- guardian.co.uk, Sunday May 2 2004 12.46 BST
- The Observer, Sunday May 2 2004
Quentin Tarantino: as jury president, he can be guaranteed to ensure the prizes aren't predictable
Photo: AP
They're changing guard at the Palais. Since the Cannes 2004 line-up was announced in Paris, commentators have searched for evidence to suggest that the organisers, worried by the rising profile of rival festivals, have decided to change tack. Gone are a number of veteran international filmmakers whose presence in the competition was so predictable that they must have planned their annual holidays around the trip to the French Riviera. In the past, flicking through the festival programme has brought to mind Bill Murray's predicament in Groundhog Day.
Yet closer inspection reveals that this is evolution rather than revolution. When the festival opens on 12 May, there will still be plenty of familiar faces in the main competition, including the Coens, who are bringing their seventh film to Cannes. In his third year as artistic director, Thierry Frémaux has attracted several high-profile, iconoclastic names. As jury president, former Palme d'Or winner Quentin Tarantino can be guaranteed to ensure that the prizes aren't predictable. When he won with Pulp Fiction in 1994, it marked the start of his ascendancy from hip young director to Hollywood brand name.
The opening night film, Bad Education, is by Pedro Almodóvar, a festival favourite. His noirish thriller, which deals in part with child abuse in the Catholic church, sounds as if it will be a controversial film on a topical issue. A recent Variety review called it Almodóvar's most ambitious project to date. It promises to complete a trilogy of mature melodramas, following All About My Mother and Talk to Her, that examine how the past remains alive in the present. Almodóvar's inclusion is no surprise - the mystery is why the film wasn't given a slot in the main competition.
Michael Moore makes a welcome return with his latest documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11. In 2002, his wry study of gun control, Bowling for Columbine , inspired and infuriated critics in almost equal measure. In Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore's thesis is that the Bush administration used the attacks on the World Trade Centre to push its neo-con agenda. This is hardly an earth-shattering revelation but doubtless Moore will gleefully put Dubya and cronies through the wringer.
Other notable directors include Wong Kar-Wai, Olivier Assayas, Emir Kusturica and Walter Salles. 2046 is Kar-Wai's first film since In the Mood For Love, a Cannes prize-winner in 2000, and is likely to be the coolest film in competition. The director is notoriously perfectionist - there was even speculation that this film might have made it in time for last year. 2046 is a futuristic drama, set in Hong Kong 50 years after the British handover and starring two of Asia's most bewitching actresses: Maggie Cheung and Zhang Ziyi.
Cheung promises to be one of the big stars this year. She also features in Clean, directed by ex-husband Assayas, and set in 1980s America, Europe and Australia. Shot mainly in English, it concerns a child custody battle between a widowed junkie and the parents of her late husband. Mexican heartthrob Gael Garcia Bernal matches Cheung by having two films playing in the Salle Lumière - he stars in the Almodóvar and gives what is said to be a career-making performance in Salles's Motorcycle Diaries, playing Che Guevara. The film was a huge hit at Sundance and Salles caused controversy when he withdrew it from Berlin for a crack at the Palme d'Or.
Kusturica makes a welcome return with Life is a Miracle, about a man building a railway for tourists in war-torn Serbia. This bear of a director hasn't made a film for nearly eight years, preferring instead to turn in some cameo roles in French features such as La Veuve de St Pierre and to tour with his gypsy-rock band. A two-time winner (1995's Underground and When Father Was Away on Business in 1985), he is always original and his films brim with passion and impossibilities.
France hasn't had a home win since 1987 (though Polanski's The Pianist was French-funded), when Under Satan's Sun was booed during the prize-giving. This year, hopes rest with Assayas, Tony Gatlif and Agnes Jaoui.
Gatlif is capable of majestic moments - his films, such as Gadjo Dilo and Latcho Drom , are full of music and energy and are generally populated by non-professional actors with faces that tell a thousand stories. Exiles follows two young French people journeying from Paris to North Africa. Comme Une Image is the follow-up to director, actress and writer Jaoui's Oscar-nominated 2001 romantic black comedy, The Taste of Others . Set in a similarly bourgeois milieu, it focuses on relationships in the Paris publishing world.
Elsewhere, La Nina Santa looks exciting, being the second feature from Argentina's Lucrecia Martel, whose debut, The Swamp ( La Cienega ), was memorably caustic and atmospheric. Shrek 2 would be a controversial winner, being a sequel and a cartoon - surely it can't hold much more in the way of surprises than its (admittedly delightful) original? Mamoru Oshii's Innocence is the second animated feature in the line-up and, look, there's a German entry too, the first for 10 years. Director Hans Weingartner is new to me, but Die Fetten Jahre Sind Vorbei stars Daniel Bruehl, who made such an impression in Goodbye, Lenin!
Britain's sole involvement is The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, which is mostly funded by US outfit HBO (which, incidentally, won with last year's Elephant ). Geoffrey Rush is Sellers, Charlize Theron is Britt Ekland, while Emily Watson and Emilia Fox also appear as the comic genius's put-upon women. Stephen Hopkins, who's been directing episodes of 24 recently, is at the helm and its selection in competition suggests this is more than a straightforward bio-pic.
