The Birthday Party review – grimly compulsive unhappy occasion in deepest France

Cannes film festival: This could be better paced but the crisis which descends on an up-against-it dairy farm is delivered by some very memorable goons There’s nothing like a home-invasion suspense thriller to provide a change of pace in the Cannes competition, and Léa Mysius’s film – adapted from the French bestseller Histoires de la Nuit by Laurent Mauvignier – isn’t at all bad, although it runs out of narrative steam in the third act and one particular shock-twist appears to unshock and untwist itself. Yet the film certainly delivers some sinister rural strangeness in the France profonde countryside and some gonzo shootouts; plus there is a ripe turn from Benoît Magimel, who with every film seems to morph further into a cross between Gérard Depardieu and Christopher Walken. In a very remote bucolic village, Thomas (Bastien Bouillon) is a hardworking dairy farmer who took over the family smallholding after his father killed himself. After a whirlwind romance, he married Nora (Hafsia Herzi), a rather glamorous city-slicker of a woman who just showed up in the neighbourhood; they have a daughter, Ida who has recently irritated Nora by posting a wacky video of the three