Film Festivals

2017 Cannes Critics’ Panel Day 11: Lynne Ramsay Hammers out Career Best & Palme Contender in You Were Never Really Here

Published on May 27, 2017

Kitchen sink realism in the distant past, You Were Never Really Here counts as feature number four, and yet this is her seventh visit to Cannes (with creds on three award-winning short features) prior 1999’s Un Certain Regard selected Ratcatcher. She of course gave us 2002’s Morvern Callar (Quinzaine) and she was last her first foray into Americana with 2011’s We Need to Talk About Kevin. Another adaptation (from Jonathan Ames’ novel), starring Joaquin Phoenix and Ekaterina Samsonov, this goes into dark matter of sex trafficking and unlike the Travis Bickle comparisons, this character has a heart.

This last comp title blew most of our jury away and undoubtably has a chance at toping our charts with the average grade just under 4 out of 5 stars. Despite the rush to get this to Cannes (there were no screen creds at the end), this film with almost no dialogue is arguably her career best, and is a possible Palme winner (not impossible for a final showing to win as this happened to Dardenne’s Rosetta).

Check back with us as we wrap up what our panel loved (and detested most) and make sure to join us on Sunday as we let our critics predict what should win and will win the Palme.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).