The Cannes Festival is the World Series of cinema events, a blood sport where the big hitters strut their stuff and rookies might get hurt. This is a festival with attitude, a happening that excites and riles the public. Playing favorites, faithful and finicky by turn, Cannes -- and its audiences -- make and break champions.
There are directors who seem to have lifelong contracts, who are known by initials or nicknames, and those who have been dropped along the way into noncompetitive sections.
Then, in the highest out-of-competition realm, you have George Lucas's Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, providing the Hollywood touch. The festival chiefs Gilles Jacob, Thierry Fremaux and Veronique Cayla are proud of copping this world premiere, along with Match Point, the new Woody Allen, which opens the out-of-competition screenings.
PHOTO: EPA
In this year's 58th festival, which began Wednesday and runs until May 22, the game is looking tamer, for the competition brags so many big names that you wonder where the novelty will come from.
Just look at this list: David Cronenberg, Lars Von Trier, Wim Wenders, "Gentleman" Jim Jarmusch, Gus Van Sant, "HHH" or Hou Hsiao-Hsien (
Making their competition debut this year will be Tommy Lee Jones as a director, Italy's Marco Tullio Giordano, the Larrieu brothers of France, China's Wang Xiaoshuai (
Emir Kusturica, who heads the jury, was practically born on the shores of Cannes. The director from Sarajevo first came and won the Palme d'Or with When Father Was Away on Business (1985), a comedy set in Yugoslavia. Freshly unshaved, pale, and barefoot on the beach, he spoke neither French nor English.
Since then, he made Arizona Dream with Johnny Depp, suffered his country's internal wars while being heavily criticized for not taking a stand against the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, and, briefly, dropped out of filmmaking.
"I had to learn the lesson of the immigrant," he said in a 1998 interview. He also taught cinema at Columbia University, polished his language skills and leads a rock band called No Smoking.
Despite his second Palme for Underground (1995), Kusta, as he is called, is a wild card, a man who likes a good fight.
There is speculation that a jury that includes novelist Toni Morrison and filmmakers Agnes Varda and Fatih Akin will be touched by films with social and political issues, such as the Kurdish director Hiner Saleem's Kilometer Zero. But no one doubts that Kusta will have his say and leave his mark on the awards.
Dominik Moll opened the competition Wednesday evening with Lemming, a ghost story of sorts starring Charlotte Rampling, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Laurent Lucas and Andre Dussollier.
The tall, lanky, laughing Moll, who looks much too relaxed to be a French auteur, is in the hot seat: Lemming opens in France the same day, a risky business. The director made a splash in 2000 with Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien (Harry, He's Here to Help), a dark Hitchcockian comedy that was an overnight hit -- thanks to Cannes.
A festival that flourishes on surprises and upsets, Cannes savors the rumble of impatient critics, the frenzy of press conferences, the high of last-minute entries.
Last year, it was the late arrival of Wong Kar-wai's (
Last year there was also Michael Moore with his Fahrenheit 9/11, winning over the jury's president, Quentin Tarantino, and taking the Palme, much to the dismay of the fastidious Gilles Jacob.
It was the year of the documentary, with Jonathan Nossiter's Mondovino boosted up to the competition at the last moment. Nossiter says it was like being invited to the Oscars to watch and being told he was part of the show.
"If Mondovino was shown in over 40 countries, it's mostly because of what happened at Cannes," he said.
This year, there are no documentaries, no animation surprises, no stark Iranian landscapes, no kung-fu fun. There are plenty of specials: an Atelier de Creation to help young filmmakers from all over the world, evenings on the beach called "La Soiree Movie-Mix," and an acting master class taught by Catherine Deneuve.
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