Christophe Honoré's Marcello Mio, in official competition at Cannes 2024: Our opinion

This is the seventh time Christophe Honoré has presented a film at Cannes. His last appearance on the Croisette was in 2019, for Chambre 212 in Un Certain Regard, but you'll have to go back to 2018, with Plaire, aimer et courir vite, to find the French director in Official Competition.

Chiara Mastroianni 's new film Marcello Mio, by Christophe Honoré, is in official competition at the Cannes Film Festival 2024, and has been in cinemas since May 21.

In a very funny first scene, the actress, all platinum blonde wig and tight black dress, is forced to throw herself into the Saint-Sulpice fountain to reproduce for a photo shoot, dressed as Anita Ekberg, the famous scene from Fellini's Dolce Vita, where the latter urges Chiara's father, Marcello Mastroianni, to join her, shouting the famous "Marcello, come here!

She was then cast by director Nicole Garcia, who ordered her to play the scene "more Mastroianni and less Deneuve", to which Chiara replied that she thought she was "being Chiara". Suddenly, in front of her mirror - in a quite successful morphing sequence - she sees her late father' s face instead of her own. She begins a physical transformation to resemble him.

While this identity crisis is quite moving (she smokes, moves and speaks, hands turned skyward, in the same way as her father) and brings a few smiles to our faces (like the improbable chase of Marcello Mastroianni look-alikes), this generational journey doesn't go very far - except to Rome - and doesn't even allow this nepo baby to sincerely question her place as anactress and daughter of.

Similarly, there's only one step from intimacy to navel-gazing, and Christophe Honoré takes it again and again, delivering with Marcello Mio a small, worldly film that never for a moment shies away from its bourgeois entre-soi, while the little hive of intimates - Catherine Deneuve, Benjamin Biolay, Melvil Poupaud, Fabrice Luchini, Nicole Garcia, in their own roles - never ceases to bustle around the actress who feels 'like the ghost of her father'.

• To be read
• Parthenope by Paolo Sorrentino, in official competition at the Cannes Festival 2024
• Oh, Canada by Paul Schrader: Our review and trailer
• L'Amour ouf by Gilles Lellouche, with François Civil & Adèle Exarchopoulos: Our opinion and the trailer

The trailer for Marcello Mio:

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