• Pierre Salvadori’s The Electric Kiss opened the 2026 Cannes Film Festival out of competition
• The 1920s-set romantic comedy stars Anaïs Demoustier, Gilles Lellouche, Pio Marmaï, and Vimala Pons
• Critics are divided — some find it a pleasant crowd-pleaser, others call it the worst Cannes opener in a decade
• The film has five credited writers, including Robin Campillo and Rebecca Zlotowski, whose original idea sparked the project
• Salvadori says the opening slot marks a first in his 30-year career and came with “an immense terror”

The 79th Cannes Film Festival got underway Tuesday night with The Electric Kiss (La Vénus Électrique), Pierre Salvadori’s lushly designed 1920s romantic comedy about a carnival performer, a grieving painter, and a con that slowly becomes something more complicated than anyone bargained for. Whether it was the right film to kick off eleven days of cinema’s biggest showcase is, to put it gently, a matter of considerable debate.

The reviews landing out of the Palais are all over the place — which, in its own way, tells you something about a film that can’t quite decide what it wants to be.

What the Film Is Actually About

Set in 1928 Paris, The Electric Kiss centers on Suzanne (Anaïs Demoustier), a down-on-her-luck carnival attraction known as “Venus Electrificata” — a flapper femme fatale who delivers mild electric shocks to paying customers willing to kiss her. She’s been in near-indentured servitude since her father sold her into the carnival business at 15, working for a measly stack of francs under the thumb of the surly Titus (Gustave Kervern).

Desperate for a way out, Suzanne stumbles into an opportunity when she’s mistaken for the carnival’s neighboring medium by Antoine Balestro (Pio Marmaï), a once-celebrated painter who has stopped working entirely since the death of his wife Irène. He wants to make contact with her. Suzanne wants money. Slipping on a pair of milky opaque contact lenses and calling him “my little sausage,” she improvises her way through a séance convincingly enough to get booked for a private session at his Paris villa.

When Antoine’s art dealer, the domineering Armand (Gilles Lellouche), figures out the ruse, he doesn’t shut it down — he cuts himself in. If Suzanne can keep Antoine believing his late wife is communicating through her, maybe the painter picks up a brush again. And a productive Antoine means valuable new work to sell. The scheme clicks into place, and for a while, the film clicks with it.

That’s before it introduces its second major narrative strand: Suzanne discovers Irène’s diaries, and the film plunges into extended flashbacks tracing Irène (Vimala Pons) and Antoine’s relationship years earlier — how a pragmatic artists’ model spotted an undiscovered talent, convinced Armand to represent him, and gradually transformed a dissolute young man into a great modernist painter. Two timelines, two love stories, four main characters, and one film that increasingly strains under the weight of all of them.

The Critical Divide

The warmest read comes from Deadline, which called it “a sweetly old fashioned kind of movie” and praised the cast across the board — particularly Demoustier, Marmaï, and Lellouche — while singling out cinematographer Julien Poupard, production designer Angelo Zamparutti, and composer Camille Bazbaz for giving the film its visual and sonic richness. The verdict: not quite electric cinema, but a functional Cannes opener that “does the job.”

IndieWire landed somewhere in the middle, awarding the film a C and acknowledging its genuine pleasures — particularly the chemistry between Demoustier and Lellouche in the film’s first half — before concluding that it “badly overstays its welcome.” The review noted that both stars carry an almost anachronistic quality that suits the period perfectly: Demoustier framed beneath a Louise Brooks bob, Lellouche fitted with a mustache that “somehow makes him seem even more French.” Watching them scheme together, the review noted, is “like witnessing a pair of Al Hirschfeld caricatures suddenly brought to life.” The problem is that the film keeps adding layers until that easy charm gets buried.

The Hollywood Reporter was less forgiving, calling the film “bland, middlebrow entertainment” that “doesn’t occupy either dimension” — playful fantasy or dramatic reality — “with enough imagination to create much intrigue.” The review also flagged an uncomfortable Amélie-adjacency in Demoustier’s pixie-ish energy that “does the new film no favors,” and concluded that the twin plotlines simply don’t hold together structurally. “While the romance, the deception, the surprise discoveries, the attempted suicides (genuine or fake) and the burlesque comedy should be gathering steam, it all becomes a tedious muddle.”

Variety was the harshest, calling The Electric Kiss possibly the worst festival opener in a decade — a rough designation given competition that includes Final Cut, Annette, and last year’s celebrity-chef musical Leave One Day. The review took particular issue with Pio Marmaï’s painter, describing him as “a quaintly uninteresting sap” and the film’s lush cinematography as looking like it was “shot through a filter of rosé.” The central conceit — that a man could fall in love with a woman through her “channeling” of his dead wife — was called “so strenuous and conceptual that it never takes wing.”

Five Writers and a Lubitsch Problem

Part of what makes the film so uneven may be its unusually crowded screenplay. The Electric Kiss carries story credits for five writers: Zlotowski (A Private Life), Campillo (BPM), Benjamin Charbit (The Beast), and longtime Salvadori collaborators Benoît Graffin and Salvadori himself. The original idea, it turns out, came from an unexpected place.

Salvadori told Deadline that Zlotowski gave him the film’s premise as backstory for a character he was playing in her 2019 film The Summoning — he was cast as a director shooting a film in 1938, and she handed him a loose story description to help him improvise on set. “She told me it was the story of a young woman, a fake psychic, who makes a young man believe she can put him in contact with his deceased wife, and in the process falls in love with him,” Salvadori recalled. He was immediately hooked. Zlotowski didn’t want payment for the idea — “Ideas belong to those who take them on,” she told him — but Salvadori gave her and Campillo credits anyway.

The Lubitsch comparison, which the Cannes website itself invited, is the one critics keep returning to — and not always kindly. Salvadori has spoken at length about how seeing Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait was the film that made him understand what directing actually was. “I understood that ultimately, it was the formalists who interested me,” he said, namechecking Howard Hawks, Mitchell Leisen, and Raoul Walsh alongside Lubitsch as foundational influences. “Directors who work with genre, but with a very strong point of view.”

The problem, as Variety put it, is that Lubitsch and Wilder “were magicians who knew how to lure in an audience” — and that quality of real magic underlying the fakery is precisely what The Electric Kiss can’t quite manufacture. The film is about illusion, but the illusion doesn’t hold.

Joy, Terror, and Thirty Years in the Making

Whatever critics make of the film itself, there’s something genuinely moving about what opening Cannes means to Salvadori personally. In his Deadline interview, the director — who has been making films since 1995 — described the experience as “a gift, something that has not happened to me across the 30 years of my career.” He admitted to feeling “a mixture of elation and terror” and joked that the fear would only lift once the screening ended at 10:30pm.

Notably, he said he didn’t want to be in competition. “This is a film for a party, a celebration… it’s a film that talks about my love for cinema.” He suggested earlier works — like In the Courtyard with Catherine Deneuve or The Trouble With You, which played Directors’ Fortnight in 2018 — would have been stronger Palme d’Or contenders. This one, he seemed to know, was built for the opening-night room.

He also revealed that the film’s art dealer character, Armand — the charming, slightly manipulative operator played by Lellouche — was directly inspired by his own producer and longtime collaborator Philippe Martin, with whom he’s worked for thirty years. “There has always been this dimension of friendship and work, and sometimes a lot of tension,” Salvadori said. “There’s this unbreakable friendship, almost a brotherhood, and then this other dimension of our relationship around making a film work together, which can be very chaotic and difficult.”

The decision to set the film in 1928, he explained, was deliberate: the era’s genuine craze for spiritualism — séances, psychics, the belief that the afterlife was reachable — makes Antoine’s credulity feel earned rather than foolish. Salvadori even pointed to Thomas Edison, who reportedly invented a machine intended to communicate with the dead, as evidence that the period’s fascination with the supernatural went all the way to the top.

The Electric Kiss is now in the Cannes official selection out of competition. Whether it finds its audience beyond the Croisette remains an open question — but for one night at least, it gave the festival its opening spark.

The post Cannes 2026 Opens With ‘The Electric Kiss’ to Mixed Reviews appeared first on Cream.

• ‘The Electric Kiss’ opened the 2026 Cannes Film Festival out of competition on May 12
• Director Pierre Salvadori’s 1920s-set romantic comedy stars Anaïs Demoustier, Gilles Lellouche, Pio Marmaï, and Vimala Pons
• Critics were largely underwhelmed, calling it overlong and tonally scattered — though the cast earned praise
• The film’s original premise came from director Rebecca Zlotowski, who gave Salvadori the idea while he was acting in her 2019 film
• Salvadori described opening Cannes as “a joy accompanied by an immense terror” after 30 years in the industry

Pierre Salvadori’s The Electric Kiss — La Vénus Électrique in French — opened the 2026 Cannes Film Festival on Monday night to the kind of reception that has become almost a Cannes tradition: polite applause, a winning cast, and critics quietly wondering how this ended up in the opening slot.

Set in Paris in the late 1920s, the period romantic comedy follows Suzanne (Anaïs Demoustier), a carnival performer known as “Venus Electrificata” who delivers mild electric shocks to paying customers willing to kiss her on stage. Desperate to escape her near-indentured servitude to the carnivale’s sleazy barker Titus (Gustave Kervern), she stumbles into a lucrative side hustle: convincing grieving widower and celebrated painter Antoine Balestro (Pio Marmaï) that she can channel the spirit of his late wife Irène (Vimala Pons). Antoine’s art dealer Armand (Gilles Lellouche), initially furious at the deception, quickly becomes her co-conspirator when he realizes the fake séances are getting his best client back to the easel. From there, the film spirals into a dual-timeline romantic tangle — present-day con job layered over flashback love story — that critics found charming in parts and exhausting overall.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=rUiTrexQKkQ%3Ffeature%3Doembed

What the Critics Said

The most generous take came from Deadline, which called it “a sweetly old fashioned kind of movie” and “a crowd pleaser that could work nicely for audiences, international and domestic, seeking a little escape.” The review praised cinematographer Julien Poupard’s visual design, production designer Angelo Zamparutti’s period work, and composer Camille Bazbaz’s score, concluding that while the film may not be “electric cinema itself,” it does the job as a festival opener.

IndieWire was more measured, giving the film a C and acknowledging that it “peaks early” — specifically in the scenes where Demoustier and Lellouche are scheming together in close-up. “Of all contemporary Gallic stars, Lellouche and Demoustier already feel slightly out of time, their features recalling both silent-era performers and screwball archetypes,” the review noted, comparing the effect to “witnessing a pair of Al Hirschfeld caricatures suddenly brought to life.” The problem, per IndieWire, is that the film introduces a fourth major character and a second narrative strand that throws off the whole geometry. “If three’s a party, four’s a crowd.”

The Hollywood Reporter was blunter, calling it “bland, middlebrow entertainment” and noting that Demoustier’s pixie-ish quality creates an “unfortunate Amelie adjacency that does the new film no favors.” The twin plotlines, the review argued, “don’t hold together structurally,” and what should be a gathering momentum of romance and deception instead becomes “a tedious muddle.”

Variety was the harshest of all, calling The Electric Kiss possibly “the worst festival opener I’ve seen in a decade” — a pointed statement given Cannes’ own checkered history with opening-night selections, a list that includes Woody Allen’s Café Society, the much-derided Final Cut, and last year’s Leave One Day. The review took particular aim at Pio Marmaï’s painter, calling him “a quaintly uninteresting sap” and arguing that the film’s overly lush cinematography makes it look “like it was shot through a filter of rosé.”

The consistent thread across all four reviews: the cast is likeable, the period design is lovely, and the core idea has genuine charm. The execution is where things fall apart. At 122 minutes, The Electric Kiss is simply too long for the kind of breezy screwball confection it wants to be — and too scattered in tone to work as anything weightier.

Five Writers, One Overcrowded Script

Part of the tonal inconsistency may trace back to the film’s unusually crowded writing credits. Rebecca Zlotowski (A Private Life) and Robin Campillo (BPM) share story credits alongside Benjamin Charbit (The Beast) and longtime Salvadori collaborators Benoît Graffin — five voices feeding into a single romantic comedy, and critics noticed the seams.

Salvadori has been open about the film’s unusual origin. He first heard the premise from Zlotowski while acting a small role in her 2019 film The Summoning — the one starring Natalie Portman and Lily-Rose Depp. “She told me it was the story of a young woman, a fake psychic, who makes a young man believe she can put him in contact with his deceased wife, and in the process falls in love with him,” Salvadori recalled to Deadline. He was immediately hooked. “I loved the paradox of someone manipulating someone but at the same time falling in love with that person as they steal from them.”

Zlotowski didn’t want payment for the idea. “Rebecca said, ‘Ideas belong to those who take them on,'” Salvadori recounted. He put her and Campillo in the credits anyway.

The decision to set the story in 1928 was deliberate. Salvadori wanted to tap into the era’s genuine obsession with spiritualism — séances, clairvoyants, and the belief that the dead could communicate with the living were mainstream preoccupations across Europe and the U.S. at the time. “It needed to be set in that era, otherwise my character would come across as too gullible, almost naive, bordering on stupid,” he said. He even pointed to Thomas Edison as an example of the craze’s reach — the inventor reportedly built a machine intended to communicate with the afterlife.

Salvadori’s Lubitsch Dream

Salvadori has long cited Ernst Lubitsch as the filmmaker who changed his life. “The first filmmaker who liberated me and broadened my horizons was Lubitsch. It was after seeing Heaven Can Wait that I suddenly understood what directing was, what it was all about,” he told Deadline. He sees The Electric Kiss as having the DNA of Lubitsch’s 1932 classic Trouble in Paradise — another con-artist love story built on deception and desire.

Whether the finished film lives up to that lineage is where critics diverge. Variety noted that “Hollywood artists like Lubitsch and Wilder were magicians who knew how to lure in an audience,” while Salvadori “has conceived The Electric Kiss as a film about fake magic, yet there’s no spirit of real magic underlying the fakery.” IndieWire was more forgiving, crediting Salvadori with at least knowing what he was reaching for, even if the ensemble of screenwriters pulled the result in too many directions at once.

For Salvadori, opening Cannes at all — out of competition, in the Grand Théâtre Lumière — is its own milestone. After 30 years and ten features, this is his first time in Official Selection. “It’s a joy accompanied by an immense terror and fear, that will only come to an end at 10.30pm,” he said days before the premiere. He was also candid that he didn’t want to be in competition: “This is a film for a party, a celebration… it’s a film that talks about my love for cinema.”

The cast is stacked with familiar French faces. Marmaï has worked with Salvadori twice before, on In The Courtyard and The Trouble With You. Demoustier is a first-time collaborator — Salvadori says he met her on a jury and was struck by “her quickness, her intelligence, her mischievousness.” And Lellouche’s art dealer character, Armand, is reportedly inspired by Salvadori’s real-life producer and decades-long collaborator Philippe Martin, whose company Les Films Pelléas produced the film. “There has always been this dimension of friendship and work, and sometimes a lot of tension,” Salvadori said of their relationship. “An unbreakable friendship, almost a brotherhood.”

The festival runs through May 24. Whether The Electric Kiss turns out to be the low bar that makes everything else look better — as Cannes openers so often do — remains the question. Salvadori, at least, seems at peace with whatever comes next. He wanted a party. He got the biggest screen in France.

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