Other festivals take note
The opening ceremony at Cannes is always delightfully odd. Was there any particular reason why Gabriels sang a version of Stand by Me in the middle of it all? Not really. But it was perfectly charming. The highlights were the presentation of an honorary Palme d’Or to Michael Douglas and a regal appearance by Catherine Deneuve, who graces this year’s festival poster. For the past few years, journalists watching the press screening of the opening film have been forced to sit through a relay of the event before the flick starts. Why whinge? It’s a nifty 40 minutes. Other festivals take note.
Croisette’s precision strike
The authorities have responded to widespread industrial action throughout France by banning protests along the Croisette and surrounding territory. The Confédération Générale du Travail, or CGT, one of the five key trade-union confederations in France, will, however, still be holding a demonstration on Sunday in objection to the Paris government’s much reviled changes to pension regulations. The march will progress along Boulevard Carnot, the central thoroughfare that stops just north of the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès.
Variety reports that the organisers are also raising issues specific to the film industry. Céline Petit, an official in the CGT, acidly remarked: “Aside from the pension reform, we’re also denouncing the way women are treated in the film world, but they don’t want us to stain the glittery image and standards of the Cannes film festival.” Hospitality workers – unimaginably important in such a resort – will also be holding a rally in front of the Carlton Hotel on Friday.
‘I don’t why Johnny Depp was cast’
Thierry Frémaux, festival director, always has to dodge incoming bouncers during his opening press conference, but the bowling has been particularly dangerous this year. Online ticketing has been in place for only three years, but complaints about crashes and delays have already become a tradition. “Technology makes things better but also complicates them,” he said. “All that the festival can do, we are doing. I’m really sorry.”
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He again addressed the objections to opening with a film that stars Johnny Depp. The actor, whose disputes with his former wife Amber Heard have provoked huge controversy, appears as Louis XV in Maïwenn’s Jeanne du Barry; he received a standing ovation that Variety timed at seven minutes long at Tuesday night’s premiere. “I don’t know the image of Johnny Depp in the United States,” Frémaux said. “He is extraordinary in the film in a role which is difficult. I don’t why he was cast. You will have to ask Maïwenn her reasons for choosing him.”
But the most awkward exchanges concerned the suggestions of the former actor Adèle Haenel, in a public letter, that Cannes protected sexual abusers. “She felt obliged to make this comment on Cannes, but it’s false, erroneous,” Frémeaux said. “Cannes is an event with a strong media echo and people use Cannes to talk about certain problems. I find that normal. It doesn’t bother me. Cannes can be interpreted in different ways and given different identities, which don’t reflect reality.” No emollience there.
Neil Young’s Palme d’Or odds
As ever, Neil Young (no, not that one), the experienced Wearside film programmer who also runs the Jigsaw Lounge film website, has been handicapping the race for the Palme d’Or, largely sight unseen. Last year, ear to the ground, he foresaw the rise of Lukas Dhont’s Close – ultimately runner-up – when it was barely a blip on anyone else’s radar. In 2023, Neil has women directors as first and second favourite. Alice Rohrwacher, the poetic Italian who won second prize here with The Wonders in 2014, is his director to beat with La Chimara at 9/2. Fascinatingly, Neil has Kaouther Ben Hania, a young Tunisian film-maker, as second favourite, at 9/2, with Les Filles d’Olfa. Marco Bellocchio’s Rapito follows up at 11/2. An eccentric selection.
Cannes review: Jeanne du Barry
Maïwenn, director of this meandering period epic – a film that will not avoid faint praise in the vein of “lavishly mounted” – really, really wants us to know she has watched Barry Lyndon. The camera is leisurely in its pursuit of perambulating nobility in powdered wigs. The interiors are not short of (pseudo?) candlelight. Stephen Warbeck’s excellent score even finds time for a gesture towards Schubert’s Piano Trio in E-flat, one of the most famous music cues in the Stanley Kubrick film. Might we also venture that both films feature male leads who are a bit, well, waxworky?
The press have made a decent effort to stir controversy about Cannes’s decision to open with a film starring Johnny Depp. Why worry? It seems unlikely Jeanne du Barry will provoke any great revival in his career. His performance as Louis XV is one of the less remarkable aspects of a film that is hard to love, hard to hate, hard to have any strong feelings about bar ardent respect for the wig masters, costume folk and the architects of Versailles. Depp is wheeled on. He growls a bit. Eventually he dies. As Dorothy Parker probably didn’t say upon being told of Calvin Coolidge’s death, “How can they tell?”
The director herself plays the eponymous maîtresse-en-titre of the king – a goddess among courtesans – with rambunctious, decadent energy but with little attempt to root the character in any century other than this one and its predecessor. When she lets her hair down she comes across more as a confidante of The Allman Brothers Band than of any fading Bourbon.
None of which is to suggest Jeanne du Barry has any of the antic, era-blending energy that made Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette to memorable. You won’t need a PhD in French history to guess that figure makes a late appearance. This is a perfectly tolerable, largely pedestrian, mostly safe walk-through of the facts with little attempt made at revisionism. Yes, it is largely on Madame du Barry’s side. But you’d expect that now.
Just the sort of safe cosy entertainment that often opens the Cannes film festival.
