Wendy Ide

Not everything works in Mika Gustafson’s feature debut, but the performances, in particular that of the magnetic Delbravo, have an unpredictable, wayward energy. And the restless, hungry gaze of the camera captures the savage love and joyous freedom that unites the girls.

Cactus Pears is a subdued, sensitive study of bereavement and the quietly radical act of being queer in a rural, lower-class Indian community.

It’s not surprising to learn that its writer and director, Lauren Hadaway, who based this film on her own experiences on a college rowing team, has a background in sound editing.

It’s sentimental stuff, certainly, but the picture’s unexpectedly dark humour outweighs any maudlin tendencies.

Under the party whoops and confetti cannons there’s a deceptively complex and layered portrait of female solidarity in the face of ingrained sexism, racism and general male shittiness.

The Taste of Things defies expectations. There is something refreshingly unconventional about its depiction of the tender, well-worn love between Eugénie and Dodin.

It’s a quietly profound film, one that encourages appreciation of the world through exultant widescreen landscape shots, macro close-ups and textured field recordings of skittering bugs and crunching ice. It also preaches acceptance of the inevitable cycles of nature – cycles that we, as humans, should learn to embrace rather than fight against.

In Front of Your Face is a gentle pleasure and, as such, may not be a picture that will win new fans to the films of director Hong Sang-soo. But admirers of his distinctive style – long takes, zooms, social awkwardness, vast quantities of strong alcohol – will be beguiled by this bittersweet series of encounters.

The picture draws parallels between China and the US when it comes to botched and skewed deployment of information.

The latest from Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen is a terrific psychological thriller and a brooding, muscular piece of filmmaking which makes the most of both the Galician backdrop and the imposing physicality of Menochet and, as his nemesis Xan, the remarkable Luis Zahera.

Subdued in tone and stoic in its approach to the dangers that can decimate an entire community, Identifying Features is admirable in its restraint, and all the more powerful because of it.

This is an archetypal Anderson film: mannered, fussy, obsessively designed – normally irksome traits, but in this alchemic instance it’s an utterly delightful combination.

With this seductive, serpentine neo-noir, Park Chan-wook raises the bar on the 2022 Cannes competition programme and reasserts his position as a peerless visual stylist. But there’s nothing superficial or superfluous about his style here: it’s all in the service of the film’s mercurial and at times disorientating blend of crime and passion.

The dance is the picture’s climax, a glimpse of joy and optimism. But the film’s coda, shot three years later, shows the cost of prolonged separation. Hope is a spark that can be easily extinguished.

From the intimate restraint of the early scenes, Delpero’s direction becomes more fractured and abrasive. It’s a remarkable work.

The realisation that her husband is gone for good is a gradual process that plays out, largely without words, on Torres’s face, in a performance of extraordinary intelligence and emotional complexity.

Josef Kubota Wladyka’s third feature film is a playful and whimsical confection, a deft blend of escapist kitsch and the real emotional heft that Kikuchi brings to the role.

The Eternal Memory is a restrained, respectful piece of film-making that takes its lead from its two subjects. It’s wrenchingly sad, but also a testament to the love that endures, even as Augusto increasingly struggles to recognise his wife.

The film manages the tricky feat of both staying true to Waters breathless, page-turning prose, and creating a wholly persuasive new milieu for the story.

The early potency of this macabre fairytale becomes increasingly diluted however, as the film progresses and the story broadens.

It is, at times, harrowing. The film doesn’t shy away from grief at its rawest, fear at its most paralysing.

With a smile that frays a little around the edges, and a peppy enthusiasm that can’t quite hide the doubts, McAdams wrings every last drop of pathos from her scenes, almost upstaging her screen daughter in the process.

If it’s a love letter, it’s the kind tinged with the grasping anguish and stab of bitterness that comes from knowing that the object of affection is almost certainly eyeing up a new favourite.

Like Kore-eda’s 2008 family drama Still Walking, this is a film which is interested in the architecture, both emotional and physical, of the family home.

If you pick apart the story threads, Sinners is a little messy, but Coogler’s assurance and vision holds everything together.

Like McQueen’s designs, it is thrilling, troubling and tinged with tragedy.

It’s bleak at times, but there is a defiantly celebratory aspect to the film, which finds hope in the solidarity of Black women and dignity in Gia’s quiet stoicism.

Bellocchio’s motives for making the film are in part to make sense of the events, in part, one suspects, to exorcise a lingering sense of survivor’s guilt. Yet for all the laudable intentions, Camillo still gets slightly lost in the rambling anecdotes, padding and extraneous details.