John Bleasdale

★★★☆☆ Movies love certain professions and psychotherapy is certainly one. They have to listen to people’s problems while (usually) masking their own issues. From Richard Burton in Equus to Billy Crystal in Analyse This, there’s an undoubted attraction to a job which involves lots of listening to other people’s stories.

It’s been a vintage edition of the Cannes Film Festival, with many excellent contenders in the competition. The Palme d’Or went to South Korean director Bong Joon-ho and his masterful black comedy thriller Parasite. It was a popular choice that bested the likes of Ken Loach, Justine Triet and Pedro Almodóvar.

★★★★☆ A highly flammable love affair smoulders in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Marianne (Noémie Merlant) is a painter with a spark in her eye. Although she is always aware of convention and tradition, she also knows how to bend the rules to further her own pursuit of art. She smokes a nifty little pipe and is fearless.

★★★☆☆ Acclaimed Austrian director Jessica Hausner enters the race for this year’s Palme d’Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival with Little Joe, a modest work of satirical sci-fi starring Emily Beecham and Ben Whishaw as two genetic engineers who create a “happy” plant.