Cannes film festival
The Birthday Party review – grimly compulsive unhappy occasion in deepest France
Peter Bradshaw
Fri 22 May 2026 20.34 CESTLast modified on Fri 22 May 2026 20.35 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/may/22/the-birthday-party-review-grimly-compulsive-unhappy-occasion-in-deepest-france
T here’s nothing like a home-invasion suspense thriller to provide a change of pace in the Cannes competition, and Léa Mysius’s film – adapted from the French bestseller Histoires de la Nuit by Laurent Mauvignier – isn’t at all bad, although it runs out of narrative steam in the third act and one particular shock-twist appears to unshock and untwist itself. Yet the film certainly delivers some sinister rural strangeness in the France profonde countryside and some gonzo shootouts; plus there is a ripe turn from Benoît Magimel, who with every film seems to morph further into a cross between Gérard Depardieu and Christopher Walken.
In a very remote bucolic village, Thomas (Bastien Bouillon) is a hardworking dairy farmer who took over the family smallholding after his father killed himself. After a whirlwind romance, he married Nora (Hafsia Herzi), a rather glamorous city-slicker of a woman who just showed up in the neighbourhood; they have a daughter, Ida who has recently irritated Nora by posting a wacky video of the three of them doing a goofy “family dance”, which has gone viral. The family gets on very well with an elegant artist who lives alone next door, played by Monica Bellucci on pretty stately form. Thomas has clearly got money worries; we see him on the phone trying to borrow cash from someone who has reluctantly helped him out before, as he needs €300 to pay for Nora’s approaching 40th birthday party. On the day itself, three sinister tough guys show up in the house, played by Magimel, Paul Hamy and Alane Delhaye. We might think we know who they’ve come to see and why – but things are a little more complicated than that.
The film gives us headbutting encounters between Magimel and Herzi, Magimel and Bouillon and Hamy and everyone else. There is a very claustrophobic and bizarre atmosphere as the birthday party becomes very unenjoyable indeed – although, as I said, a key confrontation between Bellucci’s artist and Delhaye’s mobster unravels, and it feels as if a script rewrite has not absorbed this fully. Nonetheless: the tension is capably managed and Magimel is a gargoyle of menace.
The Birthday Party screened at the Cannes film festival .
