Cannes Film Festival opens on Wednesday with a mix of arthouse
movie making and raw star power fitting for cinema's greatest
showcase, which turns 60 this year.
Chinese director Wong Kar Wai, best known in the West for In
The Mood For Love, brings My Blueberry Nights to the
palm-lined Riviera resort, an English language film starring singer
Norah Jones in her screen debut alongside Jude Law.
The opening movie kicks off 11 hectic days of networking, deal
making, and partying among thousands of people from across the
industry who descend on Cannes each year.
It is one of 22 competition films, but hundreds more, including
major Hollywood productions, are screened and touted, luring the
likes of Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Leonardo
DiCaprio, Martin Scorsese, and Sharon Stone to France's southern
coast.
Selectors chose no less than five US productions in the main
competition, although two have already been released in their home
country to a cool reception.
Quentin Tarantino, adored by the Cannes faithful for his
subversive style, presents Death Proof, part of a double
bill that flopped at the box office.
And David Fincher was included for Zodiac, starring
Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr. in a drama based on a
real-life serial killer.
"Often there is that disconnect between what American critics
like and what European critics like, so it could be that the
Europeans think it (Death Proof) is the bees' knees," said
Jay Weissberg, movie critic at trade publication Variety.
Previous winners
Like Tarantino, the Coen Brothers and Gus Van Sant are US
directors who have won the coveted Palme d'Or before and are in
contention to repeat that success.
They are likely to face stiff competition from two highly
regarded Russian film makers -- Andrei Zvyagintsev (The Banishment)
and Alexander Sokurov, whose "Alexandra" is set in Chechnya.
Portraits of life in Iran, Romania, Ukraine, Austria, Mexico,
Turkey, and Israel also feature in what critics expect to be a
vintage lineup.
As ever, out-of-competition films threaten to steal the
limelight, with Hollywood sequel Ocean's 13, starring
Clooney and Pitt, premiering in Cannes, and Jolie promoting A
Mighty Heart based on the story of slain reporter Daniel
Pearl.
But there are no genuine blockbusters launching at the festival
this year, unlike 2005's Star Wars sequel and 2006's The
Da Vinci Code, which went on to gross $758 million at the
worldwide box office despite a critical mauling in Cannes.
There are also fewer political films, although Michael Moore's
documentary SiCKO about the U.S. healthcare system is
likely to cause a stir, just as his anti-Bush polemic
Fahrenheit 9/11 did when it won the 2004 Palme d'Or.
Heartthrob DiCaprio is in town with 11th Hour, an
environmental documentary that is the latest product of Hollywood's
growing concern over global warming.
And although no British films appear in the main competition
this year, some of its biggest music acts are set to light up the
silver screen.
"Control" looks at the life and premature death of Joy Division
star Ian Curtis while The Future is Unwritten examines the
Clash's Joe Strummer.
(Agencies via CRI.cn May 16, 2007)