Every Cannes Film Festival there’s always one film in the In Competition section that makes you second-guess why it was chosen to be part of the distinguished official selection. This year it has to be Léa Mysius’s Histoires de la Nuit (The Birthday Party); an adequate enough home invasion thriller but perfectly out of place in the august company of Minotaur, Fatherland, Fjord or Another Day.
Adapted from Laurent Mauvignier’s novel of the same title The Birthday Party is defined by its tight, bounded world. A limited number of characters, an isolated home in a remote area for the setting and action that transpires over one very long night.
Thomas (Bastien Bouillon), Nora (Hafsia Herzi), their teenage daughter Ida, the painter-neighbour, Cristina (Monica Bellucci), and her dog are the primary players. They lead rather unremarkable lives till they are joined in Nora’s birthday party by two expected, invited guests (Nora’s colleagues) and three unwelcome ones. Secrets and lies and hidden skeletons in the cupboard come tumbling out as the family ties get tested. The entire edifice of relationships looks set to come tumbling down. How can it survive deception and betrayal of trust? Will any of them even live to tell the tale?
The crux of the problem is the essential predictability. There’s not a single element, no twist or turn that is capable of shocking, spooking or agonizing you. It’s for Benoit Magimel as Franck (who was in the same section at Cannes in 2023 in Tran Anh Hung’s The Taste of Things), Alane Delhaye and Paul Hamy to bring in a much needed touch of the sinister and the overwhelming claustrophobia.
They are aided in it by cinematographer Paul Guilhaume and production director Esther Mysius with their blue and grey palette and composer Florencia Di Concilio who create a sense of the ominous, diffuse gloom and doom on screen and make the heart of darkness come alive. Yorgos Lamprinos editing, swinging between the tardy and the rapid, gives a unique rhythm to the narrative. The atmosphere of extreme confinement, of being locked in is ably conveyed to the audience. The twin forces of violence on the one hand and arts, painting and music on the other invoke the deep-rooted disparities and dissonances further.
The Birthday Party is a character driven film, heavy on conversations. The protagonists and antagonists, both come with shades of grey, harbouring sensitivity as well as moral ambiguities within themselves. What makes them different is the side of theirs that they choose to amplify. Despite such a promising bedrock of storytelling, it's irksome to find Cannes talents like Monica Bellucci, Hafsia Herzi and Bastien Bouillon not getting much to sink their teeth into. Their presence remains disappointingly ineffective.
On the other hand, the most compelling aspect about the film is the point of view of the precocious child Ida that Mysius chooses to tell the story from. It’s her torrent of emotions—the anger and rebellion and revenge and retribution—that help the film gain in momentum and tension, help round it off on a sombre note and also lend it a belief system and spiritual core; that consciously stated lies that protect the near and dear ones from harsh reality are perhaps best forgotten and forgiven because they come from a space of concern and caring than duplicity and dishonesty.
A film is as much about what it offers as the context and platform on which it does so. The Birthday Party is a middling thriller/hostage drama that would make for a decent one time watch on a streaming platform. But on the haloed screen of the Grand Theatre Lumiere, where it could have made for a welcome change from the arthouse fare, it doesn’t come across as strong enough to grab attention and elicit a long ovation.
