Most buzzed-about performances at Cannes

Steve Carell in Foxcatcher. Courtesy Cannes Film Festival

The 67th annual Cannes film festival featured a number of remarkable performances, many of them from big-name stars. These were among the actors that had Cannes buzzing:

Steve Carell

It was an open question which star of Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher turned in the most impressive performance. There’s Channing Tatum as Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz, a physically potent but emotionally stunted man. And as his older sibling and mentor, Mark Ruffalo’s brotherly physicality is also essential. But Carell, with a prosthetic nose and greyed hair, was the one to cause the biggest stir at Cannes for his dramatic turn as the creepy multimillionaire John du Pont who’s obsessed with the other two.

Kristen Stewart

There’s a clever irony to casting one of the most famous American actresses as the assistant to a European star, played by Juliette Binoche. But in Olivier Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria, Stewart does more than wink at her fame. She’s natural and intelligent in a way she hasn’t been perhaps since the 2009 Adventureland.

Timothy Spall

Great artists have often been given majestic big-screen incarnations. In Mike Leigh’s biopic of British master J.M.W. Turner, Spall takes another route. His Turner is a humble, grunting worker whose grand artistry is hidden beneath his gruff manner.

Marion Cotillard

The Dardenne brothers have never before cast a major star as a protagonist, but they said they were smitten by Cotillard after a brief encounter. In their Two Days, One Night, Cotillard proved (to most, although not all) that her stardom didn’t interfere in telling a story about a working class woman trying to convince her co-workers to vote against a raise that will eliminate her job.

Robert Pattinson

The former Twilight star is beginning to put his teen heartthrob past behind him, and the early returns are encouraging. Along with a supporting role in David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars, Pattinson impressed as Guy Pearce’s bloodied, not-all-there companion in David Michod’s Australian thriller The Rover.

Evan Bird

Maps to the Stars, a midnight dark satire of Hollywood, offers up a lot of choice parts. Most notable is Julianne Moore as a star actress terrified that her status is slipping. But the 14-year-old Evan Bird breaks out playing a Justin Bieber-like child star with an ego far greater than his years.

Honourable mentions

The Italian family drama The Wonders was impossible to imagine without the gentle presence of the young Maria Alexandra Lungu. Alexey Serebryakov enlivened the Russian tragedy Leviathan with so much fury. Ibrahim Ahmed rooted the Turkish Winter Tale with uncommon gravity. Jean-Luc Godard’s dog also took a bite out of Cannes — stealing the show in the French master’s 3-D Goodbye to Language.