Cannes 2026 – I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning ★★★★

Released: TBC

Director: Clio Barnard

Starring: Anthony Boyle, Joe Cole, Lola Petticrew, Daryl McCormack, Jay Lycurgo

The excellently-titled I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning, about friendship and capitalism, is brilliant in one way and not so much in another. It is an unusually vibrant depiction of male friendship, contains a star-making performance from Anthony Boyle, and has the non-judgemental attitude to working-class lives that director Clio Barnard is known for. The parts about gentrification, capitalism and how money changes everything are weak, but the human connections here are so strong the weaknesses don’t matter.

All through school in Birmingham they were a gang of five: Shiv (Lola Petticrew), Conor (Daryl McCormack), Oli (Jay Lycurgo), Patrick (Anthony Boyle), and Rian (Joe Cole). Shiv and Patrick began dating in their mid-teens, got married straight after uni and have two daughters in primary school. Oli works on his bike as a food deliveryman while Shiv stays at home with the girls and her disabled mum. Conor has inherited his late dad’s construction business, is married to Sophie (Lucie Shorthouse), and they’ve settled down with a mortgage and a baby on the way. Rian works in finance in London but comes back to Birmingham for Oli’s 30^th birthday party, where he’s disappointed to learn the amiable Oli is still a drug dealer. The lads, and Shiv, are as close as ever, as their raucous night out for the birthday proves. It’s a brilliant opening sequence, though it would have been fresher to choose music other than The Streets to prove their working-class bona-fides. That said, the way the title sequence lines up with the drop provides an unusually kinetic kick that lasts most of the rest of the film. Later a visit to London to see Rian’s high-end but soulless flat causes the others to feel bad about themselves. Jane Levick’s production design is very smart and authentic, and the location shooting provides a lived-in feel without being patronising. The five of them have always been the best of friends and thought nothing would ever change that. But one of them now has all the money in the world, and the others don’t.

Now. At no point does Enda Walsh’s screenplay, adapted from a novel by Keiran Goddard, address the fact that four of these five friends clearly have an Irish background, nor is Conor and Oli’s race addressed in any way at all. The issue here is only the class difference that has sprung up within the gang, now Rian drives a Bentley, dates a posh woman named Emma (Millie Brady) and somehow personally finances an apartment block that Conor is building. Rian and Conor have the money and the resources to gentrify Birmingham, so are creating a future that Patrick, Shiv and Oli cannot and will never be able to afford. But as Oli begins to reassess his life, largely thanks to adopting a stray dog, and Conor begins to buckle under the pressure of being the gaffer, cracks begin to appear in everyone’s self-esteem and therefore that of the group. The title is a reference to a real-life destruction of some prominent Birmingham towerblocks that the characters all witnessed as children. The motif of housing security, and how everything in life is only easy if you have a safe and affordable place to live, is emphasized so much it becomes ludicrous. But this is also correct, and it’s delightful to see a movie marry its sentiments with its actions. Even as it goes too far there’s no hypocrisy here.

That said, the major weakness is Rian. Men from outside London, working-class or not, who go to work in finance in the UK learn extremely quickly that they will have to mask their backgrounds in order to be accepted by the posh men who run the show. It doesn’t matter that Rian is brilliant at – well, the movie doesn’t quite know what he does. There is just no way that he could maintain his original accent and his active ties with his rough-and-tumble friends and still be able to succeed in the English financial industry. The fact that class distinctions don’t factor into Emma and Rian’s relationship either is unusual, too. A posh woman like Emma would more likely be dating someone from a ‘lower’ class for one of four reasons: rebellion, gold-digging, revenge, or you-know-what. Since none of these motivations appear to be present it’s hard to understand their relationship, especially since Mr Cole spends most of his screen time projecting an air of bewildered unhappiness that is meant to demonstrate how out of place Rian feels without his friends. The power differential that exists the moment Conor starts working for Rian is also never addressed, which is a bad oversight. There’s more discussion of Oli bringing his dog when he starts working for Conor than Conor’s whole business and livelihood are now at the mercy of Rian’s whim. The fact all of these friendships are not remotely affected by the shifting financial power dynamics is implausible indeed.

But the work Mr Boyle does here is so good that these weaknesses don’t matter. Patrick is a man too smart for the life he’s found himself living, who additionally has the political awareness to understand why this is a systemic problem and nothing to do with him as a person. He has maintained a cheerfully left-wing political outlook that’s so important to him he can provide Rian with insightful political rants at the drop of the hat, but has the emotional intelligence only to do so when begged to. Patrick also loves Shiv and his children and doesn’t complain about the hard physical work he must do to earn their living. Why Oli, the most friendly and open of all of them, kept dealing drugs for so long is another unanswered question, as is where Conor’s anger issues and tendency for drunken violence come from. Of course, if you have been close friends with someone since childhood, you already have a pretty good idea why someone is the way they are, and don’t need to rehash that every time someone misbehaves. Patrick is the core of the gang, its tender beating heart, and the way the others have stuck close to provide him and Shiv with emotional support is exactly what friends are supposed to do. But when there’s not enough money to go around things are not that simple.

It’s a shame that Barnard decided that the wealth discrepancies at the core of her plot would not impact the friendships in any way. It would have been much more interesting if, for example, the gang had gotten resentful of Rian, or if someone had a tendency to borrow money from the others without paying it back. The angle that people who are not money-focused are superior is emphasized by Shiv speaking so highly of Emma. The scene of Shiv and Sophie having a cup of tea together is also a fine portrait of female solidarity even when other emotional priorities matter more than their friendship. But, and I am genuinely surprised that I mean this, the work Mr Boyle does in this film is so strong that none of the flaws matter. You want Patrick to catch a break, you want his and his family’s life to somehow get easier and you want his friends to appreciate how lucky they are to have him. The other plot arcs, most especially Conor’s, are nowhere near as satisfying, but those are surprisingly small potatoes. The fact that I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning knows why its lightning struck gold should permanently improve Mr Boyle’s career.