Cannes is Coming — 1st of 3
A heightened sense of anticipation pervades the days leading up to the 70th anniversary of Cannes Film Festival as we arrange screenings and parties and meetings for an adrenaline filled ten days. May 17 to 28 will be full of surprises as this unique high energy mix of glamour, work, fun and stress unfolds. A broad range of distinctive films in Competition, Un Certain Regard, Directors Fortnight (Quainzaine des realisateurs) and Critics Week (La Semaine de la critique), L’Acid compete with parties from cocktails sponsored by all the countries that are here (60+ including Armenia, Nigeria, Kazakhstan and Singapore) and with late night extravanzas on yachts and at villas in the hills.
This year’s poster portrays Claudia Cardinale dancing on a fiery red background. The Italian actress moved to Paris a long time ago. As the Cannes Muse this year, her musings illuminate the terrific span of years so many of us are commemorating on our own (It is my 31st year attending Cannes!)
In addition to being honored and proud to have been chosen as color bearer of the next edition of the festival, I am particularly happy because that specific photograph has been selected. It encompasses a thought, a reasoning, the way I imagined the festival at that time of my life. I was on a rooftop in Rome, in 1959, I do not remember anything, not even the name of the photographer… But that picture makes me think about my beginnings, a time when I never imagined I could end up on the steps of the most famous Palace of cinema of the world. Happy Anniversary Cannes!
Pedro Almodovar, President of the Jury, commented:
There could have not been, for the upcoming event, a better symbol than this adventurous performer, this independent woman, this socially active citizen.
Parties
Party calendars take special care because the parties are where we can see people we have not seen all year including those who did not return our phone calls, and we get to rub shoulders with important directors and producers. You can dance ’til dawn with live bands at the Colombia and Panama parties in big venues along the beach (called the Croisette) and at the same time see everyone from Latin America. Or have a sedate, stylish cocktail among the French crème de la crème (if you are invited!) at one of their many, many events. Passing through the Grand Hotel garden, you can also see business colleagues you have not seen in a while and say a quick hello or catch up on the latest news and gossip.
Launched 70 years ago as the free world’s post-war response to Mussolini’s Venice Film Festival, Cannes is the largest press event in the world except for the Olympics. This year, the festival was pushed back a week because of the elections and the French will be in a very celebratory mood. Six French films have been selected in this year’s Official Competition out of 19 films chosen; that is another reason to celebrate. Their specially-built-for-the-festival two-story UniFrance Pavilion, designed by Sarah Lavoine, includes a 50-square-meter mezzanine level overlooking the Cannes harbor and will host many events, cocktails, parties and conferences. You can follow conversations moderated by Rachel Donadio, The New York Times’ culture correspondent on UniFrance’s Facebook page beginning with the first artists to feature in this program, Michel Hazanavicius, Isabelle Huppert, and François Ozon.
Pavilions
Speaking of pavilions, the Dutch are celebrating artist’s Mondrian’s 100th birthday with a special unveiling of their pavilion called “A Composition in Red Blue and Yellow : Extruding Mondrian in Space” in the presence of its designer Sabine Marcelis. “Always further,” is how Mondrian termed his drive to transform his artwork, so a propos of the art we’ll be watching this year.
The Italian Pavilion is always the most extravagant design of all. The pragmatic American Pavilion showcases emerging filmmakers offering this picture to imagine yourself on the red carpet.
Auteurs
Epitomizing the best of auteur filmmaking, Cannes entices with Austrian director Michael Haneke’s new film “Happy End”, whose title “doesn’t match the content”, according to Festival Director Thierry Fremaux. Haneke could become the first three-time Palme D’Or winner (“The White Ribbon” and “Amour”).
Other auteurs in competition are Fatih Akin with “In the Fade”, a tale of revenge set in the German-Turkish community, and Cannes regular François Ozon with “L’Amant Double”, about a woman who falls in love with her psychoanalyst. Michel Hazanavicius (“The Artist”) will screen “Redoubtable” about a young Jean-Luc Godard (Quelle scandale!). Arnaud Desplechin’s “Ismael’s Ghosts” will be in competition. Eastern Europe is represented by Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa, with the Dostoevsky-inspired “A Gentle Creature” and Russian Andrey Zvyagintsev, whose new film “Loveless” had to be made without funding from his home country because the Russian Culture Ministry was angered by his last film “Leviathan”.
New Rules
South Korea’s “Okja”, and Noah Baumbach’s “The Meyerowitz Stories,” a story of adult siblings starring Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller are both Netflix films and having no French theatrical release has caused Cannes to make a new rule for 2018 that any films from Netflix and Amazon must have a theatrical run in France to qualify for the festival. The French cinema guild FNCF states (as quoted in Variety along with all the juicy details):
Netflix has been avoiding French regulation and fiscal obligations. These rules allow for the financing of our strong film industry and ecosystem which in turns allows for many French and foreign movies selected at Cannes to get made. stated the French guild FNCF.
Stars
And what would the festival be without its usual roster of star names? This year among many others, we will see Dustin Hoffman, Marion Cotillard and Nicole Kidman will be awarded special prize by Can for appearing in four films across the festival, “The Beguiled”, “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” and “How to Talk to Girls at Parties” and “Top of the Lake: China Girl”. Besides them, she recently starred in “Big Little Lies”, a Reese Witherspoon production based upon a book which has received excellent coverage and she was an Oscar nomination for “Lion”.
Up and Coming
We also can discover the work of up-and-coming directors, like competition first-timer, Bong Joon-ho (“Okja”), who previously was in Un Certain Regard (and even that was eight years ago).
Not exactly up-and-coming, the 73-year-old French director Jacques Doillon usually more likely to premiere his movies in Berlin and elsewhere, is in competition with his biopic “Rodin”. This is his first movie in four yeasrs.
TV and VR
Television has much more influence now in Cannes as well: David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” follow-up will premiere as will Jane Campion’s “Top of the Lake”. And a VR presence will be felt with Academy Award winners Alejandro González Iñárritu and Emmanuel Lubezki who have teamed up once again to create the experimental virtual reality installation “Carne y arena”/ “Virtually Present, Physically Invisible”. The six and half minute experiment is the first virtual reality project to be chosen for the Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival. Exploring the human conditions of immigrants and refugees, Iñárritu explained, “My intention was to experiment with VR technology to explore the human condition in an attempt to break the dictatorship of the frame — within which things are just observed — and claim the space to allow the visitor to go through a direct experience walking in the immigrants’ feet, under their skin, and into their hearts.”
American Indies Surge
Then there are the eagerly anticipated American indies “The Florida Project” from “Tangerine” writer-director Sean Baker, Sophie Coppola and “The Beguiled”, and Benny and Josh Safdie and their caper “Goodtime”. All three movies will play in Competition as will Todd Haynes’ “Wonderstruck” adapted from Brian Selznick’s children’s book. His film “Carol” showed here in 2015. And John Cameron Mitchell is making a rare appearance here with his “How To Talk to Girls At Parties” playing out of competition. New York-based A24 the seemingly powerful new U.S. distributor whose “Moonlight” swept the Academy Awards has “The Killing of the Sacred Deer” and “Good Time.” Amazon, repeats last year’s show of multiple selections with “Wonderstruck” and “You Were Never Really Here” by Lynne Ramsey.
Politics as Usual
The Cannes Film Festival has reinforced its status as the home of politically charged cinema with a lineup that encompasses the refugee crisis, climate change, mental health and the exploitation of animals. Claude Lanzmann (“Shoah”) will be present to show “Napalm,” a documentary about his recent trip to North Korea. A special screenings will be held of “An Inconvenient Sequel”, Al Gore’s continuation of his climate-change documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”, and we’ll see the directorial debut for Vanessa Redgrave with “Sea Sorrow”, a documentary providing historical context to the current migrant crisis and Raymond Depardon’s debut “12 Jours”, a documentary filmed in a psychiatric hospital. “Okja”, a Netflix-funded fantasy film starring Tilda Swinton was described by Cannes director Thierry Frémaux as “a very political movie” about “the way we exploit animals”.
Numbers and Women
Numbers are appealing to those who are tracking the progress of women directors in film: 15% women directors in the Competition and Un Certain Regard. 37% women directors or 7 out of 19 for feature length films. Directors Fortnight will open on a glamorous note with the world premiere of “Let the Sunshine In”/ “Un beau soleil intérieur” by Claire Denis, an ambitious French drama starring Juliette Binoche and Gerard Depardieu. The film is adapted from French philosopher and literary critic Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. Films Distribution handles international sales; Ad Vitam will be releasing it in France.
Twelve female directors will appear at this year’s edition. Three of those are in competition: Scotland’s Lynne Ramsay’s Joaquin Phoenix-starring drama “You Were Never Really Here” about a sex-trafficking ring; Japanese director Naomi Kawase with “Radiance”, about a photographer with failing eyesight; and Sofia Coppola with “The Beguiled”, a new adaptation of the southern gothic novel, starring Colin Farrell, Kirsten Dunst and Nicole Kidman who also appear together in “The Killing of a Sacred Deer”.
There’s so much more, but we’ll hear about them after the show begins! Here’s to France and la grande dame de cinema, Cannes!
