Kore'eda with its BROKER, Gray's ARMAGEDDON TIME, Park Chan-wook's DECISION TO LEAVE, Bruni Tedeschi's LES AMANDIERS, Ostlund's TRIANGLE OF SADNESS, Tarik Saleh's BOY FROM HEAVEN and, highly rated new entry, Lukas' CLOSE Dhont.
These could be the magnificent seven of this 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival to enter the Palmares that will be revealed tomorrow.
And this after the last two films have passed this morning: SHOWING UP by Kelly Reichardt and UN PETIT FRERE Léonor Serraille.
in pole position for the Palme d'Or would be BROKER by Kore'eda, a poetic reinterpretation of the drama of abandoned and resold children.
In this film, the Korean performer, Song Kang-ho (Mr Kim of PARASITE) is also running as best actor.
Well placed, and also my favorite, DECISION TO LEAVE by Korean Park Chan-wook: between thriller and IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, it tells the love story between a commissioner and a suspected multiple murderer.
Stunning images and a marine and romantic final suicide.
Also of note in this film is the beautiful murderer, the turbid Chinese Tang Wei, and the sleepless and meticulous commissioner Park Hae-il.
Also well placed ARMAGEDDON TIME, an exquisitely biographical film by James Gray that tells of Queens in the Eighties, one of the two American films in competition.
In Cronenberg's CRIMES OF THE FUTURE, the visionary nature of the Canadian master prevails, namely: will we become plastic eaters?
Could a special prize for him come out of Fremaux's hat?
In LES AMANDIERS by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, a half-Italian film, everyone liked the syncopated memory of the director's youth in Paris at the school of Patrice Cherau, but as we recalled there is a problem not just: the daughter of the president of the jury , Vincent Lindon, is in the cast.
Perfect for Lindon instead is TRIANGLE OF SADNESS by Ostlund, a biting satire on wealth and poverty, on influencers and influencers and on the eternal wickedness and selfishness of humans.
Ostlund, however, in 2017 had won the Palme d'Or with THE SQUARE.
Deservedly in the running, also BOY FROM HEAVEN by the Swedish director of Egyptian origin Tarik Saleh.
We are located in Cairo, at Al-Azhar University, which is the center of power of Sunni Islam.
Add to this a not bad intrigue.
"I want to open Pandora's box by showing a world that is embedded in a larger universe, which no camera has yet filmed," said the director himself.
Fly in the forecasts for the Palme d'Or then CLOSE by Belgian director Lukas Dhont, which looks like a film by the Dardenne brothers played a lot on ambiguity, but not too much.
The protagonists are two thirteen years old, Leo and Remy, close friends to the point of creating more than a suspicion in the school they attend where they become the object of bullying.
Among the surprises there is also TCHAIKOVSKY'S WIFE by Kirill Serebrennikov, the only Russian director in competition, much loved by the French.
The actress who plays the musician's wife, Aliona Mikhaïlova, is also very good.
And always among the surprises, but not too much, RMN by Mungiu, a less strong film than the previous ones,
And the Italians?
There is always hope for Mario Martone's NOSTALGIA, to which however the French critics have given two palms: the film seems to have more chances for a nomination for best actor than Pierfrancesco Favino.
For THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS by Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix Van Groeningen, at least on paper, little hope.