From ‘Anora’ to ‘The Substance,’ tales of beauty and its price galvanize Cannes

By JAKE COYLE
AP Film Writer

CANNES, France (AP) — After the competition lineup at the Cannes Film Festival got a lackluster start last week, the festival was enlivened by a string of films both fleshy and carnal. Foremost among them was Sean Baker’s “Anora,” in which Mikey Madison stars as a 23-year-old Russian American sex worker in Brooklyn. There’s also the festival’s most debated entry: Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance,” a blunt and gory body horror satire about beauty standards starring Demi Moore. Paolo Sorrentino’s “Parthenope” is explicitly about female beauty, with some achingly tender results. The films are part of the festival’s grand contradictions: what it exalts inside its cinemas is often in direct opposition to all that’s transpiring just down the Croisette.