Tara Brady

By the time we finally see the leading lady, La Panthère des Neiges – as the film was called at home – has long since privileged the journey over the destination.

Taking cues from the lively cast, Nabil Ayouch’s third feature to make it to Cannes is scrappy, occasionally messy, prone to distractions, and never less than diverting.

At 72 minutes, Playground falls shy of feature length, yet it atones with a sickening sense of dread and pinpoint emotional accuracy. The performances that Wandel coaxes out of her young cast are remarkable and often painful to behold.

To add to the viewer’s distress, the picture is as deafeningly loud as it is tiresomely provocative.

Celeste Cescutti leads a parochial cast that is largely unprofessional, with a fierce performance that bosses and grounds the film’s magic realist themes.

Directors Danny Clinch, Taryn Gould, and Colleen Hennessy have sifted through hundreds of hours of footage to fashion something that allows for a sense of the person behind the rock casualty. To this end, they do a splendid job.

Haarla and Borisov demonstrate impeccable timing and expertly tiny movements as they warm up to one another. It’s something like love but without either sex or romance. And it’s a joy to behold.

Both actors are ill-served by a script that carps on about finding your moment or some such. Can’t a hedgehog go on a quest to find a magic master emerald without this constant haranguing?

Following on from Harry Wootliff’s infertility romance, Only You, this confirms the British writer-director as an unmissable talent.

Bounce along as Julie might and it’s a lively, sexy, eventful two-hour adventure.

Basholli’s simple, elegantly structured script and Alex Bloom’s cinematography places Gashi’s carefully calibrated performance in almost every frame.

It is equally a solid genre effort, characterised by gory set-pieces, discombobulating scenarios, and welcome lashings of feminist revenge.

This is the kind of post-Goonies family-oriented schmaltz that plays very well on Netflix (see all of Stranger Things, a show sometimes directed by Levy) and not so well in cinemas.

For much of its impressive duration, Dolan’s film blurs the line between family friction, bipolar disorder and the supernatural.

Akhtar, an actor who was so impressive in Four Lions and Utopia, and Claire Rushbrook, recently seen as Enola Holmes’s housekeeper, make for a quietly magnetic couple. For all the obstacles they face, this remains a strangely joyful film.

This is one of those snappy, well-formed Brit-coms that one expects to see reworked as a Full Monty- or Kinky Boots-style Broadway show.

In an ideal world, it’ll do Greatest Showman box office business. Mind you, in an ideal world, Dinklage’s forlorn turn would be nominated for an Oscar.

Servants confirms the director as a major talent.

It’s a fascinating delve or “kaleidoscope” as the film-makers have it. The film is as complete a portrait as we may ever get.

Still, this is an intriguing psychological thriller and a carefully calibrated study of maternal mourning, powered by perceived class differences and harsh maternal judgment.

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is not quite the equal of the same film-maker’s Oscar contender, Drive My Car. Both films, however, share a deceptively languid pacing and find an aching humanity in middle-class people in crisis.

There are obvious parallels between Rasmussen’s film and such similarly constructed animations as Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir and Keith Maitland’s Tower, although Flee’s rugged lines are never as polished as anything found in either of those films. The sense of catharsis and the heartfelt voiceover, however, offset the roughhewn aesthetics.

For all the impeccable production values – including Bakker’s outlandish 1980s costumes, all lovingly recreated by Mitchell Travers – the film’s generosity towards its controversial heroine feels like an unwarranted canonisation.

Though not quite as extravagantly imaginative as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time or Wolf Children, the eighth feature from Mamoru Hosada marries dazzling spectacle, high-octane action and social commentary.

Parallel Mothers wears its heart on its beautifully styled sleeve. Even the dark excavation at the heart of the enterprise is delivered with wit, warmth and eye-popping colours. It is difficult to think of another filmmaker who could so effortlessly juggle tones and seemingly disparate elements.

Amulet has been billed as a feminist revenge horror. It’s a savage one, powered along by the same metaphorical heft that made The Babadook such a sensation.

The performances, carefully calibrated characters, and the unexpected detours in the conversation ensure that the film remains an absorbing piece of cinema, one that locks the viewer in with these angry, bereaved people and their increasingly difficult confrontation.

Production designer Tamara Deverell and costume designer Luis Sequeira make for an arresting spectacle, one that is, ultimately, too luxurious for the sleazy travelling show and 1940s hoboism at the heart of the movie.