• Jim Queen is a French adult animated comedy premiering in Cannes’ Midnight Screenings program in 2026.
• The film follows a gay Parisian influencer who contracts “heterosis,” a virus that turns gay men straight.
• Directors Nicolas Athané and Marco Nguyen drew from their own lives in Paris’s queer scene to build the story.
• Critics find it raunchy and entertaining but largely agree it doesn’t push far enough beyond familiar gay stereotypes.
• The film is currently seeking U.S. distribution after seven years in development.

Jim Queen, the raunchy French adult animated comedy that world-premiered in Cannes’ Midnight Screenings program, arrives with one of the more audacious premises in recent animation: a mysterious STI called “heterosis” is sweeping through gay Paris, and its devastating side effect is turning men straight. Church weddings. A sudden grasp of soccer. A complete and utter ignorance of queer culture. Mon Dieu.

The film is the feature directorial debut of Nicolas Athané and Marco Nguyen, made with European animation studio Bobbypills — the same studio behind Creature Commandos — and co-written with Simon Balteaux and Brice Chevillard. It took seven years to get here. “Until recently, we were expecting to have this very tiny movie that a couple of people were going to see,” co-writer Balteaux told The Hollywood Reporter. “Cannes changed everything after seven years of people telling us that this will never work.”

The Story: Abs, Algorithms, and an Extinction-Level Event

At the center of it all is Jim Parfait — yes, “parfait” is French for “perfect,” and yes, the joke lands — voiced by Alex Ramirès. Jim is the reigning king of the “Gym Queens” social media ecosystem, a ripped, bitchy, impossibly hot influencer with 20 million followers and a permanent perch at the top of Paris’s gay social hierarchy. His 24-pack of abs, maintained via a daily intake of 2kg of protein, is basically his entire personality and his entire career. So when heterosis starts chipping those abs away, one by one, it registers as nothing short of catastrophe.

Opposite him is Lucien (Jérémy Gillet), a sheltered, virginal twink who is the son of the city’s Thatcher-esque prime minister Christine Bayer (Elisabeth Wiener). His mother has no idea that his bedroom contains a walk-in closet of sex toys arranged around a full shrine to Jim Parfait. In a musical number that deliberately echoes “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid, Lucien’s longing for the out-and-proud life is laid out in all its pent-up, satin-lined glory.

When heterosis forces Jim out of his social throne — he loses his followers, his abs, his entire identity — Lucien becomes the only person still willing to help him. The odd couple sets off through the Marais district, Paris’s beating heart of queer life, chasing a rumored cure called “chloroqueer” held by a nefarious Dr. Ragoult. Along the way they encounter Jim’s Insta-famous archenemy Pavel (voiced by gay porn icon François Sagat, a casting choice that will register loudly with those in the know), a sneaker-sniffing scally who points them toward their next destination, and a drag queen named Glamydia (Harald Marlot) who dispenses comic wisdom with appropriate flair. Even Lady Gaga had to cancel her concert. It’s that serious.

Where It Came From — and What It’s Really About

The film is, at its bones, a personal one. “The inspiration comes from our own lives,” director Nguyen told THR. “I am gay, and when I arrived in Paris, I was 17, and I discovered a whole new world. The gay culture was so rich and had so many communities, including the fetish scene, which were all great inspirations for the movie.”

Co-writer Balteaux has his own parallel origin story. “I came to Paris from the countryside when I was 20, and I can definitely recognize myself in Lucien,” he said. The characters across the film were drawn from the creators’ real lives — friends, exes, people they met at the kinds of parties depicted onscreen. Real Paris bars and venues are woven into the backdrop. The creative team also made a deliberate effort to get the representation right, sharing scripts widely with members of the communities they were depicting. “We were so relieved when we found that they loved it and really recognized themselves,” Athané said.

The film began development during what Balteaux describes as a more optimistic moment. “The French parliament had just accepted gay weddings. I was definitely feeling very comfortable with my sexuality. We had the feeling we were living a Golden Age,” he said. “But over the years of struggling to make the movie, everything changed. And now [parts of the film will] sound very political. But we never wanted to be too political or lecture people.”

The result is a film that wears its AIDS allegory on its sleeve — heterosis spreading through gyms and sex clubs the way a certain other disease moved through Paris in the 1980s — while trying to keep the overall tone fizzy and irreverent. It’s a needle that critics largely feel the film doesn’t quite thread.

What Critics Are Saying

The reviews out of Cannes are consistent in their warmth toward the ambition and their reservations about the execution. IndieWire gave it a C+, calling it “always entertaining if uninspired” and noting that while the film’s satire of gay tribes, steroid culture, and social media hierarchies will resonate with its target audience, it “isn’t very insightful or illuminating.” The AIDS allegory framing, the review notes, makes the film feel like it’s reaching for something heavier than its comedy can fully support.

The Hollywood Reporter was similarly affectionate but pointed, calling Jim Queen “a crass, profane, giddily stupid romp” that arrives at Cannes as a welcome relief from the festival’s weightier fare — but ultimately wishing it were “funnier and fresher.” The critique that stings most: “If you’ve watched any edition of Drag Race, from anywhere in the world, in the last 17 years, you already know these jokes by heart.”

Both reviews flag the film’s conservative undercurrent around drug use as an odd tension against its otherwise liberatory message. And both note that Jim Queen is, at its core, a coming-out story — one where the arc from shallow to self-aware is predictable enough that the emotional payoff doesn’t quite land. “Jim Queen along the way becomes a kind of I Spy for gay tropes that those in the audience will laugh at and recognize,” IndieWire wrote, “but won’t be left to feel much about after gay humanity has been saved.”

Where critics do agree: the animation, produced on a fraction of what a Pixar film would cost, punches above its weight. The 2D style from Bobbypills — bright, colorful, flat, retro — draws comparisons to Steven Universe and Rick and Morty. The action sequences in the film’s third act, in particular, take on a genuine mock-blockbuster energy that suggests Athané and Nguyen have real cinematic instincts when the material gives them room to stretch.

The voice cast is rounded out by singer Philippe Katerine and drag performer La Briochée, alongside Shirley Souagnon as Nina, Jim’s best friend whose running commentary on his increasingly questionable decision-making provides some of the film’s sharpest laughs.

Jim Queen is currently seeking U.S. distribution. As for what comes next, Nguyen isn’t ruling anything out. “If the film is a success and people want more,” he said, “I would be more than ready to go for a number two.”

The post ‘Jim Queen’ Review: Raunchy Gay Animated Comedy Debuts at Cannes appeared first on Cream.

• Tangles, an animated film about a daughter caring for her Alzheimer’s-stricken mother, made its world premiere at Cannes 2026
• Julia Louis-Dreyfus voices the mother and co-produced alongside Seth Rogen and Lauren Miller Rogen
• Louis-Dreyfus revealed the subject is deeply personal — her grandmother died of Alzheimer’s and her mother-in-law is currently living with the disease
• The film is adapted from Sarah Leavitt’s 2010 graphic memoir and directed by Leah Nelson in her feature debut
• Critics find it warm and earnest but slightly surface-level compared to heavier dementia dramas like The Father or Amour

Julia Louis-Dreyfus didn’t take on Tangles just because it was a good script. She took it because she’s living the story.

The animated film — which made its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this week — follows a young woman named Sarah who leaves her blossoming life as a queer artist and activist in 1990s San Francisco to return to her conservative small-town family home after her mother is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Louis-Dreyfus voices the mother, Midge. And when producer Lauren Miller Rogen first sent her the project, the role landed somewhere deep.

“My grandmother died of it and my mother-in-law is currently suffering with it and I understand the disease well and the toll that the disease can take on a family,” Louis-Dreyfus said at a live taping of THR’s Awards Chatter podcast recorded at Meta House inside the Majestic Hotel in Cannes. “I’m living that as we speak.”

That personal weight comes through in her performance. As Midge, Louis-Dreyfus draws out the character’s spunk and warmth and sharp intellect — the full person — before the slow erasure begins. It’s the kind of voice work that makes you forget you’re watching animation, and it makes the deterioration genuinely hard to watch.

Abbi Jacobson is lively and empathetic as Sarah, anchoring the film’s emotional center with real presence. Bryan Cranston brings what might be his best dad energy since Malcolm in the Middle as Sarah’s father. And the supporting cast the production assembled is something else entirely: Seth Rogen, Sarah Silverman, Bowen Yang, Pamela Adlon, Beanie Feldstein, Wanda Sykes, and Samira Wiley all contribute their voices, giving the film a richness that extends well beyond its core family drama.

An Animated Take on a Very Human Loss

Adapted from Sarah Leavitt’s 2010 graphic memoir by director Leah Nelson, Leavitt herself, and Trev Renney, Tangles charts a specific and deeply felt experience — a daughter watching her mother disappear, while also trying to figure out who she herself is supposed to become. The film follows Sarah from the dawning suspicion that something is wrong (her family initially chalks Midge’s behavior up to menopause) through the diagnosis, and then through the long, grinding years that follow.

It’s territory that’s been covered in film before, and often with devastating force — Michael Haneke’s Amour, Florian Zeller’s The Father, Gaspar Noé’s Vortex. What Tangles offers is something different in register: lighter, more accessible, animated in a lovely black-and-white style that feels bespoke rather than corporate. Nelson and her team have done the genuine work of translating Leavitt’s static graphic panels into something that moves — both literally and emotionally. The result looks alternately cozy and forlorn, which is exactly the right visual language for a story about memory.

The film is a feature debut for Nelson, and she handles the tonal balancing act with care, though she tends to favor the lighter side. That’s not a flaw exactly — but viewers who have been shaped by the bleaker European takes on dementia may find themselves wanting a little more grit, a little more depth in the darker passages. Tangles hits the expected emotional notes — grief, devotion, gratitude — but sometimes it presents the idea of those feelings rather than the feelings themselves. The comedy is gentle and warm without ever quite landing a real laugh. There are moments where the story could use a sharper, more specific texture.

The comparison that hovers over the film, perhaps unfairly, is Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home — another queer, family-tragedy memoir that found achingly specific ways to render the complicated love between a daughter and a parent. Bechdel’s work, and the Tony-winning musical it became, had a plainspoken poetry to it. Tangles operates at a slightly more surface level, which doesn’t make it bad — just a little generic given how personal its source material is.

What Louis-Dreyfus Hopes You Take Away

For Louis-Dreyfus, the film is about something beyond its grief. “Ultimately, this movie is certainly about communication and being in community and the value of family,” she said in Cannes. “All of that is sorely needed right now, certainly in our country, and globally, you could argue. I’m hopeful that this film, when people see it, they might take away a new way of approaching those they love during difficult moments.”

That’s a generous and genuine hope — and honestly, it’s the most accurate description of what Tangles is and what it’s trying to do. This isn’t a film that wants to devastate you. It wants to sit beside you. For anyone who has watched a parent or grandparent slip away to Alzheimer’s, there’s real comfort in seeing that experience rendered with this much care and warmth, even if the film doesn’t always push itself as far as it could.

Tangles is produced by Monarch Media, Point Grey Pictures, Giant Ant Films, and LYLAS Pictures. No wide release date has been announced, but the Cannes premiere puts it firmly on the awards conversation radar — and given Louis-Dreyfus’s track record, that’s a conversation worth watching.

The post Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ ‘Tangles’ Hits Cannes With Heart appeared first on Cream.