Ben Kenigsberg

2 weeks ago | rogerebert.com | Ben Kenigsberg

Jodie Foster is known to be fluent in French, but Rebecca Zlotowski's film "A Private Life," showing out of competition,is said to mark her first time playing a leading role in the language. It's a good fit, as her character, Lilian Steiner, is an American by birth. Lilian has lived in France for decades, but her capacity for reading nuances may still be slightly off. Then again, that blind spot may simply be a part of who she is.

2 weeks ago | rogerebert.com | Ben Kenigsberg

Bearing no relation to the Joseph Conrad novel, the competition entry "The Secret Agent," from the Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho ("Bacurau"), is a tricky item to discuss. Not only does it have the kind of convoluted plot-filled with double identities, assassins, and possible red herrings-that you would expect from a film with that title, but it's also a movie that backs into revealing what it's really about.

2 weeks ago | rogerebert.com | Ben Kenigsberg

Dust, a character explains in "A Useful Ghost," is supposed to be a necessary evil in Thailand. It's a sign of progress; houses are being razed to build a mall. Of course, having a lot of dust around means that you need to own a vacuum cleaner, and the self-identified "academic ladyboy" (Wisarut Homhuan) we meet at the beginning of the movie has just purchased a faulty one: For whatever reason, overnight, the vacuum released all the dust it had gathered.

2 weeks ago | rogerebert.com | Ben Kenigsberg

"The Little Sister," the third theatrical feature directed by actress Hafsia Herzi (and the first to be shown in competition), is the sort of movie that sounds ordinary when described but is nicely judged in its details. Based on a novel by Fatima Daas, it follows five seasons in the life of a young woman, Fatima (Nadia Melliti), as she transitions from high school into college in Paris and at the same time grapples with an important discovery about who she is.

3 weeks ago | rogerebert.com | Ben Kenigsberg

Sean Baker, the winner of last year's Palme d'Or (and four Oscars) for " Anora," already has a new film at Cannes-sort of. "Left-Handed Girl," in Critics' Week, was directed by Shih-Ching Tsou, Baker's collaborator of more than two decades. Together, they wrote and directed their first feature, "Take Out" (2004). Tsou has produced several of Baker's films and sometimes acted in them.