Cannes 2009: five hot films

As Cannes begins, Dave Calhoun previews our coverage of the event and picks out five hotly anticipated titles due to premiere on the Croisette

This week sees the start of the Cannes Film Festival. Last year, the festival awarded the highest honour in world cinema – the Palme d’Or – to Laurent Cantet’s superb schoolroom drama ‘The Class’. The 2008 event also handed out prizes to ‘Hunger’, ‘Il Divo’, ‘Gomorrah’ and ‘Che’: in other words, what unfolds in Cannes over the next two weeks will define what we’ll be watching in our cinemas over the next 12 months. In the film business, it’s only a short hop from the screening rooms of the Croisette to the cosy environs of the Curzon Soho.

As ever, Time Out will be in Cannes. We’ll be reviewing every major film online and we’ll be bringing you reports, both midway and final, on these pages. At this stage, it’s impossible to predict which films will shine and which will sink – part of the thrill is the surprise. But as 20 directors line up to compete for the Palme d’Or, including heavyweights such as Ken Loach, Pedro Almodóvar, Michael Haneke, Lars von Trier and Park Chan-Wook, we present the five films which most intrigue us at this stage, as we prepare to pack our laptops, sunglasses and ample paracetamol.
You can follow our daily Cannes coverage at www.timeout.com/film

Andrea Arnold’s ‘Fish Tank’ (UK)
Forty-eight-year-old Arnold – who hails from Dartford – won the festival’s Jury Prize in 2006 with her debut, ‘Red Road’. She’s built on the themes of her short ‘Wasp’ to make a drama about a 15 year old (Katie Jarvis) whose mother brings home a new boyfriend (Michael Fassbender).

Ang Lee’s ‘Taking Woodstock’ (US)
The 54-year-old Taiwanese director of ‘Lust, Caution’, ‘Hulk’ and ‘Sense and Sensibility’ redefines ‘versatile’. This is an ensemble comedy set around 1969’s Woodstock festival. Let’s hope Lee heeds those terrible words of warning: ‘The Boat that Rocked’.

Terry Gilliam’s ‘The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus’ (FR/Can)
The 68-year-old ex-Python’s latest will screen out of competition but no doubt attract huge attention for being Heath Ledger’s final film. The actor died during the shoot and the trio of Jude Law, Colin Farrell and Johnny Depp stepped in to assume variations on his character and help Gilliam complete the film. The story is a fantasy set in a travelling theatre and also stars Christopher Plummer and Tom Waits.

Elia Suleiman’s ‘The Time That Remains’ (Palestine)
The 48-year-old Palestinian hasn’t made a feature since ‘Divine Intervention’ in 2002, which applied a comic touch to the issue of Israeli checkpoints. Billed as the third part in a trilogy about Palestinian identity that began with 1996’s ‘Chronicle of a Disappearance’, this stars Suleiman himself, is said to be semi-autobiographical and is the story of a Palestinian family from 1948 to the present day.

Michael Haneke’s ‘The White Ribbon’
The 67-year-old Austrian won the Best Director prize in 2005 for ‘Hidden’ (‘Caché’) and went on to remake his ‘Funny Games’ in English. He now returns to the German language for the first time since the original ‘Funny Games’ in 1997. The film is set in a German village in 1913 and follows several characters linked to a school choir. The film is said to explore the roots of National Socialism.

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