Foxcatcher

With his first film to be selected for the Cannes Competition, Bennett Miller, who made Capote and Moneyball, seizes his true-life subject with a measured and confident panache.

He provides Steve Carrell, barely recognisable, with a gift of a role as the seriously suppressed millionaire John E du Pont who uses power for his own vicarious ends – culminating in the murder of Dave Schultz (Mark Ruffalo), the Olympic wrestling champion.

Carrell stamps his mark on the character, suggesting a twisted and fermenting trouble on the inside but with an exterior that is acceptable to most of those who surround him – although there is a feeling from Vanessa Redgrave as the matriarch that she may have her doubts about her son.

Channing Tatum as Dave’s brother Mark is the innocent who falls under the plausible spell of du Pont, agreeing to cut loose from his brother to join the financier at his country retreat where the Foxcatcher training camp has been set up to hone the skills of the US wrestling team preparing for the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.

So start rounds of training but the undercurrents suggest that there may be sinister motives to du Pont’s interest in the young sporting hero and the exploitation of his reputation. He is a monster with a velvet tone who always gets what he wants.

Brother Dave eventually joins the camp with his wife (Sienna Miller) and his family, helping to diffuse the uncomfortably close relationship that Mark has with his “mentor” who becomes more distant and erratic in ways that can only end badly.

Miller paces it all beautifully so that the tension creeps up unawares. Despite the running time of 134 minutes there is not a moment of slack in the whole film and it becomes mesmerisingly compulsive.

Carrell should be in the running with other strong performances elsewhere for a best actor accolade while the film itself ought to appeal mightily to Jane Campion and her jurors. It has been one of the Cannes highlights so far.