Cannes 2026 – Day 9: the salute of Swann Arlaud, pop icon de Gaulle, flamboyant Rami Malek…

Every day, the hot spot live from the 79th Cannes Film Festival.

Film of the day: Our salvation by Emmanuel Marre (in competition)

September 1940. Henri Marre (Swann Arlaud, absolutely brilliant) arrives in Vichy with his political treaty under his arm, ready to “gain in efficiency”. For this frustrated and vague engineer, Pétain is both a hero and possibly his springboard. Marre’s coup de force is first of all to film the collaboration from the POV of the small civil servant: step after step, in a twisted language of “management” before its time, anachronistic and chilling with familiarity. The other strong point is that it’s funny – with an offbeat humor, which plays on the grotesque (the “Long live the Marshal” to be shouted) and the constant shift. In this register, the staging dares everything: anachronistic musical outbursts, a burlesque dance scene in the middle, and, stuck to its characters, nervous, always in movement, saturated with grating scenes, all this tilts the film towards something other than a chronicle.

But the film’s stroke of genius is the couple. Paulette (Sandrine Blancke) takes the opposite route to Henri: the more he blinds himself, the more she sees. The two trajectories deviate in the same plane and the story becomes an intimate tragedy. In a competition saturated with historical frescoes, Marre takes the opposite view: no great men, no period paintings, just an ordinary guy who is sinking. And it is precisely there, at the height of the desk, the man and the bedroom, that History hurts the most. Masterful?

Superhero of the day: Simon Abkarian in The Battle of Gaulle (outside competition)

On the Croisette we were expecting superheroes, bounty hunters, aliens and even Greek Gods, all from the US. But the big (this remains to be proven) Hollywood studios seem to have given themselves the word not to come. Who cares, we have our own Hercules on the red carpet: General de Gaulle. De Gaulle, the man of Free France, of June 18, of the battle of Bir Hakeim… After Moulin-Lellouche, here is de Gaulle-Abkarian, the Resistance in full. It’s Past & Furious. Guys in tights or from a galaxy far, far away can’t compete. Abkarian then. He is the General of the diptych The Battle of Gaulle by Antonin Baudry (photo below) whose first part – The Iron Age – was revealed here from the top of its 80 million euro budget.

A de Gaulle who still has nothing of the overhanging and intimidating figure. It is June 40. The legend remains to be written, an army has to be rebuilt. Baudry is also the author of comics (Quai d’Orsay it was him!) intends to bring De Gaulle back to human height. He is a sort of Don Quixote with what that implies of grotesque naivety. Simon Abkarian understood everything about the character. Charismatic, impressive but aware that the armor must also be cracked, he advances with his head held high with the certainties of the General anchored in his body. The world rocks, man remains upright. A little Buster Keaton, a little Tintin. De Gaulle pop icon. You had to know how to play it.

Performance of the day: Rami Malek in The Man I Love (in competition)

After the disaster NurembergRami Malek redeems his credibility with The Man I Love by Ira Sachs, sort of Let the show begin in the gay scene of New York in the 80s. Malek is quite sublime as an actor condemned to AIDS, who decides against all odds to play the lead role in a final play. A flamboyant, intense, tragic and very sexy score, which culminates with a blistering acoustic cover of “What Have They Done to My Song, Ma”. Interpretation award? This would make a good turnaround for an actor whose career we thought had ended since then. Dying can wait.

The video: interview with Arthur Harari for The Unknown

A photographer is dragged by his friends to a party where his gaze cannot take his eyes off a stranger whom he decides to follow before waking up a few hours later… in her body! By bringing the comic strip to the screen The David Zimmerman Case co-signed with his brother Lucas, the director ofOnoda and co-writer ofAnatomy of a fall offers a singular game of metamorphoses into which its performers Léa Seydoux and Niels Schneider have immersed themselves wholeheartedly. First met him just before the screening of this film which marks its entry into the Cannes competition and was going to divide festival-goers like never before this year into two irreconcilable camps. Those like us who completely surrendered to a story populated with insane cinematic moments and those who immediately stayed at the door.

Troop of the day: Orange flavored wedding by Christophe Honoré (Cannes Première)

In his new film, presented at Cannes Première, Christophe Honoré takes up, extends and increases the story of his family which he had already tackled in his play The sky of Nantesrecounting in full a wedding evening (just punctuated by three flash-forwards). And to play these grandmothers, mothers, uncles, aunts, cousins, he relies on an absolutely insane cast: Adèle Exarchopoulos (heartbreaking as a borderline aunt, but also hilarious with her “Michel Drucker, I adore him”), Vincent Lacoste, Paul Kircher (who has never been so good), Alban Lenoir, Xavier Lacaille, Malou Khebizi, Nadia Tereszkiewicz, and others whose names are less known but whose faces are familiar: Jules Sagot (the little computer genius of Legends Office), Noée Abita, Prune Bozo (amazing as a teenager upset by the death of Claude François), Saadia Bentaïeb, not to mention the children… and all of whom are magnificent, all bring to their characters a depth, flesh and melancholy which enliven the film and give it an energy electrified by Honoré’s direction, which cleverly alternates choral shots and shots stuck on faces. The director said, after the screening, that during filming, at certain moments, the actors did not even know if they were in the shot or not, and yet they were acting, and their happiness at being on screen, their intense “complicity” (to quote the director again) made this closed session in the village hall, on paper rather dark (madness, failures, cooked hatreds and drunken embraces) a very moving marriage.

Song of the day: “Like a hurricane”, in The Corset by Louis Clichy (Un Certain Regard)

Presented in UCR, The Corset follows Christophe, a young boy who grows up in a farming family in Beauce in the 1980s and who, at the dawn of adolescence, begins to suffer from an illness that causes him to bend and fall. Only solution: a metal corset. THE coming-of-age which follows is quite classic but deployed with humor, finesse and intelligence which delight and reach heights of emotion. It is also supported by sumptuous animation, mixing watercolor landscapes and Bill Watterson-style characters (Calvin and Hobbes)both lively and tender, airy and precise.

And then there’s the sound. And among the film’s many sound discoveries (excerpts from The RTL suitcase voice of Philippe Risoli…), there is “Like a hurricane”the slightly cheesy synth-pop hit by Stéphanie de Monaco, which the father listens to on repeat (and hums secretly) in his car. This song resonates magnificently in the fantastic climax which, by the way, is connected with the international title, Iron Boy. Because one of the (other) beautiful ideas of the film is that the illness which tilts Christophe is a superpower allowing him to also tilt the world when he becomes angry. As for “Like a hurricane”we wouldn’t think that one day he would make us cry (with jubilation). When you see it, stay until the end of the credits, to hear the version with choir and church organ.

Today in Cannes

Penultimate day of the competition this Thursday, with two highly anticipated films: The black bola of “Javis” (to whom we owe the incredible series La Mesias) And Coward by Lukas Dhont. Also on the program, a “Rendezvous with Tilda Swinton”, the horror film Victorian Psycho in Un Certain Regard (with scream queen Maika Monroe), Machine Gun Kelly by Roger Corman at Cannes Classics and the Intriguer Vertigo by Quentin Dupieux at the Quinzaine des filmmakers.