Cannes 2005 preview

Notebook, check; Spare liver, check, Dave Calhoun looks forward to a very promising Cannes Film Festival.

May 11 2005

The Cannes Film Festival is about to start: 12 days of diverse films, excitable crowds, ridiculous hype, copious wine and the inevitable accusations of anti-Americanism as stirred up by nervous journalists desperate to file a story back across the Atlantic.

Already a dead cert to inherit Michael Moore's crown in the last category is Lars von Trier's 'Manderlay' – his follow-up to 'Dogville' – which will have its world premiere on the Croisette next week. As fellow Danish director and Dogme partner-in-crime Thomas Vinterberg warned Time Out in January: 'Expect some heavy race issues…'

Von Trier isn't the only Cannes regular with a film in competition. The Official Selection reads like a homecoming, with new films, all competing for the Palme d'Or, from David Cronenberg ('A History of Violence'), the Dardenne brothers ('L'Enfant'), Atom Egoyan ('Where the Truth Lies'), Amos Gitai ('Free Zone'), Michael Haneke ('Caché'), Hou Hsiao-Hsien ('Three Times'), Jim Jarmusch ('Broken Flowers'), Gus Van Sant ('Last Days') and Wim Wenders ('Don't Come Knocking').

Also a Croisette regular, Woody Allen will present 'Match Point' – made with Scarlett Johansson in London last year – in the festival's Out of Competition section, and George Lucas's final 'Star Wars' film will have a special screening on the Riviera two days before it rolls out across the globe.

Any surprises, then? A lack of sympathy for British movies has come to be expected from Cannes selectors, and it's the thinnest year in a while for homegrown cine-patriots.

Martha Fiennes' 'Chromophobia' is the festival's Closing Night Film but won't compete for the Palme d'Or.

The only other British work floating about the nether regions of the Official Selection is Adam Curtis's acclaimed and BAFTA-winning documentary series, 'The Power of Nightmares' (as seen on TV here last year).

Any curiosities? At first glance, the inclusion of Tommy Lee Jones' directorial debut, 'The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada', among the 21 films selected to compete for the Palme d'Or seems like like an oddity. Look more closely, though, and you'll find that its screenwriter is Guillermo Arriaga, the man behind such solid arthouse fare as 'Amores Perros' and '21 Grams'.

Any obvious change of direction for Cannes? Not really – although there's no sign of last year's flirtation with documentaries ('Fahrenheit 9/11', 'Mondovino') and animation ('Shrek 2', 'Ghost in the Shell 2').

And despite acting as a launchpad for 'Star Wars', and the inclusion of comic-book adaptation 'Sin City' in competition, the festival shows no signs of bowing further towards Hollywood.

The competition line-up has a healthy geographical spread, with films from Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East (including one by a former Iraqi exile, Hiner Saleem).

Unusually, there are only two French films in that parade: 'Harry, He's Here to Help', director Dominik Moll's 'Lemming', and brothers Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu's 'Peindre ou Faire l'Amour'. Still, François Ozon has a new film in the Un Certain Regard section.

What else to expect? Red-carpet glamour, as ever, courtesy of a host of American celebrities and their new films: Scarlett Johansson for 'Match Point'; Michael Pitt and Asia Argento for 'Last Days'; Natalie Portman for 'Star Wars'; and Sharon Stone, Tilda Swinton and Bill Murray for 'Broken Flowers'.

And, of course, the parties… The annual shindig hosted by MTV will this year be in honour of Stephen Chow's cheeky martial-arts flick 'Kung-Fu Hustle'. It's rumoured that Sonic Youth will play at a party for Van Sant's 'Last Days'. And apparently Naomi Campbell is throwing an exclusive birthday party in aid of Nelson Mandela's AIDS charity. (Er, nothing to do with cinema at all then…)

Apart from that, expect the unexpected. The smaller sections of the festival are full of films from little-known filmmakers from across the globe.

The first film I ever saw in Cannes (only three years ago, which is not a patch on my colleague Geoff Andrew's 18-years-and-counting Cannes service) was an anonymous Brazilian feature that no one in the sparse queue outside the screening room had any clue about. Its name? 'City of God'.

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