Cannes Is in Its Flop Era

A Cannes poster used an iconic image from Thelma & Louise, featuring Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon posed on a 1966 Ford Thunderbird. The film’s festival-era presence is framed as a blend of thematic boldness and commercial viability, supported by box office success, critical acclaim, and six Academy Awards. The movie also elevated its leads and sparked debates through overt feminism. The piece contrasts that impact with a later sense that mainstream movie industry risk-taking has faded. It also notes that major Hollywood studio films were absent from Cannes, suggesting the gap may reflect timing and individual filmmakers’ festival histories rather than a uniform refusal to participate.

"From inside the halls of the Palais des Festivals, atop the theaters, and along the sides of lamp posts, an impossibly cool Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon stretched out in blue jeans atop that 1966 Ford Thunderbird, icons of American rebelliousness looking down on an event whose packed streets implied more of a sense of urgency than the actual films generated on the screens inside."

"From the perspective of 2026, Thelma & Louise represents, with its mixture of thematic daring and commercial viability, an alchemy our mainstream movie industry seems to have since largely forgotten. It was a box office hit as well as a critical one that racked up six Academy Awards, burnished the star status of its leads, and fired up debates with its overt feminism."

"A lot has been made about the lack of Hollywood at Cannes this time around, about how the big studios, already creatively cowed, financially shaken, and in the midst of intensely politicized corporate consolidations, all opted out of the risk of putting a precious tentpole release in front of a famously tough audience."

"When you get more granular with the prospective blockbusters from prestigious enough lineages to have been Cannes candidates this year, however, their absence looks more like a question of timing than some more significant collective opting out. Christopher Nolan, now king of the multiplex, hasn't taken a film to a festival since Insomnia in 2002, while, after Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull emerged from the 2008 Cannes with a mild stink from mixed reviews, Steven Spielberg probably didn't want to."

Read at Vulture