2009 may be remembered as a “down year” for the Cannes Film Festival — certainly, some press and industry faces familiar from previous years were nowhere in sight; certainly, celebrity directors like Ang Lee, Pedro Almodovar and Quentin Tarantino showed up with new films that failed to single-handedly rescue the world economy by the end of their first screenings — but isn’t it a down year all around, not just for film but for, like, life on Earth? In a time as stagnant and depressed as this, what can we reasonably expect a film festival to do? Never once in my eight days at the festival did I question whether Cannes does or does not matter. Spending hours each day in Market badge lines composed of Cannes’ equivalent of rabble (myself included — I was standing in those lines because my coverage is not important enough to the Festival to merit press accreditation) the weight of the event doesn’t seem up for debate — you’re literally fighting over seats with too many people to whom Cannes matters to.
Back in New York now, maybe I should have a clearer perspective, but it’s hard. Even as the bigger films failed to meet my expectations, even as Lars Von Trier stomped in like Godzilla, swallowed the press corps whole and left the festival in ruins (and I *liked* Antichrist), even if I went home without seeing anything that matched 2008’s A Christmas Tale or Modern Life as sure-to-endure masterworks international cinema … I’ll still do whatever it takes to go back next year. I spend an awful lot of time covering things out of obligation because they’re perceived to matter to someone; in return, let me be selfish. Let me have Cannes, if for no other reason than because it matters to me.
And with that: after the jump, you’ll find my collected coverage. At right, the one photo I managed to take of “local color” - because even the coffee at Cannes this year came with unneccessary nudity.
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In 2008, The Class won the Palme D’or “out of nowhere” — or so it seemed, as the film hadn’t screened before a large chunk of the press had gone home. Almost as if pulling a bait and switch on journalists who stayed through the final weekend the following year in fear of missing a second Oscar-safe “surprise”, the 2009 Cannes lineup saved not the best for last, but certainly the most balls-out and commercially unviable. The two films I saw on my final day in the South of France were admirably experimental, undeniably gorgeous to look at, obstinately focused on form over narrative, so ambitious as to threaten to render that word meaningless as an adjective, and really fucking hard to watch.
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If you’ve been paying attention to any of the pre-Cannes speculation this year, you won’t be surprised to see that Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds, Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock, Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, and Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces made the competition lineup. You may be surprised by just how many modern masters, globally recognized provocateurs and early-to-mid career boldfaced names will be showing work alongside them: Michael Hanneke, Jane Campion, Park Chan Wook, Johnny To, Isabel Coixet, Gaspar Noe, Jacques Audiard, Tsai Ming-liang, Andrea Arnold, and Alain Resnais. This leaves little room for emerging talents — and in fact, a couple of small American films gossiped about in recent weeks as being Cannes-bound were not included in the Competition or Un Certain Regard lineups. But there’s always Director’s Fortnight; the slate for that and Critics Week will be announced tomorrow. The full ineup so far after the jump.
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