IT BARELY seems like a week since I filed my last report from 2007's Cannes Film Festival. And yet here I am again, walking along the Riviera resort's famous esplanade the Croisette, just hours before the curtain goes up on the 61st edition.
Stopping in front of the luxurious Carlton hotel, the upper floor of its belle époque façade draped in banners advertising Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Dollar, I briefly savour the quiet before the storm.
Soon, Fernando Meirelles's (City
of God, The Constant Gardener) opening-night film, Blindness, will sound the whistle that sends everyone – media, film-makers, deal- makers, wannabes, somebodies and never-will-bes – over the top and into the frenzy that is the world's most famous, and arguably craziest, celebration of cinema, celebrity, and cold hard cash.
The Croisette will teem with industry and media folk, locals and tourists, crawling cars and slaloming mopeds. Rubberneckers will bunch together outside the upscale Martinez, Majestic and Carlton hotels, and line up several rows deep across the road from the red-carpeted steps of the Palais des Festivals, desperately trying to catch a glimpse of the likes of Clint Eastwood, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Black, Robert De Niro, Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sean Penn, Madonna, Benicio Del Toro, Scarlett Johansson in the flesh. And it will become increasingly difficult to grab a quick bite to eat at one of the overpriced food stands on the seafront.
Given the chaos that always attends Cannes, it is little wonder that some festival-goers compare their experience to battle. However, I cannot remember a year in which the fog of war has descended so quickly, thanks to the later-than-usual completion of the line-up and screening schedules. Indeed, Blindness became an apt metaphor for the way some people were still groping around in the dark on the eve of the event.
"Don't even get me started on the lateness issue," moaned one frustrated publicist, who already appeared to be near the end of his tether (a state usually reached during the festival) a little over a week before the opening.
"It has driven all marketing, publicists and journalists crazy," he said. "I'm really hoping they don't do this again next year; I've been working around the clock just to keep up with everything."
Still, this is looking like a promising year on screen, though whether it can equal last year's strong line-up – Control, Persepolis, No Country for Old Men, Sicko and so on – is questionable. Certainly Blindness, adapted from Nobel Prize-winning author José Saramago's novel about a community in the grip of an epidemic of sightlessness, starring Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo, bodes well for the opening gala. After the risible The Da Vinci Code in 2006, and Wong Kar Wai's flimsy My Blueberry Nights last year, things, as they say, can only get better.
The competition features faces new and old, including grizzled veteran Clint Eastwood, in town as the director of the Palme d'Or contender Changeling – a period mystery drama about a lost child who is seemingly refound – and as the narrator of Richard Schickel's documentary love letter to the early days of Warner Brothers, You Must Remember This.
Steven Soderbergh, who won the Palme d'Or in 1989 with his low-budget directorial debut Sex, Lies and Videotape, is already being tipped as this year's winner with a bum-numbing four-hour double bill – Guerrilla and The Argentine – starring Benicio del Toro as poster-boy revolutionary Che Guevara. The films will be shown near the end of the festival as a single project. But how many critics will be able to keep awake for such a weighty work by then, is anybody's guess.
Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovitch, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) will be hoping to emulate Soderbergh by carrying off the top prize with his directorial debut, Synedoche New York, while festival favourites Atom Egoyan and Wim Wenders return with Adoration and Palermo Shooting respectively. Music fans will be able to spot the legendary Lou Reed and Patti Smith playing themselves in Wenders's film, which re-teams the German director with Dennis Hopper, star of his acclaimed 1977 thriller The American Friend.
One of the hits of last year's competition was Marjane Satrapi's animated feature about her childhood during the Iranian revolution, Persepolis. Now, Ari Folman gives us the animated feature-length documentary Waltz with Bashir, in which the former Israeli soldier and animator explores his repressed memories about Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Eagerly anticipated by critics, it'll be one of the hot tickets.
Not in competition but feverishly awaited is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Harrison Ford's return as the whip-cracking adventurer after almost two decades has already generated many column inches, now it's time to see whether the film can match the hype. Expect everything else to be overshadowed by the houpla.
High expectations certainly aren't something that Woody Allen will be in danger of disappointing with his latest effort, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, featuring Scarlett Johansson and Penélope Cruz. Though it would be wonderful to see the New Yorker get his mojo back, recent efforts such as Match Point, Scoop (as yet unreleased in the UK) and Cassandra's Dream have suggested an irreversible decline in his creative abilities. Still, weirder things have happened.
Speaking of which, disgraced sporting legends Mike Tyson and Diego Maradona are both scheduled to visit the Croisette in support of documentaries – Tyson, directed by James Toback, and Maradona, directed by Emir Kusturica. Expect much discussion of ear-biting, drug-taking and the so-called Hand of God incident.
While there aren't any British films up for the Palme d'Or, there are two home-grown films to get excited about: Of Time and the City, Terence Davies's documentary about his native Liverpool; and Hunger, controversial Turner Prize-winning artist Steve McQueen's film about jailed IRA soldier and MP Bobby Sands. Who says Cannes doesn't have something for everyone?
• The 61st Cannes Film Festival runs from today until 25 May.
The full article contains 1019 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
