Review | Cannes 2022: Three Thousand Years of Longing movie review – George Miller’s first feature since Mad Max: Fury Road is enchanting

This story stars Tilda Swinton as a solitary woman who buys a vase in Istanbul and discovers a genie, played by Idris Elba

She asks the genie for his life story, and we are treated to a litany of flashbacks and special effects in this charming tale

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Tilda Swinton (left) as Alithea Binnie and Idris Elba as The Djinn in director George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures

Published: 5:00pm, 21 May 2022

4/5 stars

“There is no story about wishing that is not a cautionary tale,” remarks Tilda Swinton’s lonely academic in George Miller’s beguiling fable, Three Thousand Years of Longing.

Premiering out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival, this long-gestating project marks the Australian director’s first film in seven years, since his jaw-dropping Mad Max: Fury Road. By comparison, this latest outing is a far more sedate affair, though no less spectacular in places.

Swinton, looking as bookish as she can in glasses and a dog-tooth-check jacket, plays Alithea Binnie, a narratologist who arrives in Istanbul to give a lecture. There, in a store, she buys a blue-and-white vase, and back in her hotel bathroom starts cleaning it with her toothbrush.

Out pops a giant djinn (Idris Elba), who promises to give her three wishes, whatever her heart desires. At first, she closes her eyes, hoping it’s a trick of her mind, but she soon realises this sprite is here to stay.

There are rules – she cannot ask for immortality – but all too aware that such genies can be tricksters, Alithea is reluctant to ask for anything. Even for the return of the husband she lost to another woman.