The official recognition here of Asian cinema continues apace, evidenced by Wong and by new films from the Korean directors Kim Ki-duk and Lee Chang-dong, both in competition. Four out of 20 films in a parallel program called Un Certain Regard are from Asia, including that program's opening-night film, from the revered Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢): The Flight of the Red Balloon (紅氣球), with Juliette Binoche, a tribute to the classic children's short The Red Balloon. Action enthusiasts are already looking forward to Triangle, a collaboration of three Hong Kong legends: Tsui Hark (徐克), Johnnie To (杜琪峰) and Ringo Lam (林嶺東).
Its international scope is part of what makes Cannes so unmistakably French. No matter how wide-ranging their selections, American festivals — New York, Chicago, San Francisco, even Sundance — remain parochial events, but Cannes is bigger than the city that bears its name. It is a French affair, a source of national pride and a reminder of this country's cherished, and perhaps vestigial, status as a capital of world culture. The covers of the glossy magazines cluttering newsstands are divided between Cannes and Nicolas Sarkozy, the newly elected president, and it is not always clear which — affairs of state or affairs of cinema — are more important.
For the next 11 days, in any case, Cannes will be the undisputed center of the movie universe, a place of hyperbolic debate, unexpected delight and also a certain measure of disappointment. Established reputations will be dented or burnished, and new ones will be minted.
A great deal of fruitless speculation will be devoted to trying to read the minds of the jurors. Headed by the British director Stephen Frears (The Queen), the panel is made up of the usual assortment of filmmakers (Marco Bellocchio and Abderrahmane Sissako among them), actresses (including Maggie Cheung (張曼玉), Sarah Polley and Toni Collette), and also, for good measure, a Nobel Laureate in literature, the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk. Somewhere, no doubt, there is a bag with his name on it.
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