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The brother and sister in Arnaud Desplechin’s “Brother and Sister” can’t stand each other. The sister, played by Marion Cotillard, is Alice, a theatre superstar playing to packed houses in an adaptation of James Joyce’s “The Dead.” The brother, played by Melvil Poupaud, is Louis, an award-winning author and poet.

Alice resented it when his fame briefly overtook hers, but there is more to their mutual loathing than that. For mysterious, complicated reasons, they haven’t spoken in 20 years, and when they talk about each other to other people, Alice smiles a smile of pure venom, and Louis explodes in vicious rage. What are they to do, then, when Louis has to return to his hometown of Lille to visit his dying parents? Will he and Alice be forced to confront each other at long last?

It’s a juicy premise, but Desplechin and his co-writer, Julie Peyr,...

All is not well with the Vuillard clan and something’s gone rotten in Roubaix. While their matriarch lies ill, treading the line between the here and the hereafter, the paterfamilias is left to contend with his three headstrong children. Though the youngest, who lives a stable married life, more often than not serves as ballast between more electric older siblings, sparks fly when the other two meet — or at least they would, had the eldest daughter not banished her hard-drinking middle brother from the family.

Sound familiar? Sounds, perhaps, like another Arnaud Desplechin film that premiered once upon a time in Cannes (as nearly all his films do)? Sounds about right.

Though the French auteur has always freely recycled themes and plot points (with more than half the characters in his 14 features carrying the surnames Dedalus and Vuillard), “Brother and Sister” seems more like a retread (and a retreat...

An Arnaud Desplechin film showing up in the Cannes competition lineup is as expected as the changing seasons. An Arnaud Desplechin film starring two titans of French cinema, Marion Cotillard and Melvil Poupaud? Even more welcome. “Brother and Sister” is among the main competition titles heading to this year’s festival, which runs May 17 through May 28. Ahead of the film community’s big return to the Croisette, watch the first trailer for the film, exclusive to IndieWire, below.

In “Brother and Sister,” or “Frère et Soeur” as it’s known in French, Alice (Cotillard) and Louis (Poupaud) are siblings. She is an actress, while he was a teacher and a poet. For the past two decades, Alice has resented him, and they’ve remained estranged for the last 20 years. That is, until their parents become involved in a serious accident, and they are forced to toss blood under the bridge and reconcile anew.

Xenix Film has revealed an official trailer for the French indie drama titled Brother and Sister, originally Frère et Soeur in French. This is premiering at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival later this month playing in the Main Competition, before opening in French cinemas. The story revolves around a brother & sister who are nearing their fifties - Alice is an actress, Louis was a teacher and a poet. They no longer speak to one another and have been avoiding each other for over twenty years, but the death of their parents will force them to cross paths. Melvil Poupaud and Marion Cotillard co-star as the titular brother and sister, with Golshifteh Farahani, Cosmina Stratan, Patrick Timsit, Benjamin Siksou, and Max Baissette de Malglaive. This looks like a very emotional story about a family and the challenging dynamics between two siblings that don't like each other. There's no English subtitles available yet,...

While You Were Peeping: Godet’s Elegy Brimming with Belabored Emotion

With his sophomore directorial effort, Fabienne Godet’s A Place on Earth (Une place sur la Terre) once again places Belgian actor Benoît Poelvoorde in the midst of a doomed romantic entanglement. Surprisingly, the generally comedic thespian excels at these melancholy, brooding types, as evidenced by recent stints in Jean-Pierre Ameris’ Romantics Anonymous (2010) and Benoit Jacquot’s Three Hearts (2014). As an uninspired photographer, Poelvoorde’s equally forlorn here, though he’s on the less dramatic end of the comparable occupationally challenged protagonist featured in Godet’s first feature, Burnt Out (2005). However, the film’s dramatic conflict inevitably ends up feeling a bit forced, the emotionally unstable natures of its romantic leads vaguely administered, which casts an extemporaneous pallor over the script that should leave us feeling as devastated as the roiling soundtrack and sweeping visuals urge.

A struggling photographer,...