Megastars invade Cannes
2008-05-14 15:46
Cannes - The world's biggest
film festival has kicked off in Cannes, bringing
Hollywood A-listers, media and fans together for 12 party-packed days on the French
Riviera.
As the blitz of movies, parties and industry schmoozing started on Wednesday, the question was whether the independent movies beloved by Cannes critics could hold their own against the media bombast for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which plays here this weekend.
On opening day, the festival's dual nature was apparent for anyone strolling down Cannes's main drag, the Croisette.
On one side is Cannes's official poster: indie filmmaker David Lynch's arty photo of a mysterious blond bombshell.
On the other is a hotel facade dressed up for Indiana Jones festivities to look something like a plastic temple of doom.
While critics may gripe that Cannes has succumbed to Hollywood, the festival prides itself on having something for everyone.
Take Wednesday. The festival opens on a serious note with Blindness, Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles's tale of an epidemic that causes people to lose their vision, starring Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Gael Garcia Bernal and Danny Glover and based on a novel by Portuguese Nobel laureate Jose Saramago.
While critics pondered the symbolism of Blindness in a darkened cinema, paparazzi were hitting the beach to capture funnyman Jack Black pulling a publicity stunt for Kung Fu Panda, DreamWorks' tale of a pudgy panda with a love of martial arts.
Dramatic entrance
Black made a dramatic Cannes entrance by boat, then strolled down a pier among 40 people inside giant panda suits. Black, who provides the voice of the title character, showed off some kung fu moves on the pier as the pandas crowded in behind him. The movie has its Cannes premiere on Thursday.
Kung Fu Panda and Indiana Jones are not competing for prizes. The jury, led by Oscar-winning American actor and director Sean Penn (Into the Wild) and including Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men), American actress Natalie Portman (The Other Boleyn Girl) and comic book artist-director Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis), will hand out awards at a ceremony May 25.
Blindness, which is up for the top prize, was an unusually dark choice for an opening film, which is usually more festive, glitzy or crowd-pleasing - past openers include The Da Vinci Code and Moulin Rouge.
The theme of mayhem, mass hunger and displacement in Blindness revived memories of familiar crises, including Hurricane Katrina. The movie is about "the fragility of civilisation," the director said.
"To be honest, I still don't think that this is the best film to open the festival," Meirelles joked. He added that it was a "big honour" as well as "big pressure" to launch Cannes.
Missing-child drama
One highlight of films vying for the top prize, the Palme d'Or, is Clint Eastwood's Changeling, a missing-child drama starring Angelina Jolie. Eastwood is a regular at Cannes - he led the jury in 1994 and showed films here including Mystic River - but he has never won the top prize.
Jolie, Harrison Ford, Woody Allen, Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz and Robert De Niro are among the stars expected in town during the festival. Madonna and Sharon Stone are to turn up at a benefit dinner on Cannes' sidelines for the American Foundation for Aids Research.
Other films in the running for prizes are James Gray's Two Lovers, a romantic drama starring Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow, and Steven Soderbergh's 4 1/2-hour marathon Che, starring Benicio Del Toro as Argentine revolutionary Ernesto Guevara.
Dark themes abound as usual in the competition films. Palme d'Or laureates Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who took top honours at the 1999 and 2005 festivals, are back with a gritty drama about an illegal immigrant and her sham marriage, "Le Silence de Lorna (Lorna's Silence)."
Israeli writer-director Ari Folman's Waltz With Bashir - an animated film - tackles the subject of war and repressed memories.
And Italian film Gomorra, by director Matteo Garrone, takes on the Naples-based Camorra mob.
- AP