– CANNES 2026: Léa Mysius directs a sharp, tense and stripped back thriller telling a dark, modern tale about family and the return of the murky past in a nigh-on huis clos context
Bastien Bouillon, Hafsia Herzi and Twaba El Gharchy in The Birthday Party
“Your neighbours might not have been entirely honest with you”. A fearsome kind of aquarium, where predators burst out of nowhere and long-buried secrets are unearthed, is the setting for Léa Mysius’ achingly intense, new movie, The Birthday Party, which was adapted from Laurent Mauvignier’s novel and presented in competition at the 79th Cannes Film Festival.
Choosing a farm in the French provinces as the liminal space in which to gradually heighten the malaise of her nine characters (seven main characters and two secondary) who have been thrown together by circumstance, the filmmaker delivers an incredibly hard-hitting, real-time cinematographic reconstruction of a puzzle, linking back to the troubled past of some of its protagonists – an incisive, life-science mini-treaty set in a twilight world.
“In nature, colour is as inexistent as boundaries: there’s only the sun and the shadows.” Goya’s Black Paintings are a source of inspiration for Cristina (Monica Bellucci), who lives alone off of her pension (she hasn’t sold a painting for a while), in a huge house abutting the home of a small family composed of debt-laden farmer Thomas (Bastien Bouillon), his wife Nora (Hafsia Herzi) – who’s working herself to oblivion in an urban planning office in town – and their ten-year-old daughter Ida (Twaba El Gharchy). But three brothers – Franck (Benoît Magimel), Flo (Paul Hamy) and Bègue (Alane Delhaye) – who are clearly troublemakers despite the sweet and amiable nature of the eldest, soon rock up having seen one of Ida’s Tiktok videos. After killing Christina’s dog, they wait for Nora, and, when she finally returns home after dark, she’s greeted by the fateful words of these strangers: “aren’t you going to kiss us? Happy birthday, Leila”…
When revenants track down a ghost, old scores are settled and painful truths revealed. Delivering a French rural version of A History of Violence with a masterly sense of suspense, Léa Mysius works meticulously on opportunities for duality (two houses, two families, two lives, two loves, freedom/survival and confinement, the past and the present, different social classes, contradictory emotions, etc.) and on an end-of-cycle atmosphere (with chemical pollution in the water, Europe having “not taken care of everyone”). Including an increasing number of viewpoints (everyone observes everyone else), the director builds up a brutally melancholy portrait in which everyone has their own excuses (“you broke my heart”) for numbing their sorrows with sleeping pills and alcohol, which is lifted by a hint of dark humour and an excellent group of actors (headed up by Benoît Magimel with his worrying “don’t be afraid” reassurances). Mysius demonstrates crystal clear vision in The Birthday Party, never loosening her narrative embrace, lending each and every character a certain depth, and carefully maintaining coherence (in visual and musical terms too, thanks to Paul Guilhaume and Florencia Di Concilio) in a film which breathes new life into the genre. It’s not ground-breaking, but it does leave a memorable mark through its personal intensity.
The Birthday Party was produced by F Comme Film in co-production with France 3 Cinéma, Division and Belgium’s Beside Productions. mk2 Films are steering world sales.
(Translated from French)
