Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur just missed out on topping Screen’s Cannes jury grid while Pedro Almodovar’s Bitter Christmas also landed.
Minotaur scored an average of 3.2 from the critics, putting it in second place behind Pawel Pawlikowski’s Fatherland on 3.3. Ratings included five four-stars (excellent) and four three-stars (good) while Katja Nicomedus (Die Ziet) and Stephanie Zacharek (Time) were slightly less impressed, giving the Russian-language drama two stars (average).
Click on the image above for the most up-to-date version of the grid.
The exiled Russian filmmaker has consistently scored strongly on the jury grid, including a 3.2 for 2017’s Loveless and 3.5 for 2014’s Leviathan.
Set in a small Russian town in 2022, the year of the invasion of Ukraine, Minotaur stars Dmitry Mazurov as a business executive whose controlled existence is impacted by professional crises, global chaos and his wife’s affair.
Bitter Christmas landed on the grid with an average of 2.2, making it Almodovar’s lowest scoring film in Cannes. His previous ratings include 3.4 for Pain And Glory in 2018; 2.4 for Julieta in 2016; 2.8 for The Skin I Live In in 2011; 3.2 for Broken Embraces in 2009; 3.4 for Volver in 2006, that year’s jury grid winner; and 3.2 for All About My Mother in 1999.
The Spanish veteran’s latest is a meta-fictional tragicomedy following a filmmaker (played by Leonardo Sbaraglia) who writes a script about an advertising director (Barbara Lennie) navigating a crisis two decades earlier.
The next films to land on the grid are Emmanuel Marre’s Man Of His Time and Ira Sach’s The Man I Love.
The jury grid is updating live on screendaily.com.
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