With less than 24 hours to go to its red-carpet opening night, Cannes is busy with digging and rigging. The colourful flowers that adorn the Promenade de la Croisette – the famous beachside street that leads to the purpose build festival building, Le Palais – are quickly being planted, the lawns trimmed and the huge sign that covers the entrance of Le Palais still being strapped down in the warm spring breeze. No sign yet of the red carpet or the stars that will have to run its gauntlet nightly for the next twelve days.
It wont be so much a tuxedo as a men-in-tights start for the 63rd festival, with Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood chosen as the glamour film to get proceedings underway. Scott joins Woody Allen and Oliver Stone who also have new films premiering this year – but none of these in any of the official competitions. Scott, Allen and Stone are really just the commercial icing on top of the Cannes layer cake, with the real interest in the films “In Competion.” Eighteen films will compete for the top prize – the Palme d’Or – including Mike Leigh’s Another Year starring Jim Broadbent, and new films from old hands Nikita Mikhalkov (who is presenting a sequel to his Palme d’Or and Academy Award winning film Burnt by the Sun) and Abbas Kiarostami – the renown Iranian director who is screening his first film shot outside Iran. Cinema legend Jean-Luc Goddard also has a film in the Un Certain Regard section of the festival.
The early talk from Cannes has been less about the films and more about the lack of female directors, with no sign of “the Bigelow Effect” gaining traction. There’s not one woman director featured in the eighteen competition films, although the rest of the official programme includes a sprinkling of non-male work, including Sophie Fiennes (sister of Ralph) and outspoken Italian comedienne Sabina Guzzanti, who both get special screenings.
Australia is even more poorly represented, with only half a film – a French-Australian co-production – anywhere in the programme. The Tree, the festival’s closing film, was directed by Julie Bertucelli and shot in Queensland. It will be up to our actors to carry the flag – with Cate Blanchett and Russell Crowe starring on opening night, and Naomi Watts appearing in two films – Doug Liman’s Fair Game, and Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.
And talking of tall dark strangers, I thought that I caught a glimpse of George Clooney as I wondered past Le Palais to register for the film marketplace. And indeed, I did –there he was, seemingly watching a painter putting a quick coat of paint on the white fence that keeps the hoi polloi away from the red-carpet zone. But when the crowd around him dispersed I realised it was only a life-size cardboard cut-out. When I spotted Johnny Depp a bit further along the beachfront, I didn’t look twice.
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Hi Simon
Hope the sunny climes of Cannes are free of all volcanic ash! Not that you’ll notice the sun once you start hitting the screenings. Remember to get some shut eye occassionally and do give George my love when he eventually turns up.