The Mastermind review – Josh O’Connor is world’s worst art thief in Kelly Reichardt’s unlikely heist movie

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Cannes film festival Reichardt’s quietist, observational style is unexpectedly successful at creating a super-naturalistic depiction of an art gallery robbery It needs hardly be said that the title is ironic. The abject non-hero of Kelly Reichardt’s engrossingly downbeat heist movie, set in 1970s Massachusetts, is weak, vain and utterly clueless. By the end, he’s a weirdly Updikean figure, though without the self-awareness: going on the run with no money and without a change of clothes, to escape from the grotesque mess he has made for himself and his family. This is James, played with hangdog near-charm by Josh O’Connor; he is an art school dropout and would-be architectural designer with two young sons, married to Terri (a minor complaint is that the excellent Alana Haim is not given enough to do). James depends on the social standing of his father Bill, a judge, formidably played by Bill Camp, and is borrowing large sums of money from his patrician mother Sarah (Hope Davis), oste...
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Anora is a vivacious Cannes victor and a fitting end to a radically romantic festival

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Sean Baker’s story of an erotic dancer who marries a Russian oligarch makes a terrific surprise Palme d’Or winner – though more reward for Mohammad Rasoulof might have felt better

This was a Cannes that turned out to be about love, and the Palme d’Or went to a love story that knocks down the whole idea of a Cinderella romance, while also, in some mysterious and delicate way, passionately believing in it.

Sean Baker’s Anora is superbly acted by its star, Mikey Madison, who plays an erotic dancer and escort in New York called Ani (short for Anora) who finds herself in an exclusive commercial relationship with the wastrel son of a Russian oligarch, called Ivan, played by Mark Eidelstein.

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