Minotaur - Nel labirinto del potere

The director, whose name is difficult to pronounce, won a place in our hearts with his debut film, "Il ritorno". He won the Golden Lion at the 2003 Venice Film Festival, which came as a surprise as he was a complete unknown at the time. “Leviathan”, set in a fictional town on the Barents Sea in northern Russia, and “Loveless” (about a couple on the verge of divorce when their twelve-year-old son Alyosha goes missing from home) confirmed his talent. Minotaur – winner of the Grand Prix du Jury at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival – is a remake of La femme infidèle, a film by Claude Chabrol shot in 1969. A (high) bourgeois drama of infidelity, the married couple live in the countryside just outside Paris. Transposed to Russia, it is enriched with historical and political dimensions. The cuckolded husband is a company executive in a small town far from Moscow; the war with Ukraine has just broken out and the government is ordering the recruitment of workers to be sent to the front – at least 14 strapping young men (like those demanded by the Minotaur in the labyrinth, who was slain by Theseus). The couple live in a beautiful house; the wife, Galina, has a lover with whom she spends her afternoons. Her husband discovers her affair, goes to find his rival and kills him. It is here that, for the viewer, the film finally begins. But an hour of the film’s two-hour running time has already passed. It is a shame, because life in the Russian provinces, even when filmed in all shades of grey, is not all that fascinating. At this point, at last, the film really gets going, and it is very good.