Cannes Film Festival is known for its standing ovations and this year, we’re trying to predict how long they’ll last.
The Cannes Film Festival, perhaps the glitziest, most glamorous film festival of them all, is now in full swing. Celebrities and journalists alike have gathered on the French Riviera for 11 days of movie premieres and press conferences.
In the next few days, the internet will be full of reviews for the new films by Richard Linklater, Wes Anderson, Lynne Ramsay and even Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (here’s one!). We’re also going to be getting daily updates on the lengths of the standing ovations each film gets, a scoring methodology that’s Cannes’ own version of a Rotten Tomatoes score.
Most films presented at the festival will get a standing ovation and (some) headlines love to highlight the specific minutes the audience stayed standing up and clapping. So let’s play a game. Here are our predictions for this year’s standing ovations, including a ‘hand colour’ reference, to indicate clapping enthusiasm levels and the chafing caused.
Why not leave your predictions in the comments? And then, for a bonus point, have a guess at how long the standing ovation for each of these will be when they get to the Odeon in Dudley…
Eddington (dir. Ari Aster) – 7 minutes (hand colour: Tickle Me Pink #FC89AC)
Ari Aster’s films aren’t to everyone’s taste and, like Beau Is Afraid, Eddington might be a bit too out there. So we think the film will receive a polite, but confused 7-minute standing ovation. We’re predicting a few walkouts and a couple attendees to fall asleep during the film’s reported 148-minute runtime. Hopefully the seats in the cinema are comfy.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (dir. Christopher McQuarrie) – 16 minutes (hand colour: Rouge #F26B8A)
Eight minutes of applause for Tom Cruise surviving everything he’s put himself through while playing Tom… Sorry, Ethan Hunt… across an eight-movie run. And another eight minutes for Christopher McQuarrie surviving five movies directing Tom Cruise – while, as a writer, managing to use a major tentpole franchise as a stealth psychological analysis of its star and his strange brand of charisma. Every single clap will be deserved.
Update: Oh no! We’re off to a terrible start! In between writing this and publishing it, The Final Reckoning has come in at a tepid five minutes of applause. We’d someone managed to bloat the running time of the applause threefold.
Alpha (dir. Julia Ducournau) – 7 or 8 minutes (hand colour: Brink #FF6090)
Once 10% of the audience has walked out – the last film Ducourau made was the car humping one – the ones who are left behind will need to amplify their efforts to get across the sound of a loud auditorium. We’re going for seven or eight minutes here, double that for people who came via public transport.
The Phoenician Scheme (dir. Wes Anderson) – ∞ minutes (hand colour: Blood Red #660000)
A Wes Anderson film? Cannes? The applause will continue until next year’s festival.
Die My Love (dir. Lynne Ramsay) – 9 minutes (hand colour: Fiery Rose #FB4570)
The buzziest Palme d’Or competitor among the heads? Probably. Not least ‘cause, it’s taken Ramsey eight years to follow up You Were Never Really Here, which came out the same year as the book this film is based on. Die My Love’s premiere audience, then, will be attending a film festival ‘event’, created by a cult director, packed with star power, and based on an established text. It’s a perfect Cannes storm. What’s more, they’ll want some return on the efforts they went to to bag tickets. It’d be unfair to consider it a snub if Die My Love gets less than a minute for every year its director has been away, but we’d raise an eyebrow.
Eleanor The Great (dir. Scarlett Johansson) – 14 minutes (hand colour: Old Rose #C08081)
Just like the ovation for Mission: Impossible is mostly for Tom Cruise’s ability to stay alive while clinging to the outside of a plane, the standing ovation for Eleanor The Great will be to commemorate June Squibb’s awesomeness. If the film is genuinely great, that’s just a plus. Scarlett Johansson is making her directorial debut here as well, so that will add a few minutes to it too. Every now and then, a Cannes standing ovation comfortably smashes past ten minutes. This might be one of them.
Highest 2 Lowest (dir. Spike Lee) – 15 min (hand colour: Amaranth Red #DA012D)
Spike Lee and Denzel Washington, together again? That’s going to tickle a lot of fancies and it helps that the trailer for Highest 2 Lowest looks pretty scrumptious too. Cannes tends to be a formal sort of affair, but Lee and Washington might be able to jazz up the place with their new joint. We’re hoping for a full on dance party, but will settle for an enthusiastic 15-minute standing ovation with a couple of cheers from the real fans.
The History Of Sound (dir. Oliver Hermanus) – 7 minutes of purring (hand colour: tabby)
Not one, but two internet boyfriends in a tale of forbidden love? In period costume? On an emotional journey through the lives changed forever by World War I? AND the promise of some kind of meditation on the power of sound recording as a vital element of the cinematic medium from a director whose last film was a lovely remake of 50s Kurosawa? Film nerd catnip. This should get a great reception if the audience is not rolling on their backs, out of their gourds batting pompoms around by the time the credits roll.
Geostorm (dir. Dean Devlin) – Endless (hand colour: Fandango #B53389)
It’s not screening, but it should be. Clearly an admin error.
Honey Don’t! (dir. Ethan Coen) – 4 minutes (hand colour, probably Blush Pink #FE828C)
Those who enjoyed the MacGuffin of Ethan Coen’s last film as director, Drive-Away Dolls, may be less keen to show their enthusiasm in public for whatever he’s come up with next. You’re fairly safe applauding a Coen in France though, so a respectable four minutes at a fairly consistent volume, with a few whoops and cheers thrown in from a sizable sub-section of the crowd to whom the central relationship in this film may appeal. You can probably add another minute for big-screen Charlie Day and Chris Evans leaning even harder into his ‘post-Marvel on-screen asshole’ persona if either is in the crowd.
The Mastermind (dir. Kelly Reichardt) – 5-6 minutes (hand colour: Taffy #F987C5)
Josh O’Connor off the back of Challengers, Alana Haim off the back of Liquorice Pizza and John Magaro off the back of being ‘the sweet guy who you wished starred in more things’ (and Koln 75) in a 70s period piece about barely semi-competent art theft. While these actors are now too mainstream to be considered genuine hipster choices, this screening will nevertheless be packed with hipsters wanting a glimpse of their gods. Expect an ‘ironic’ five or six minutes, with a low mumble in the background as everyone explains to the person next to them how they ‘loved those guys before they were big’.
Nouvelle Vague (dir. Richard Linklater) – 6 seconds or 6 minutes (hand colour: Pitchfork Brown #80461B or French Pink #FB6F90)
An American director presenting a love letter/homage to A Bout De Souffle, that also tells the story of its making, with Godard (played by Guillaume Marbeck) as a central character, making its debut at Cannes in The Year of Our Lord 2025. This has the potential to go very, very wrong. In the same way that juggling with sticks of lit dynamite may be considered a questionable life choice. Still, at least Linklater’s French-language debut has his decision to work in its subjects’ native tongue going for it. Nothing if not a ballsy move from the director of School Of Rock and Hit Man – and definitely a ‘one for me’ effort…
Slauson Rec (dir. Leo Lewis O’Neill) – 1 minute, gets a bit awkward (hand colour: Lemonade #FCBACB)
Slauson Rec will be the one no one knows how to react to. The documentary apparently captures the ‘intense’ relationships between Shia LaBeouf and his mentees at the titular acting school he founded. LaBeouf reportedly supports the film’s release – which seems 100 percent on-brand for a man equally famous for starring in an Indiana Jones film and a greenscreen video of him screaming ‘JUST DO IT’ – but audience members may not know whether clapping equals enabling the troubled actor.
Cannes Film Festival takes place from 13th May – 24th May.
Penned by Maria Lattila, Ryan Lambie, John Moore, Simon Brew.
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