{"id":7715,"date":"2025-05-28T04:06:45","date_gmt":"2025-05-28T04:06:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/05\/28\/at-cannes-kristen-stewart-scarlett-johansson-and-harris-dickinson\/"},"modified":"2025-05-28T04:06:50","modified_gmt":"2025-05-28T04:06:50","slug":"at-cannes-kristen-stewart-scarlett-johansson-and-harris-dickinson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/05\/28\/at-cannes-kristen-stewart-scarlett-johansson-and-harris-dickinson\/","title":{"rendered":"At Cannes: Kristen Stewart, Scarlett Johansson and Harris Dickinson"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Three actors made their directorial debuts at the 78th annual Cannes Film Festival. From left, Kristen Stewart, Scarlett Johansson\u00a0and Harris Dickinson. Stephane Cardinale\/Corbis via Getty Images; Lionel Hahn\/Getty Images; Daniele Venturelli\/WireImage<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cAre you fucking <\/span>kidding<\/span><\/i> me? Okaay,\u201d crowed Kristen Stewart<\/a> at the world premiere of <\/span>The Chronology of Water<\/keyword><\/span><\/i>, her debut as a bona-fide filmmaker after eight years of struggling to adapt Lidia Yukovich\u2019s acclaimed memoir for the big screen. Vibrating with nervous excitement during her opening remarks, she thanked all of her collaborators with a fierce joy, ending with a dedication to the book\u2019s author. \u201cTo Lidia Yuknavitch<\/a>,\u201d she said, \u201cfor writing and spewing the very face of <\/span>fuck<\/span><\/i>! Thank you for your trickle, thank you for the <\/span>gush<\/span><\/i>. Thank you for everything! Now let\u2019s rip off this bandage and watch this fucking movie!\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Actors acted like directors this past week during the Cannes Film Festival, and their newfound roles were just as surprising and convincing as their acclaimed performances in front of the camera. Along with Stewart\u2019s messy but vibrant debut, Scarlett Johansson<\/a> debuted her rookie film<\/span> Eleanor the Great<\/span><\/i>, a touching work starring nonagenarian June Squibb<\/a> that was sweetly reminiscent of quirky \u201990s indie comedies. And up-and-coming Brit hottie Harris Dickinson<\/a> followed up his steamy turn co-starring with Nicole Kidman in feminist sex fantasy <\/span>Babygirl<\/span><\/i> by getting behind the camera himself and making <\/span>Urchin<\/span><\/i>, a searing and startlingly mature piece of social realism.<\/span><\/p>\n

The trio of films were not in the Official Competition at Cannes, instead appearing in the sidebar section Un Certain Regard, a less high-pressure berth that offers a more supportive showcase for new and emerging filmmakers. All three have enough commercial potential\u2014and artistic merit\u2014to guarantee a commercial release, if not an end-of-year awards campaign. (Sony Pictures Classics had already picked up <\/span>Eleanor the Great<\/span><\/i> before the festival selected it). But what\u2019s so striking are their stylistic differences, and how they reflect each actor\u2019s sensibilities.<\/span><\/p>\n

True to form, <\/span>The Chronology of Water<\/keyword><\/span><\/i> is all Kristen Stewart\u2014and might arguably be the <\/span>most<\/span><\/i> Kristen Stewart movie ever made: aggressively aggrieved, almost comically confrontational, hyperventilating with an in-your-face attitude that belies a self-consciously juvenile insecurity. At times, the drama delivers genuinely harrowing shocks; but interspersed are moments so over-thought and over-wrought\u2014all <\/span>lookkit-me<\/span><\/i> camera angles, word-salad sound design, and flutter-cut montages\u2014that it plays like the product of an addled film student more eager to provoke than impress.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Imogen Poots in Kristen Stewart\u2019s directorial debut, The Chronology of Water.<\/em> Cannes Film Festival<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And then there\u2019s Imogen Poots<\/a>. The wide-eyed intensity and physicality that Poots brings to her portrayal of Yuknavitch\u2014from sexually abused teen to weathered-and-wise middle-aged mother\u2014is revelatory. And that\u2019s clearly due to Stewart\u2019s clarity of vision. The way that Poots expertly delivers bursts of anger, fleeting moments of joy, wallowed self-pity and adrift soulfulness proves that an assured directorial hand is working behind the camera to modulate those mood swings.<\/span><\/p>\n

The strongest parts of <\/span>The Chronology of Water<\/keyword><\/span><\/i> are those character reveals\u2014especially the quieter ones, when a wrung-out Yuknavitch, after a punishing gauntlet of sex, drugs, and alcohol, slowly finds the path to redemption by writing her way out of personal oblivion. That\u2019s when Stewart\u2019s dogged devotion to the source material shines though in a way that signals a major filmmaking talent.<\/span><\/p>\n

With <\/span>Eleanor the Great<\/span><\/i>, Johansson is taking a much less ambitious stab at directing, one that feels more like a test run than a full-throated attempt to become an auteur. It also feels like the project was inspired by her 94-year-old lead actor. \u201cWhen we were shooting my film,\u201d she said in her opening remarks at the film\u2019s premiere, \u201cI said, \u2018if I do my job right, my dream is to see June on the Croisette in Cannes.\u2019 And here we are! So it really is a dream come true.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Eleanor the Great<\/span><\/i> is modest in style but emotionally rich, a comic drama where Floridian retiree Eleanor, after the death of her longtime best friend, moves back to New York City to be with her overworked adult daughter and genial but detached grandson. Faced with empty days and lonely nights, she starts to deliver little white lies that eventually snowball into an avalanche of deception.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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June Squibb in Scarlett Johansson\u2019s directorial debut, Elenor the Great.<\/em> Courtesy of Sony PIctures Classics<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a director, Johansson trusts Squibb to carry the film, letting the actor\u2019s genial nature lead a light-hearted story into sadder depths. \u201cIt\u2019s about friendship, it\u2019s about grief, it\u2019s about forgiveness,\u201d said Johansson. \u201cAnd I think those are all things that we can use a lot of more of these days.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But of these three Cannes-f\u00eated neophyte helmers, the twentysomething Dickinson is the one who delivers a real cinematic wallop with <\/span>Urchin<\/span><\/i>\u2014a film he not only directed but also wrote. His look at the self-destructive patterns of a young man on the fringes of East London feels so fully formed, so confident in its plot points and performances, so strikingly restrained in its direction and so absolutely wrenching overall that the result feels preternaturally mature for such a young actor-turned-director.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Skeptics might call <\/span>Urchin<\/span><\/i> a knock-off of iconic kitchen-sink miserabilists like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh\u2014British masters who have devoted their astonishing careers to chronicling society\u2019s disenfranchised and alienated. But there\u2019s something different enough about Dickinson\u2019s approach that he feels more like a successor to these directors than an imitator.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Like Stewart and Johansson, Dickinson\u2019s acting acumen certainly explains the uniformly absorbing performances\u2014especially from lead Frank Dillane<\/a>, a frustratingly charming mess too prone to self-sabotage despite his best efforts to resist the temptations of drugs and petty theft. But it\u2019s the cumulative power of his storytelling, a slow-burn episodic script that builds confidently and irreversibly towards tragedy, that heralds Dickinson as such a promising new voice. There\u2019s no doubt more will come from all three multi-hyphenate stars.<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"Screening<\/p><\/div>\n