Power to the people who punish bad cinema!’ This formidable rallying cry forms the climax of one of the 100-odd movies, feature-length and otherwise, that make up the world’s most glamorous and prestigious cinematic event.
Two years ago, the Cannes film festival almost drove the Americans away for good, pouring heretical film-snob derision on such Hollywood blockbusters as Godzilla and Armageddon. But the film in question is not part of some Situationist prank, or a calling-card film by some enfant terrible from the Tarantino school of life. No, the line features in Cecil B Demented, the latest film by the Baltimore trash auteur John Waters. Its unlikely star is Melanie Griffith, and its inclusion proves that, slowly but surely, the Americans are coming back. The film’s subject also reflects one of the themes of Cannes 2000, which opens on Wednesday.
Griffith plays Honey Whitlock, a Hollywood actress kidnapped by guerrilla film-makers who turn her stardom against the studios by forcing her to be in their underground movie. It is strikingly similar to the closing film, Denys Arcand’s Stardom, which explores the rise and fall of a model by showing her quest for fame through realistic TV interviews and newsreel footage: or to Famous, a film by American Werewolf star Griffin Dunne, showing in the Un Certain Regard section, in which a documentary maker shoots a film about a struggling actress while hoping his film will bring him celebrity.
Because, this year, glamour is returning to Cannes. Perhaps it is an attempt to wash away the tide mark left by last year’s mostly average festival, which ended in controversy when David Cronenberg’s jury awarded the Palm D’Or to rank outsider Rosetta and gave acting awards to first-timers. Perhaps it’s a riposte to the Berlin Film Festival, which played host to Hollywood A-list stars with an enthusiasm that bordered on toadying. Perhaps it is coincidence, but Cannes is going back to what it does best.
As a conciliatory gesture, there is even a special Out Of Competition screening of Brian De Palma’s Mission To Mars, a corny sci-fi blockbuster that even the Americans did not like. The opening film, Vatel, marks another strand of this year’s festival. Although directed by one Englishman, Roland Joffe, and scripted by another, Tom Stoppard, this lavish, star-studded Louis XIV-era epic is regally French in tone, featuring pompadoured Gérard Depardieu and some of the highest hair since The Draughtsman’s Contract. And this French renaissance (some would say French bias) is reflected in the competition line-up, which features five home-grown entries and several French co-productions.
A traditional Cannes would be incomplete without a little something from indigenous iconoclast Jean-Luc Godard. He has obliged with a specially commissioned short. The explosion in Asian cinema (a trend highlighted at January’s low-key Rotterdam festival) comes into its own in the festival’s official side sections Un Certain Regard and Critics’ Week and also in the parallel festival known as Director’s Fortnight. But these offerings from China, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan will have a hard time overshadowing the competition entries from Asian heavyweights Wong Kar-Wai, whose as yet untitled film is already in the running for the main prize, and Nagisa Oshima, whose homo-erotic Samurai drama Gohatto (“Taboo”) is his first in 14 years. Out of competition, confirming a genre the festival describes with typical French grandeur as “films de sabre”, comes Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a period piece starring Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh, that is already gaining excellent word-of-mouth simply on the basis of a showreel.
The Croisette is not about to be swamped by British film-makers. In competition are the perennial Ken Loach, making his first US-set film Bread And Roses, and James Ivory, who is sticking to his guns with an adaptation of Henry James’s The Golden Bowl, starring Nick Nolte. In the Directors’ Fortnight are Stephen Daldry’s Dancer, about a northern boy who dreams of being a ballet dancer; Simon Cellan Jones’s Some Voices, a dark romance about a schizophrenic; and Mark Herman’s Purely Belter, which promises to do for northern football clubs what his Little Voice did for its nightlife. Then, in the pop-into-film corner, comes Dave Stewart’s Honest (starring three quarters of All Saints), a brave attempt at a psychedelic Lock, Stock that you can only imagine the selection committee saw with the sound turned off.
Surprisingly, Italy – which spawned Fellini, Pasolini and Rossellini – has been snubbed. The festival clumsily explains that it was not for want of trying, thereby inadvertently rubbishing the 40 Italian films they claimed to have sat through. Spain, too, has been grumbling, though Spanish-language talent continues to rise via Mexico, but it falls to the Americans to make the biggest ruckus.
When trade bible Variety reported on the line-up, its coverage sniffed at the paucity of US movies on show, without really commenting on their quality. In fact, one of the highlights is the long-awaited Coen brothers movie O Brother Where Art Thou?, an unlikely homage to Homer’s The Odyssey, starring George Clooney and John Turturro as fugitives from a Deep South chain gang.
There is also Nurse Betty, a dark romantic comedy from Neil Labute (director of caustic sex-war satire In The Company Of Men) and The Yards, a prison-gang thriller with a superb young Hollywood cast in Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix and Charlize Theron. Out of competition is Requiem For A Dream, Darren Aronofsky’s surreal follow-up to Pi, which explores the self-destroying fantasy lives of a dysfunctional Coney Island family.
And as if more proof of old-school Cannes glamour were needed, there is also Barbara Kopple’s documentary Conversations With Gregory Peck, who will be attending the festival and thus eclipsing appearances by Gene Hackman (in town to promote legal thriller Under Suspicion) and James Caan (The Yards).
One of France’s favourite leading ladies returns, but not with a French movie. Catherine Deneuve will be coming with the circus accompanying Lars Von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark, his first movie since the formation of (and his resignation from) the Dogme 95 movement. It stars Björk as Selma, a Czech immigrant working in America to save her son’s eyesight. Dancer In The Dark heralds a step towards redefining the integration of music and image, a trend likely to be reflected in the Coens’ movie and in Wong Kar-Wai’s. A fan of Hollywood musicals, Björk’s character is given to bursting into song – an old-style Cannes affectation if ever there was one.
After two years in the wilderness, Cannes has realigned itself, striking an admirable balance between high and lowbrow – as always with a photogenic flourish. After 53 years, this is still the festival.