With sun hat and press pass already packed, our roving film critic DONALD CLARKEruns through his final checklist for Cannes 2010
FEW CULTURAL institutions endure such a conspicuous strain between the commercial and the recherchéas does the Cannes Film Festival. Yes, the Palme d'Or has gone to such highbrow auteurs as Michelangelo Antonioni, Theo Angelopoulos and Abbas Kiarostami. Sure, the event has launched some of the most distinguished careers in serious cinema. But, if the tabloids are to be believed, the event is also greatly concerned with ensuring that every Italian starlet gets the opportunity to point her nude breasts at every beach-bound photographer.
Having observed fascinated from a distance for decades, this writer will finally get the opportunity to test the tautness of the cultural tug-of-war when he makes for La Croisette next week.
Commerce is served by the inclusion of Ridley Scott's Robin Hoodas the opening film. Less promising movies have premiered at Cannes – The Da Vinci Codefor one – but the festival's increasingly common habit of showcasing mainstream pictures days before they go on general release has raised eyebrows. As was the case with the fourth Indiana Jones picture in 2008, Scott's film will open everywhere the same week of its unveiling at the Palais.
With this in mind, it was gracious of 20th Century Fox to move the release of Wall Street: Money Never Sleepsfrom summer to late September. Lucky Cannes punters will now get to see Oliver Stone's sequel (like Robin Hood, screening out of competition) a good four months before it is put before the hoi polloi.
By way of contrast, the list of films playing in competition displays an impressive starkness and lack of frivolity. Even the economy of the selection – much briefer than usual, with just 16 movies – speaks of a determination to avoid froth.
Abbas Kiarostami, the Iranian master who received the top prize for Taste of Cherry in 1997, makes an unprecedented foray into European cinema with The Certified Copy. The picture stars Juliette Binoche as a gallery owner interacting with a writer in Italy.
Mike Leigh, another previous winner, will be in competitive action once more with Another Year.Fans of the veteran will be encouraged to hear that the regular team are all out in force – Jim Broadbent, Lesley Manville, Phil Davis and Imelda Staunton all return.
Other distinguished directors among the 16 include Takeshi Kitano, durable Japanese master, with a crime drama entitled Outrage, Bertrand Tavernier, French cinematic royalty, with La Princesse de Montpensier, a period drama, and Alejandro González Iñárritu, who will be hoping to regain lost ground after the sappy Babel with a drama named Biutiful.
One film among the candidates for the Palme d'Or has already kicked up some controversy. Nikita Mikhalkov's Burnt by the Sun 2, a sequel to the Russian director's Oscar-winning drama from 1994, has become a spectacular, ruinously expensive flop in its home territories. The word on the Moscow street is that the public rather resents Mikhalkov's cosy closeness to the Putin regime. The picture, a study of the war against the Nazis, has, however, received perfectly decent notices so far.
Tim Burton, president of the jury, will have such luminaries as actors Benicio del Toro and Kate Beckinsale, and directors Shekhar Kapur and Victor Erice on hand to judge a selection which – though promising in quality – lacks glamorous bunker busters such as last year's Antichristand Inglourious Basterds.
Never mind all that. Cannes veterans will often tell you that the most exciting films are often found in the sidebar events and among those pictures screening out of competition. There is some Irish interest in both the Un Certain Regard section and the (unofficial) Directors' Fortnight strand. In the former, Hideo Nakata, director of Ringuand Dark Water, directs Aaron Johnson in a version of Enda Walsh's play Chatroom. For the latter, Alicia Duffy helms an Irish/Belgian/French co-production entitled All Good Children. As ever, tribunes of the domestic industry will be at the Irish Pavillion to – I'm guessing here – pump hands and cast optimistic oil on troubled economic waters.
I’ve got a hat to cover my big pink forehead. I have lubricated my trachea in preparation for 10 days of bellowing at foreigners in English. Let the slap-down between art and commerce begin.
