Bonjour hi. (Where are we, Montreal?) The 79th Cannes Film Festival is nearing its end. As I write this, there are only two competition films yet to premiere, both from female directors. Cannes does have an unfortunate tendency to relegate women to the back—like poor Kelly Reichardt, who always gets a crummy late-fest slot. They also kept the gays waiting this year. On Wednesday night, Ira Sachs premiered his film The Man I Love, and Thursday saw the debuts of both The Black Ball and Coward. Yes, they made the two gay war movies in competition premiere on the same day. Which did one of them no favors. 

I said in my previous letter that this post would be about my personal favorite films at the festival, and I will get to that ranking, but let’s first talk about the battle of the bulges (sorry). On one side you have The Black Ball, from Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo (Los Javis), which is as swooning and vibrant as their series Veneno, while taking on the challenge of intertwining three different narratives and capturing some facet of the Spanish Civil War. On the other side there is Coward, from the Belgian formalist Lukas Dhont, a polite and reserved depiction of WWI soldiers in love. I saw The Black Ball first, twirled out of the theater, and then sat down for Coward, which was like eating a baked potato right after enjoying a sumptuous omakase.