I’ll cut right to the chase: the Midnighters are usually my most anticipated sidebar of any given festival (from last year’s Cannes alone, they treated us to “Exit 8” and I was higher than most on “Honey Don’t!”), So I come into films premiering in this section with an open mind and eager heart. Save for one visually inventive animated film, they’re nearly all disappointments. It’s entirely possible that films that would have slotted nicely here were regulated to other sections (see: “Victorian Psycho” and “Too Many Beasts”), but here’s hoping that future renditions of this section won’t feel like leftovers from others.
Quentin Dupieux makes a return to English-speaking films with “Full Phil,” and it’s clear that the time in between hasn’t kept his pen sharp. Yes, it’s absurdist, so its overly literal dialogue and awkward line deliveries from the father-daughter duo played by Woody Harrelson and Kristen Stewart can be read as full-throated commitments to the bit. But it oscillates between mind-numbingly nonsensical and awkwardly literal that by the end, you’re not sure what the point of it all was. It reminds me of those Michelin-starred meals that are fancy to the point of being saccharine; they look pretty, but there’s not much by way of sustenance.
What feels particularly grievous is that Dupieux wastes the talents of fine actors like Harrelson and Stewart, who are trapped in archetypes that deny them the ability to tap into anything remotely resembling interiority. Harrelson has played the know-it-all diva many times now, and in his role as the titular Phil, a wealthy tycoon, he delivers the entertaining but hackneyed hits. The first part of the film sees him arguing with his daughter, Madeleine (Stewart), about how she clogged the toilet on his side of their sprawling Paris suite. It’s a bit that feels like it goes on for far too long, and there’s only so many ways you can subject yourself to variations of “You shouldn’t have clogged the toilet / Well, too bad I did” type of dialogue exchanges that it becomes maddening.
To give Dupieux some credit, he clearly understands that there’s some appeal in witnessing beautiful people eat. It’s through Stewart’s Madeline that the film dips into its more surreal elements: throughout their arguing, she orders more room service, never showing signs of satiety. Stewart delights in literally chewing the scenery, munching on all sorts of Parisian food in such off-putting ways that they stand in stark contrast to the dishes’ aesthetic appeal. There’s a joy in watching Stewart eating them in ways that the creator of those dishes probably never would have intended.
The actress seems aware that the way a character eats reveals as much about a character as dialogue. One great bit comes when she gets a tomahawk steak, grips it from the bone, and eats it the way one might do a Harold’s Chicken Shack drumstick; she clearly has an appetite for the unconventional. She can’t quite escape the grip of poorly written dialogue; “I like boys,” she says to her father at one point, and I could have sworn I saw Stewart wink in jest at how untrue that statement is.
Between bites, Madeleine watches a black-and-white monster movie in which a “Shape of Water”-type sea creature terrorizes characters played by Emma Mackey, Tim Heidecker, and Eric Wareheim. It’s a far more interesting film and crafted with more care than the live story we’re watching unfold. The more Madeleine eats, the more Phil grows in size, at one point spotting a belly so engorged you’re worried the long movement might make it pop, sending organs and blood everywhere.
Maybe it’s all some metaphor about how kids’ mindless consumption becomes a burden for their parents? It’s hard to say, and as the film descends, it feels like Dupieux and his collaborators are just throwing everything into a pan and cooking everything at the same temperature, unable to gel the ingredients into anything cohesive. I firmly believe that a healthy cinematic diet should also consist of junk food, but “Full Phil” doesn’t have the dignity to be even that. It’s just empty calories,
There’s some culinary carryover with “Sanguine (Species)” from director Marion Le Corroller, which is one of those projects where the idea is far more interesting than the execution. It’s a body horror satire with a feminist bend that will undoubtedly draw comparisons to Coralie Fargeat and Julia Ducournau, but it’s far more in line with Cronenberg’s “Dead Ringers” or Verbinski’s “A Cure for Wellness,” in the way it explores how the horrors of our chosen vocations take on violent, embodied consequences. Making a film about the horrors of work burnout is an intriguing premise, given grind culture and the hustle economy, but it’s too stilted in its machinations and too uninvested in its characters’ lives to cut more than skin-deep.
The beginning starts with such promise that it’s hard to accept the ways Le Corroller loses the plot along the way. We’re transported to the inner workings of a fast food restaurant whose rhythms feel more like a concert: the lighting feels uniquely garish, and the sounds, from customers chewing to order numbers being called, are an assault on the senses. In other words, it’s understandable that these are the prime conditions for someone to go insane due to this type of work, and Le Corroller delights in showing how all of these factors can crescendo to a crash out, giving the film its name. After a customer angrily demands the Royal King burger despite the store being out of inventory, the cashier snaps and beats him to death before killing himself.
After the cold open, we meet Margot (Mara Taquin), who starts as an intern in a high-intensity Emergency Room, where the head doctor treats patients as if it were more like a sweatshop. Margot faces her own self-doubt and competition with her coworkers; she encounters patients whose bodies are marked with a mass of red veins and darkened eyes, not unlike the restaurant worker we see at the film’s start. When Margot begins to experience the same symptoms–due to a virus that infects the overworked–she finds that everyone who works in this high-intensity environment can be a potential carrier.
Taquin makes for a capable lead, and the film is wise to anchor the drama by keeping the camera close to her face. She’s a problem solver at heart, and yet Taquin lets Margot’s softer, vulnerable sides ripple across her face in moments of crisis. She is strong but appropriately overwhelmed by her family’s expectations. She feels the weight of being the embodiment of her family’s biggest dreams, thanks to how far she has come in her education, and the outbreak represents not just physical disruption but an attack on her family’s hopes.
It’s a shame that the film around her is a slog to get through. It has flashes of contemporary medical drama, but it takes far too long to finally get interesting. Cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman has some fun with cinematography at least, using wide shots and implementing first-person POV for those who have been infected, to make it seem like we’re in the middle of a zombie video game. This needs to be punctured quickly and with verve, but it feels like getting stabbed in your gums when your mouth is on novacaine; the impact is significantly muted.
Featuring an electric soundtrack, a delightfully self-aware sense of humor, and making the most out of its imaginative animation style, “Jim Queen” has all the makings of an animated cult classic. Its narrative runs a bit thin, and it’s one of those films that masquerades as having one idea with nonstop visual gags, but its self-assuredness will make you catch feelings quickly. It’s an animated charmer that blends raunch and warmth into a memorable gem.
From the start, directors Nicolas Athane and Marco Nguyen tip you off to you exactly the type of film this will be: opening to a shot of histrionically ripped men in the throes of lifting, they begin to croon about thor gym’s mission statement: “We like ripped bodies (well-hung big packages)” they declare, before other lyrics dive into the importance of physical health for being a good bottom or top (I’m sure the lyrics sing better in French). We meet the titular Jim Parfait (Alex Ramirès), a gym influencer and star of the gym who boasts a 24-pack of abs and consumes enough creatine and protein powder that would decimate a legion of Victorian children.
The genius of the film’s sensibilities is distilled in the opening scene: everything is dialed to an eleven, with Jim’s abs looking like mountains rather than anything resembling what you’d find on a normal body. There will be commentary around gay subculture and powerful sequences about learning to love yourself, but this is atypical entertainment at its most vivacious and irreverent. The animators are clearly having fun as they stuff the film with one too many visual gags (and other kinds of bondage tools) to count, inviting you to do the same.
If the film’s one-note sensibilities weren’t already evident from that opening, its inciting action will also reveal what Athane and Nguyen are commenting on: Jim is horrified to learn that he’s contracted a new STI called heterosis, which turns people straight. Horrified that he’s becoming straighter by the minute (evidenced by how he’s catching feelings for his friend Nina (Shirley Souagnon) he embarks on a journey to find a cure. Along the way, he gets entangled with Lucien (Jérémy Gillet), who is obsessed with Jim. He’s the son of Prime Minister Christine Bayer (Elisabeth Wiener), a Margaret Thatcher-type leader who couldn’t be happier about a reduction of the gay population. Bobbypills’s animation style feels like a throwback to the very best of Adult Swim programming, and it’s nice to see it cloak a story with such modern angsts and sensibilities.
To paraphrase what Jim says at the start, “Be yourself because everyone else is already taken.” “Jim Queen” lives fully into its identity, inviting others to do the same. Its central conceit may be wild, but there’s a horror that it taps into as well, that of living your whole life as a lie to appease a system that would benefit from your suppression rather than celebrate your liberation. If pain is “weakness leaving the body” (as many a Planet Fitness motivational poster may tell you), then maybe, as the film shares, and tears you experience upon finally accepting who you are are just long-nested shame finally leaving the body.
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