JPop stars them­selves know how to.

Open­ing with a tat­tered jour­nal, dam­aged by water and fire and con­tain­ing the writ­ings of an unknown hand, Heads or Tails? will be ​“quite a sto­ry,” as promised in the open­ing voiceover nar­ra­tion of John C. Reil­ly as Buf­fa­lo Cody, the bison hunter and Indi­an Wars vet­er­an turned tour­ing impre­sario of a famous ​“Wild West Show” fea­tur­ing ridin’, ropin’, shootin’, and too-good-to-fact-check sto­ries about how the West was won.

The film opens in Italy, where Buf­fa­lo Bill per­forms his pageant of con­quest for an audi­ence of Uni­fi­ca­tion-era gen­try. Open­ing in black and white and Acad­e­my ratio, like a clas­sic Hol­ly­wood West­ern, the vio­lent Wild West show is ini­tial­ly quite real­is­tic — or as real­is­tic as a clas­sic Hol­ly­wood West­ern — before Buf­fa­lo Bill emerges from behind the cur­tain back­drop, and the aspect ratio widens and the film shifts to cov­er. (The palette retains the pointil­lis­tic sat­u­ra­tion of direc­tors Alessio Rigo de Righi and Mat­teo Zop­pis’ pre­vi­ous film The Tale of King Crab. The cel­lu­loid blues are espe­cial­ly rich and hand­some, and some actors appear to have been cast for their eyes.) ​“Amer­i­ca is the land of free­dom,” says Buf­fa­lo Bill before mim­ing the killing of his Native co-stars; at the sub­se­quent recep­tion and press con­fer­ence, he express­es his admi­ra­tion for them, but they don’t speak.

Inspired by the show, one of Bill’s Ital­ian hosts boasts of his own horsemen’s skills; Bill, sens­ing a good show, takes his bet and sets up a bronc-break­ing exhi­bi­tion, at which San­ti­no (Alessan­dro Borghi), the nobleman’s best hired man and a par­tic­u­lar favorite of his younger French wife Rosa (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), dis­obeys orders to throw the com­pe­ti­tion, and fur­ther catch­es the eye of the fair maid­en — no won­der, as Borghi is a swarthy, pierc­ing Tomas Mil­ian type.) A cow­boy is ​“pure of heart,” says Reil­ly in voiceover as San­ti­no bucks atop a white stal­lion, but as in the sto­ry of Lancelot and Guin­e­vere, chival­ric tra­di­tion and court­ly love get more com­pli­cat­ed than intend­ed. When San­ti­no wins, humil­i­at­ing Bill, his liege con­fronts him, and accus­es his own wife of infi­deli­ty; she shoots him dead with a Lady Der­ringer. Rosa and San­ti­no flee on horse­back in a long scrolling left-to-right track­ing shot, the cam­era dol­ly sprint­ing breath­less­ly to keep up as two race through the mag­ic hour’s actu­al, lit­er­al frisca­lat­ing dusk­light. (Lat­er, at the end of the film, the same horse will ride right to left, into the sunset.)

With his fringed embroi­dered leather jack­et and sil­ver goa­tee, Reil­ly resem­bles the Buf­fa­lo Bill of pho­tographs, a star-span­gled show­man played by, among oth­ers, Louis Cal­h­ern in the rough-and-tum­ble back­stage musi­cal Annie Get Your Gun and Paul New­man in Robert Altman’s Buf­fa­lo Bill and the Indi­ans, or Sit­ting Bull’s His­to­ry Les­son, a cyn­i­cal rasp­ber­ry blown in 1976, after defeat in Viet­nam and at the height of Bicen­ten­ni­al-era patri­o­tism. The char­ac­ter is a straight­for­ward Amer­i­can sig­ni­fi­er that is eas­i­ly bent to revi­sion­ist pur­pos­es, as is the corset that Rosa soon sheds as she and San­ti­no keep ahead of the track­ers on their trail, and the trail of a reward for his cap­ture and her safe return. But despite this, and despite sub­plots such as the revolt of labor­ers against a das­tard­ly rail­road baron, the film is hard­ly in the left­ist tra­di­tion of spaghet­ti West­erns like Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West. As in The Tale of King Crab, an exis­ten­tial quest against a back­drop of South Amer­i­can colo­nial­ism that took a much gen­tler polit­i­cal tack than, say, Martel’s Zama or Gálvez’s The Set­tlers, Rigo de Righi and Zop­pis, and their cowriter Car­lo Sal­sa, are more inter­est­ed in a good yarn — and a meta-dis­course on storytelling.

So as Rosa and San­ti­no escape man­hunters which come to include Buf­fa­lo Bill, Reilly’s nar­ra­tion, which includes chap­ter titles like ​“Kid­napped” and ​“To the Res­cue,” sets a mock-leg­endary tone, and rather mis­con­strues the sto­ry, fol­low­ing the Want­ed posters in cred­it­ing San­ti­no with the incit­ing killing, and mak­ing Rosa out as a hostage rather than a per­pe­tra­tor. Buf­fa­lo Bill’s florid and unre­li­able prose resem­bles, to use his own phrase, one of the ​“dime-store nov­el” that print­ed the leg­end of the emerg­ing West, enlarg­ing its heroes and sand­ing off its bru­tal­i­ty — like the books of Ned Bunt­line, whose sto­ries cre­at­ed the Buf­fa­lo Bill per­sona, and inspired screen West­ern nov­el­ists like W.W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek), whose illu­sions are shat­tered in Unfor­giv­en, or indeed Eli Cash in The Roy­al Tenen­baums. Intrigu­ing­ly, though Reil­ly nar­rates in first per­son, the actu­al writer of the voiceover script is Buf­fa­lo Bill’s com­pan­ion and faith­ful amanu­en­sis John­ny, shown through­out the film to be scrib­bling in the note­book from the opening.

As Rosa and San­ti­no weath­er encoun­ters with rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies and ban­dits, expe­ri­enc­ing jail­breaks and shootouts, greed and betray­al, it’s San­ti­no becomes the sub­ject of out­law bal­lads, which cred­it him as strik­ing a blow against the oli­garchy, rewrit­ing Rosa’s role to be more pas­sive in the ser­vice of polit­i­cal myth­mak­ing. When San­ti­no starts to sing along, and embell­ish his leg­end fur­ther, the appro­pri­a­tion of Rosa’s sto­ry becomes a sore point.

Tak­ing on the iconog­ra­phy of a hoary adven­ture sto­ry with a light touch, Rigo de Righi and Zop­pis don’t always rub suf­fi­cient­ly against the grain of arche­type to gen­er­ate real sparks. The film sags in the mid­dle, and many of its tweaks to for­mu­la, par­tic­u­lar­ly regard­ing Rosa’s recla­ma­tion of her agency, are rote or mere­ly cutesy, despite ris­ing star Tereszkiewicz’s rosy-cheeked mox­ie. But equal­ly there are won­ders here in the vein of the dirty-fin­ger­nailed mag­ic real­ism that is con­tem­po­rary Ital­ian cinema’s most reward­ing mode, as in Alice Rohrwacher’s Hap­py As Laz­zaro and Pietro Marcello’s Scar­let. Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Simone D’Arcangelo, who also shot King Crab, lights ani­mals beau­ti­ful­ly, with sub­tle spot­lights, so they stand out as at once earthy and ethe­re­al, like in Night of the Hunter, and Rigo de Righi and Zop­pis retain their eye for rough-hewn peas­ant faces. (King Crab​’s Gabriele Sil­li, with his wild-man beard, and aura of fog­gy vicious­ness, receives a star’s entrance.)

And most of all there’s John C. Reil­ly, who plays Buf­fa­lo Bill with a magician’s pat­ter, like Reed Rothchild in Boo­gie Nights, giv­ing him an ingen­u­ous­ness, a bluffer’s self-sat­is­fied con­fi­dence, and an entrepreneur’s shrewd­ness. He helps great­ly in the film­mak­ers’ mis­sion to put the West­ern in air quotes, to play with­in and com­ment on the genre, in par­tic­u­lar its even more exoti­ciz­ing Euro­pean man­i­fes­ta­tions, like the nov­els of Karl May, the Ned Bunt­line of Ger­many. It’s a mas­sive­ly charis­mat­ic per­for­mance on par with any­thing else in Reilly’s career, and gives all-Amer­i­can sub­stance to this clever Ital­ian mistranslation.

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Some­thing very bad hap­pened to Agnes. It’s hint­ed at in the first seg­ment of Sor­ry, Baby, when her best friend Lydie (Nao­mi Ack­ie) arrives for a vis­it, and asks Agnes (Eva Vic­tor) if she feels com­fort­able hav­ing the office of their old Eng­lish pro­fes­sor Pre­ston Deck­er (Louis Can­cel­mi). It’s fair­ly easy to infer what Lydie means by this, par­tic­u­lar­ly once they go for din­ner at the home of their for­mer class­mate Natasha (Kel­ly McCor­ma­ck) and she snark­i­ly remarks that Agnes was always ​“Decker’s favourite”. Lydie polite­ly changes the sub­ject and gives Agnes’s leg a reas­sur­ing squeeze.

There has been a del­uge of films about sex­u­al assault in the wake of MeToo, but for all the artis­tic cap­i­tal (right­ful­ly) afford­ed to sur­vivors, pre­cious lit­tle has mate­ri­al­ly changed with­in cul­ture. Some­times it feels as if there’s more resent­ment than ever towards vic­tims for dar­ing speak­ing up – it’s this real­i­ty that Eva Victor’s direc­to­r­i­al debut (which she wrote and stars in) cap­tures so well, in which a woman is sex­u­al­ly assault­ed by a man in a posi­tion of trust, and the accord­ing fall-out is the lack of fall-out. Noth­ing in the world at large changes; every­thing does in hers, revealed in non-chrono­log­i­cal order, with a chap­ter for each year fol­low­ing the assault. When she goes to see a (male) doc­tor fol­low­ing her assault, he chas­tis­es her for not going to the ER imme­di­ate­ly after­wards. He seems com­plete­ly indif­fer­ent to the trau­mat­ic inci­dent Agnes has expe­ri­enced; all Agnes and Lydie can do in response is laugh.

What else can Agnes do? The per­pe­tra­tor has already hand­ed in his notice at col­lege, and the school claim they’re unable to open a case against him as a result. Agnes doesn’t want to press charges against him because he has a child – and if she’s treat­ed like an incon­ve­nience by med­ical staff and her school, who’s to say the police would be any dif­fer­ent? So Agnes inter­nalis­es her pain. Over the course of the next four years, she lives her life in the same apart­ment she shared with Lydie dur­ing grad school, and teach­es at the same col­lege she used to attend. There’s an unspo­ken sense that Agnes can’t quite move on from the place; she sleep­i­ly haunts it, unable to find clo­sure because no one – except Lydie – under­stands or acknowl­edges what hap­pened to her.

It’s the banal­i­ty of endur­ing a sex­u­al assault that Vic­tor cap­tures so well in her film; how the trau­ma lingers long in the body, even when you keep insist­ing to every­one (includ­ing your­self) that you’re fine. When Agnes begins a ten­ta­tive romance with her sweet neigh­bour Gavin (Lucas Hedges) she doesn’t quite know how to respond to his affec­tion; when she has a pan­ic attack in her car, a gruff sand­wich shop own­er (John Car­roll Lynch) coach­es her through it and then makes her some food. These small moments of kind­ness – as well as the beau­ti­ful friend­ship between Agnes and Lydie – glim­mer like flecks of gold on the bot­tom of a murky riverbed, demon­strat­ing there is still some good in the world despite what hap­pened to her. Good that also exists in Agnes’ cat Olga, who she finds on the street as a kit­ten days after her assault, even if she even­tu­al­ly has to euthanise a mouse left in her bed.

This sur­pris­ing­ly vio­lent mer­cy killing feels like an odd­ly cathar­tic moment for Agnes, who is sym­bol­ic of thou­sands of peo­ple who nev­er receive jus­tice after being assault­ed, and reflects the strange rhythms of Sor­ry, Baby – a film which doesn’t pre­tend to have all the answers, but cer­tain­ly under­stands the bur­den of shame placed on sex­u­al assault sur­vivors, and how nav­i­gat­ing the world in the after­math of assault feels like walk­ing through dense fog, blind­ing reach­ing for a hand to guide you to the oth­er side.

Although based on the 2020 nov­el ​‘Box Hill’ by Adam Mars-Jones, Har­ry Lighton’s Pil­lion is most­ly unrecog­nis­able from its source mate­r­i­al, retain­ing only a few cru­cial details. Gone is the 1970s Sur­rey set­ting, along with the first-per­son nar­ra­tion and reck­on­ing with queer iden­ti­ty at the height of the AIDs cri­sis. Kept are the names – Col­in and Ray – and the latter’s ties to the local BDSM bik­er com­mu­ni­ty, but where Mars-Jones’ nov­el skewed heart­break­ing, this loose adap­ta­tion is broad­ly buoy­ant, as the mild-man­nered traf­fic war­den Col­in (Har­ry Melling) finds him­self entan­gled in a dominant/​submissive rela­tion­ship with the near mono­syl­lab­ic Ray (Alexan­der Skars­gård), a gor­geous unknow­able alien who seems to get exact­ly what he wants every sec­ond of every day with­out hav­ing to ask for it. And as unlike­ly as it seems when they first meet – one per­form­ing with his bar­ber­shop quar­tet in a pub, the oth­er in his bik­er leathers, not look­ing up from a stack of Christ­mas cards he’s fill­ing out – Ray wants Colin.

Col­in is flum­moxed by the atten­tion but imme­di­ate­ly game, accept­ing a writ­ten instruc­tion to meet out­side Brom­ley Pri­mark on Christ­mas Day, much to the con­cern of his well-mean­ing par­ents (who insist Col­in take the family’s long-haired dachs­hund with him for pro­tec­tion). What Col­in lacks in world­li­ness he makes up for in enthu­si­asm. Ray, unread­able, sees poten­tial, and quick­ly installs him in his spar­tan flat, where their sex­u­al rela­tion­ship begins in earnest. From here Col­in is induct­ed into a world of leather, lube and delayed grat­i­fi­ca­tion; he takes to it like a duck to water.

Har­ry Melling has been doing con­sis­tent­ly great work as a char­ac­ter actor, par­tic­u­lar­ly in The Bal­lad of Buster Scrug­gs and Har­vest, but Pil­lion marks his first bona fide lead­ing role, and the del­i­cate bal­ance of Colin’s char­ac­ter is a tes­ta­ment to Melling’s skill. He’s a ner­vous, awk­ward sort, with a hang­dog expres­sion and one foot con­stant­ly in his mouth, but as he grows in con­fi­dence through his rela­tion­ship with Ray, Col­in comes into his own, under­stand­ing him­self bet­ter through explor­ing his sex­u­al desires. He’s the per­fect foil to Ray, a tow­er­ing mon­u­ment of qui­et machis­mo with just a glint of good humour, and the chem­istry between Melling and Skars­gård in their tricky tightrope dou­ble act is essen­tial to Pillion’s effec­tive emo­tion­al core.

While some of the weight of Mars-Jones’ nov­el is lost by updat­ing its time peri­od and giv­ing Col­in a more sup­port­ive fam­i­ly, the biggest mis­step comes in a changed end­ing, opt­ing for an ambigu­ous end to Col­in and Ray’s sto­ry. While the gen­er­al light­ness inject­ed in rip­ples across Pil­lion is to the film’s cred­it, the final act threat­ens to reduce the poignan­cy of the cen­tral rela­tion­ship by sug­gest­ing it’s quite replic­a­ble. Per­haps the inten­tion is to indi­cate that Colin’s life doesn’t end with Ray (while it may have start­ed with him) but the con­clu­sion under­mines the well-bal­anced mix­ture of ten­der­ness and tur­moil in both Lighton’s script and the two cen­tral performances.

Nev­er­the­less, Pil­lion under­stands the excru­ci­at­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of vocal­is­ing desire both sex­u­al and emo­tion­al, realised on-screen with some of the most erot­ic and unin­hib­it­ed sex scenes in recent mem­o­ry (with spe­cial cred­it to inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tor Rob­bie Tay­lor-Hunt). The bold­ness, nuance and humour with which Lighton nav­i­gates BDSM dynam­ics as well as Col­in and Ray’s per­son­al and joint com­plex­i­ties results in a film that’s fre­quent­ly touch­ing and sur­pris­ing, less of an adap­ta­tion and more of a reimag­in­ing that com­pli­ments the source mate­r­i­al rather than repli­cates it.

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For all its big themes, there is a vague­ness to Haf­sia Herzi’s anec­do­tal char­ac­ter study about a 17-year-old named Fati­ma (Nadia Mel­li­ti in her first screen role). Adapt­ed from Fati­ma Daas’s aut­ofic­tion nov­el ​‘The Last One’, pub­lished in 2020, there is much to admire in the ten­der­ness that sat­u­rates depic­tions of the nude female form and in the eupho­ria puls­ing through a hand­ful of les­bian club scenes.

It’s hard to shake the feel­ing else­where that spe­cif­ic char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion has been sac­ri­ficed in order to duti­ful­ly ser­vice the iden­ti­ty mark­ers of Fatima’s life. She is defined through the prism of being a queer Mus­lim nav­i­gat­ing the tran­si­tion between home with her Alger­ian par­ents and adult­hood accord­ing to her own val­ues in Paris. There is a lit­tle sense of how Fati­ma exists as a per­son unplugged from these head­line tus­sles. We are told that she is a keen foot­baller, but it’s only in the final scene that we wit­ness these skills. This is a char­ac­ter study about a char­ac­ter that remains out of view.

Divid­ed into sea­son­al sub­head­ings – Spring, Sum­mer, Autumn and Win­ter – Herzi intro­duces Fati­ma in bois­ter­ous scenes with sis­ters at home. At school male friends talk loud­ly and graph­i­cal­ly about (imag­i­nary?) sex­u­al encoun­ters. When a qui­et scene final­ly comes its con­se­quences are loud­er still. She sneaks a meet­ing with her some­times boyfriend who negs her for not dress­ing more fem­i­nine­ly before sug­gest­ing mar­riage. The spec­tre of tra­di­tion­al patri­ar­chal gen­der roles looms. Per­haps this is why Fati­ma is primed to fly at a gay class­mate who cor­rect­ly notices that she is of his tribe.

All the thanks he receives is a bro­ken pair of glass­es, nonethe­less, his obser­va­tion push­es Fati­ma into explor­ing the women-only sec­tion of dat­ing apps. She gives a fake name and a fake nation­al­i­ty as she hoovers up expe­ri­ences until a real life encounter with Ji-Na (Park Ji-Min, iri­des­cent) opens her up to first love.

Mel­lit works over­time to emote some­thing between the lines of a char­ac­ter required to be impas­sive and con­tained in most sit­u­a­tions. Scenes of inti­ma­cy, danc­ing and a dream where she grinds to a halt at a swim­ming pool reveal a poten­tial oth­er­wise sub­li­mat­ed by a script over­ly pre­oc­cu­pied with mov­ing us from A to B. There is a, per­haps appre­cia­ble, lack of trust in the audi­ence to under­stand the cul­tur­al forces at play. Hence there are scenes unpack­ing every­thing from homo­pho­bia with­in tra­di­tion­al Islam to a list of what les­bians do for sex­u­al gratification

The cost of the film’s need to spell out the con­flict­ing ele­ments of Fatima’s life is that she is not afford­ed the same gor­geous vital­i­ty that ani­mates Ji-Na and a les­bian cou­ple she meets in anoth­er sea­son. This is a frus­trat­ing film that ticks all the box­es that make up a per­son with­out pump­ing in the oxy­gen that would make them come alive.

Herzi con­vinces that the out les­bian life is a rich one and that Algerian/​French/​Muslim cul­ture is full of tex­ture and nuance. The back­drops in La Petite Dernière are care­ful­ly wrought, it’s only the teenag­er her­self who is crushed by the bur­den of all that she represents.

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