This year’s festival has been low on Hollywood stars, and the market feels flat. The weather is chill and the lineup spotty, and yet none of this matters — because God is coming to town. Jean-Luc Godard! Inside the Palais, the delegates recite his name like an incantation. Who cares if he’s old and frail (79 last birthday)? So what if he says his latest work — Film Socialism — will be his last? If anyone is guaranteed to raise Cannes to the rafters, it is the revolutionary firebrand behind Breathless, Weekend and Contempt.
There are still some at this festival who can recall the heady days of May 1968, when Cannes was galvanized by the uprisings in Paris. They will tell you how Godard was at the vanguard of a gang of nine filmmakers who stormed the festival hall and brought the event to a juddering halt. These directors came to rally support for the strikers and the students. The audience, however, thought they had come to burn the cinema down and proceeded to break for the exit. Cannes 68 was officially cancelled the following morning.
Cannes 2010 is just a few days old. The man himself has yet to arrive but that’s OK, because a glance through the program suggests that the spirit of 1968 is alive and well. The lineup includes pointed political films from France, Italy, Africa and China, amid the usual crop of Hollywood blockbusters and B-movie rip-offs. It has become a Cannes tradition to balance its ticket, to offset the celebrity glitz with the sort of films that kick up a storm and clamor for action. The Rolls Royces cruise down the Croisette while the newspaper vendors cry “Liberation!” on the steps of the Palais.
This festival, in fact, sparked a diplomatic incident before it even began, courtesy of a film by Italian director and comedian Sabina Guzzanti. Draquila: Italy Trembles is a grand, tub-thumping polemic in the style of Michael Moore, who won the Palme d’Or here in 2004 for Fahrenheit 9/11. Where Moore tackled Bush, Guzzanti targets Silvio Berlusconi, and his handling of last year’s Aquila earthquake. She makes the case that he used the resulting crisis to crack down on civil liberties, forcing survivors into militarized tent cities while he embarked on a lucrative development project. Inevitably, her film has outraged the Italian government, prompting culture minister Sandro Bondi to boycott the festival. Draquila, he claims, is “propaganda that offends the truth of the entire Italian population.”
In the courtyard of her hotel, Guzzanti suggests that we sit in the sun, beside the pool, so she can top up her tan. If she’s going to be exiled anywhere, it may as well be here. “Italy is not a parliamentary republic any more,” she says. “I’m ashamed of it. The parliament has no power because Berlusconi makes the law. When I was shooting this film, people were scared to speak to me. These days, you lose your job if you open your mouth, or dare to join a union.”
Guzzanti describes herself as a “dissident filmmaker,” a spiritual cousin to blacklisted Chinese directors such as Lou Ye (婁燁) and Li Yang (李楊), who have shot their films on the sly and then unveiled them at previous festivals. She used to present her own TV show, but is now effectively banned from working on Italian television. Instead, she organizes theater tours and funnels any profit into filmmaking. “I discovered that no producer in Italy would dream of funding my films,” she says. “Why? Because they’re cowards.”
Guzzanti has been sued in the past: A case brought by Mara Carfagna, the former topless model and Berlusconi’s minister for equal opportunity is ongoing (Carfagna objected to Guzzanti’s suggestion that her job was a reward for sexual favors). “This time it’s different. Previously I’ve always been found innocent. But you can always find a judge who is corrupt, who does as he’s told, particularly now Berlusconi has rewritten the entire constitution. The justice system is just one of his tools.” She gives a crooked smile. “I think that this time they will find a way to punish me.”
If so, it’s small wonder she’s making the most of her time in the sun. Cannes, she says, has a proud history of promoting freedom of expression. “It’s a festival that encourages filmmakers to speak about their time, and to try to make sense of the world. I think a lot of that comes from the French filmmakers, from people like Truffaut and Godard. French filmmakers and critics tend to be very committed and politicized. I remember a few years back when they showed Amelie here, and people were so angry: ‘Why are we showing this stupid, whimsical little film? We should be showing films about real life!’” Guzzanti guffaws. “They hated that film!”
Happily, there is no Amelie in this year’s lineup. Instead, the big French picture looks set to be Hors la Loi (Outside the Law), a Palme d’Or contender that screens here on Friday. This is by the writer-director Rachid Bouchareb, his sequel to the acclaimed Days of Glory (2006). That film shamed the French government into restoring pensions for Algerian soldiers who fought for France in World War II; his new film examines the plight of Algerian refugees in Paris, including the notorious 1961 “massacre” after a pro-Front de Liberation Nationale demonstration. Government ministers have already lined up to lambaste it as “an insult to France” and a tale that “falsifies history.” A right-wing protest is planned for the premiere.
In the meantime, there is Lucy Walker’s anti-nuclear broadside, Countdown to Zero, and a plethora of films addressing the current financial meltdown. These run the gamut from Oliver Stone’s slick Wall Street sequel through crusading documentaries such as Cleveland vs Wall Street. Then there is the exhaustive and bizarrely gripping Inside Job. Director Charles Ferguson made his debut with No End in Sight, which spotlighted the US occupation of Iraq; with Inside Job, he identifies a different kind of crime scene, buttonholing the culprits in their palatial boardrooms and forcing them to confess.
I meet Ferguson on the beach, beside the million-dollar yachts. I’m not sure whether the location is ironic or outright indecent. “There’s certainly a lot of shady money washing around this place,” Ferguson says. “But I’m not opposed to money per se. What I have a problem with is people getting rich by causing a global financial crisis. I mean, if you have US$100 million, why commit a crime in order to gain another US$100 million? For me, US$100 million would be fine.”
This is a good place to show his movie, he says. Cannes and controversy go hand in hand. “I guess it’s a chicken-and-egg situation. People are always going to be making political films, particularly in times of trouble. But it seems obvious that the festival goes out of its way to support these films. It gives them the stage. It presents them to the world.”
On Monday morning, the sun comes out, and the crowds gather for Godard. It’s the moment we’ve been waiting for. Afterwards, there will be a press conference, but first comes the film; the master’s crowning political statement. We sit in the dark and watch it unfold, on a cruise ship tootling between Algiers and Egypt, Palestine and Odessa. From time to time, the singer Patti Smith takes to lugging her guitar around the ship’s deck and through the cabins. “Knife and art,” she tells us. “War.”
What is one to make of it all? You might argue that Godard intends his ship as a metaphor for Western capital, sailing blithely through choppy global waters, but it’s hard to say. If this is the word of God, he needs to speak more clearly.
Film Socialism wraps up with one last cue card. “No Comment,” it says, and this turns out to be prophetic. We rush to the press conference, but there is no press conference. Godard has bailed; his final act of mischief. Later, he will release a statement in which he insists: “I will go until death for this festival, but I will not take a step more.” His non-appearance, he explains, is down to “problems of a Greek type.” No one seems quite sure what this means: Is he expressing support for the Greek people, or could he not afford his fare?
Outside the press area, the mood is one of insurrection. The hacks are outraged, the organizers reportedly incensed, and for a moment it’s like May 1968 all over again. Then the mood dissipates, as swiftly as it sparked, and we file off down the stairs in search of something new. Godard has gone, but a fresh generation of filmmakers has stepped in to pick up the baton.
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