“The idea was to bring Vincent Lindon to uncharted waters in terms of his acting.” That’s director Stéphane Brizé describing the main reason behind using non-professional actors alongside the French veteran for his latest little slice-of-life film, The Measure of a Man. Slice-of-strife is more like it, as the story follows Lindon’s Thierry Taugourdeau, an everyman struggling with unemployment and an increasing sensation that his humanity is being eroded in the process. It’s Brizé’s third time working with Lindon, and first time working with DP Eric Dumont, whose previous work was solely on documentaries. Thanks to this naturalistic environment, the cinéma vérité style with the camera constantly following and observing Thierry, and the actor’s familiarity with the director; the weighted resonance in The Measure of a Man oscillates entirely from Vincent Lindon. The film may be little in terms of scale, but the performance at its centre is massive beyond measure.

Lindon disappears into Thierry so completely that he overpowers every other aspect of the film. The sole exception is perhaps Brizé’s and Olivier Gorce’s naturalistic screenplay, which teems with the kind of verbal exchanges that softly tighten the squeeze around a man’s soul. We follow Thierry in the middle of arguments, salvaging whatever pride he’s got left while talking to ex-colleagues from the factory that’s made him redundant. Sitting through partially-humiliating and demoralizing Skype interviews. Getting dissected like a frog in a lab by fellow job seekers, only to hear how none of his organs are functioning. We see him spending time at home with his wife and son, or enjoying a bit of dancing, and our hearts sink lower and lower at the hardships this good man is forced to endure because of an inhumane, profit-driven, system. Thierry finally does get a job, which brings a whole new type of moral challenge.

The kettle is boiling, that piercing whistle grows louder and louder, and it’s impossible to switch off. That’s what Lindon manages to convey through every pore in The Measure of a Man, one of the most depressing films of the year because of how realistic and immediately relevant it feels. The dedication on display by Lindon is let down by Brizé’s handling of the third act, wherein the climactic buildup isn’t nearly as gripping as anything that occurs in the first half of the film, while Thierry desperately searches for a new vocation. This is due to the stylistic choice of keeping Lindon mostly off-screen or on the side for the last half hour, hammering the point that the film is at its best whenever the camera is on Thierry. Those “uncharted waters” Brizé mentions earned Lindon a welcomed Best Actor award at Cannes, and important subject matter notwithstanding, it’s really the biggest reason one should go and seek this film out.

Originially posted on October 11th, 2015 as part of our NYFF coverage.

It’s been a tumultuous year at Cannes, and today’s surprising awards ceremony certainly made for a fitting ending to this year’s festivities. Festival head Thierry Fremaux got lots of criticism thrown at him for his picks this year, which went heavy on French films, but this year’s festival jury—headed by Joel and Ethan Coen—had lots of love for the French selections. Best Actor went to Vincent Lindon for The Measure Of a Man, and Emmanuelle Bercot got a shared Best Actress prize for her turn in Maiwenn’s Mon Roi.

But the biggest surprise came when Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan was announced as the winner of the Palme D’Or. Audiard is a fine director (many of us here are fans of A Prophet, which got him the Grand Prix back in 2009), but critics were mostly sour on Dheepan, criticizing it for a startling turn in the final act that didn’t work for most people. And people were shocked that the two critically adored films in this year’s competition, Todd Haynes’ Carol and Hou Hsaio-hsien’s The Assassin, didn’t wind up taking home the big prizes; Hsaio-hsien won Best Director (considering how much of the film was praised for its gorgeous visuals, this sounds pretty deserving), and Carol got a Best Actress prize for Rooney Mara. But with Carol receiving a nice, Oscar-friendly release date in December from Harvey Weinstein, and The Assassin already bought up for US distribution, this certainly won’t be the last we’ll hear of these two films.

The only predictable outcome this year was Son of Saul winning the Grand Prix, which people assumed would be taking home a prize after it screened to a strong reception. It’s an impressive win, considering this is director Laszlo Nemes’ first feature, and it should have a nice tour around the festival circuit for the rest of the year. Another slight shocker was Michel Franco winning Best Screenplay for Chronic, but that might only come as a shock to anyone who’s seen his previous films; he’s a filmmaker known more for his directorial skills, and it sounds like critics were baffled by his win.

Read on below for the full list of winners, and expect to see a good chunk of these films get some sort of release throughout 2015 and 2016. While we only got the chance to see a few films this year, including Jury Prize winner The Lobster, we’re eager to check all these winners out once they play closer to home. Until then, all we can do is wait until we do it all over again next May.

2015 Cannes Winners

Camera D’Or (Best First Feature): La Tierra Y La Sombra

Best Screenplay: Chronic

Best Actress: Rooney Mara, Carol; Emmanuelle Bercot, Mon Roi

Jury Prize: The Lobster

Best Actor: Vincent London, The Measure Of A Man

Best Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien, The Assassin

Grand Jury Prize: Son Of Saul

Palme D’Or: Dheepan

No matter what your opinion is on Claire Denis‘ films (full disclosure: I’m not the biggest fan of her work myself), it’s impossible to deny her skills at making one hell of an image. The opening moments of Bastards merely continue to show how strong Denis, and her regular DP Agnès Godard, are at pulling people in. On a rainy night, a man (Laurent Grévill) is seen standing near an open window. Somewhere else, also at night but without any rain (one of many instances of screwing around with chronology in the film), a young woman (Lola Créton) is walking around the streets completely naked save for the high heels she’s wearing. The next scene, which shows paramedics covering up a body on the street, implies that the man in the first scene jumped to his death. How these two events link together is where Bastards starts.

The naked girl turns out to be the daughter of the man who killed himself. Marco (Vincent Lindon), the man’s brother-in-law, leaves his job and life on the seas as a captain to help deal with the situation. Marco’s sister (Julie Bataille) places the blame squarely on Edouard Laporte (Michel Subor), a wealthy financial figure who might have had a hand in the failure of the dead man’s business. Marco moves into an empty apartment below Laporte, presumably on some sort of mission for vengeance, and begins an affair with Laporte’s wife (Chiara Mastroianni). As Marco’s affair intensifies, and he investigates further into the relationship between Laporte and his brother-in-law, he starts discovering some dark and disturbing information.

Questions will run through the minds of anyone watching Bastards. Does Marco have real feelings for Laporte’s spouse, or is it just part of his plan? What exactly was the business relationship between Laporte and Marco’s family? What exactly happened to Marco’s niece? Bastards exists in a world where everything seems to be undefined or barely explained, leaving viewers to fill in the majority of the blanks. My assumption that Mastroianni is Laporte’s wife is only because they live together and have a child. It could be a long term relationship, or she could be a mistress of Laporte for all I know. Knowledge is hard to really obtain in Bastards, but it’s seemingly for the best. Every time something is suggested or divulged it implies a darker, more hideous truth barely lying underneath.

That feeling of dread and darkness permeates throughout, and Denis’ ability to evoke these emotions are masterful at times. Shortly after Marco helps Laporte’s son with his broken bicycle, there’s a random cutaway while Marco lies in bed: A distraught Mastroianni, walking around a forest with police until she comes upon her son’s bike. Could it be a flash forward, a hint of what’s to come, or just a fleeting thought in Marco’s mind? The scene is never touched upon again, but it certainly helps set a mood of pure discomfort. Plenty of moments in Bastards play out like this. An innocuous moment, like Laporte sitting with his son in a car, is shot by Denis in a way that suggests something far worse is going on. The fact that almost all of these scenes are never mentioned again only makes their implications far more disturbing.

As much as I enjoy Denis’ style in Bastards, it doesn’t work entirely. A subplot involving Créton and two other characters (Denis regulars Grégoire Colin and Florence Loiret Caille) gets obscure to the point of frustration. While other people thoroughly enjoy Denis’ elliptical approach, I’ve found that it can sometimes muddle an apparently simple piece of narrative information. The film’s conclusion also feels abrupt to the point of sucking out all of the dramatic weight from it. A major decision by one character is done in such a rushed, hasty manner that it loses much of its impact. That hastiness is thankfully made up for with the film’s final shocking scene (which, in a touch of some pitch black humour, is set to Tindersticks singing “Put your love in me”). Unlike the other Denis films I’ve seen, my issues with the narrative were thankfully much smaller than usual. On mood and atmosphere alone, Bastards is highly impressive and one of Denis’ strongest works.