Todd Haynes Teases R-Rated 'De Noche' at Lumière Festival Opening

Todd Haynes confirmed Saturday night in Lyon that his Pedro Pascal–Danny Ramirez romance "De Noche" has finished filming and will "most likely be an R-rated film."

The director delivered the update on the red carpet of France's Lumière Festival opening gala, held at the 5,000-seat Halle Tony Garnier. The film, set in 1938, was revived after Joaquin Phoenix exited the project in 2024. A release date has not been announced.

Haynes said he saw no need to make the film's visual language "prurient." He kept his description grounded in character.

"What's going on between the two men is so complex and so moving, but ultimately, it's a love story," Haynes said. "They're exposing themselves to each other, and they're exploring things about their masculinity, their vulnerability."

"Anyone can identify with what's happening," he added. "The sort of armor of masculinity is particular to men." The 1938 setting, he noted, brings its own cultural barriers.

"De Noche" shares its historical backdrop with Ettore Scola's "A Special Day," the 1977 classic starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni that served as the festival's opening-night screening, introduced by Haynes himself. That film follows an encounter between a housewife and a gay man in Fascist Rome on the day of Hitler's visit to Mussolini.

Who was in the room?

The opening gala drew Zhang Ziyi, Daniel Brühl, Tsui Hark, Andrey Zvyagintsev, Fatih Akin and Abel Ferrara to an improvised red carpet inside the Halle Tony Garnier. They launched a nine-day program of 163 films and more than 400 screenings across dozens of venues in and around Lyon.

Haynes is in town for a masterclass and a retrospective spanning "Poison," "Safe," "Far from Heaven" and "I'm Not There."

Zhang introduced the first French screening of a 4K restoration of Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (2000), the film that was shown out of competition at Cannes, won four Oscars and launched her internationally. Asked whether such a film could be made today, she answered: "I don't think so." Digital tools might spare crews from needing "50 people to pull the wire," she said. "Maybe things get easier, but the feeling has changed."

What did Frémaux say about Trump?

Lumière Festival chief Thierry Frémaux, who also heads the Cannes Festival, took a well-received swing at U.S. President Donald Trump from the stage.

"Donald Trump has protested that he wasn't given the Nobel Peace Prize. The Lumière Award is the only prize we think he won't ask for," Frémaux told the crowd, referring to the festival's top honor. "In any case, we won't give it to him."

Who receives this year's Lumière Award?

Joel and Ethan Coen will accept the Lumière Award at the festival's climax on Oct. 16. "We like cinema brothers in Lyon," Frémaux said, nodding to Auguste and Louis Lumière, the Lyon-born founders of cinema, and to Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, two-time Palme d'Or winners who received the prize in 2020.

The Coens join previous recipients including Clint Eastwood, Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Wong Kar-wai, Jane Fonda, Tim Burton, Jane Campion and Michael Mann.

The ceremony closed with guests delivering the traditional declaration that the festival was open — Zhang obliged a request to improvise a Chinese version. Frémaux also used the evening for his customary crash course in Lyon cinema history, showcasing the Lumière brothers' autochrome color process through vivid early photographs and newly restored experimental footage to press the city's claim as cinema's birthplace.

At the gala dinner, cinema history gave way to another Lumière tradition: a full-volume blast of Johnny Hallyday's "Allumer le feu," a perennial favorite of Frémaux's. French actress Alexandra Lamy and Brühl were among those dancing on their chairs.

The Lumière Film Festival runs through Oct. 18, with the Coens' award ceremony on Oct. 16 as its centerpiece.