The curse of being trapped in Léa Seydoux's body

Special envoy to the Cannes Film FestivalThere were many expectations placed on the second film that Léa Seydoux is premiering in the official competition of this edition of Cannes, Léa Seydoux in the official competition of this edition of Cannes, L’inconnue. Partly, it is due to the presence of the French actress, who at 40 years old is already a festival legend: she has presented sixteen films here since 2010 – almost one per year – and won a Palme d'Or for Blue is the Warmest Colour alongside Adèle Exarchopoulos, whom Seydoux applauded on Sunday at the end of the gala screening of the gala screening of Garance. But there was also anticipation to see L’inconnue because it is Arthur Harari's first film after the Oscar for the screenplay of Anatomy of a Fall, the 2023 Palme d'Or that he co-wrote with Justine Triet.

In this case, the film faithfully adapts El caso de David Zimmerman (Astiberri), the comic that Arthur Harari wrote with his brother Lucas, also a cartoonist, and which ARA considered the best comic published in 2025. The film's story follows the comic's plot, where David, a depressed photographer (Niels Schneider), is dragged by two friends to a party and there discovers the face of a girl (Seydoux) whom he once photographed from afar. Without exchanging a word, they look for a quiet corner and make love abruptly. The photographer leaves immediately, but the girl falls asleep. When she wakes up, we discover that during sex their minds have been swapped and now David is trapped in the voluptuous and strange body of a woman he has never spoken to and whose name he doesn't even know.

Harari films the story with murky images that convey the protagonist's anguish. The curious camera and unsettling tone are reminiscent of the cinema of the best Brian De Palma, morbid and fascinating, and drag the viewer into an absorbing thriller where questions pile up and the few answers we get never resolve the mystery. As usual, Léa Seydoux is magnificent embodying the confusion and inner fracture of her character. The actress's bravery should be highlighted, as in the film she displays with absolute naturalness the kilos she gained in her last pregnancy; but it is a gesture that many divas of cinema and fashion like Seydoux – a Louis Vuitton ambassador since 2016 – would not dare to make.

In any case, the problem with L’inconnue is the coldness of its final stretch, in which we miss the feeling of catharsis and closure that the comic it adapts did have. However, it leaves us with one of the most uncomfortable sex scenes of recent years – and not because of what the characters do but because of what they feel – but also the doubt of how far this story could have gone in the hands of David Cronenberg or De Palma himself.

What does a film like you do at a festival like this?

To Thierry Frémaux, the director of the Cannes Film Festival, his hand did not tremble when programming a full-fledged Korean science fiction blockbuster like Hope, by Na Hong Jin, one of the masters of modern action cinema and director of titles such as The chaser, blockbuster, one of the masters of modern action cinema and director of titles such as The chaser, The yellow sea or The stranger. The screening of Hope at the festival has outraged part of the more orthodox critics, who consider Frémaux's decision to be an extravagance, but the majority of accredited attendees have celebrated the film as the great action cinema party that it is, filling the session in the Debussy hall with shouts and applause as if, for a day, the Cannes Film Festival were Sitges.

In Hope

, a not-too-bright police officer and a handful of civilians armed to the teeth face an imposing three-meter monster that is destroying a coastal city and massacring the population. The film gets straight to the point and, yet, in a masterful exercise of anticipation reminiscent of Jaws, for the first 50 minutes we don't see the monster, only its devastating effects. The first hour and a quarter of the film is modern action cinema history, a crescendo of sequences filmed prodigiously by Na Hong Jin, who could well be the best action film director in the world today. Each scene is a filigree of planning and editing, a lesson in mise-en-scène that blends horror, violence, and the absurd sense of humor of the Koreans, with an scatological monologue highly acclaimed by the audience.

That said, and assuming from the outset that the script is the least important thing in this type of film, it is difficult to accept how clumsy and rushed some of the decisions in the final part of the story are, which almost seem improvised during the production of the film to pave the way for a sequel that would enhance the science fiction elements. This problem and others –all minor– do not erase the good time that Hope has given us, and it should not be ruled out that it may receive an important award at the awards ceremony, especially with Korean director Park Chan-wook presiding over the jury this year.