“Karma,” Guillaume Canet’s gripping religious cult thriller starring Oscar-winning actor Marion Cotillard, earned a six-minute standing ovation at Cannes on Friday.
The edge-of-your-set French movie, which is produced by Iconoclast with Canet’s Caneo banner, world premiered in the Special Screenings section in the official selection.
“Karma” is the second film that Canet has brought to Cannes as a director, following his English-language debut “Blood Ties.” It’s also his sixth movie with Cotillard, and a total departure from the other films which were dramedies (“Little White Lies”) and family films (“Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom”) in which Cotillard had supporting roles.
In “Karma,” Cotillard plays Jeanne, a French woman with a mysterious past who is living in Spain with her boyfriend. When her godson goes missing, Jeanne flees the country as a prime suspect and is forced to seek refuge with a brutal religious cult she escaped years earlier.
Cotillard, who stars opposite Denis Menochet, Luis Zahera and Leonardo Sbaraglia, was visibly moved as she drew rounds of applauses as the camera turned to her during the standing ovation.
