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By Gemma Brosnan – In Cannes
There was little sign of Le Crunch along the Riviera this week as the great and the good donned their dinner jackets and designer gowns for the opening of Cannes Film Festival 2009.
Veteran auteurs and previous Palme d'Or winners such as Ken Loach, Lars von Trier, Jane Campion and Michael Haneke have defied economic reality and turned out to support the world's most important film festival and take part in this year's competition.
French actress, Isabelle Huppert, the president of this year's competition jury, remained tight lipped about her favourites and warned of interesting times ahead for her and her fellow judges, who will decide which of the 20 films in competition will be awarded the Palme d'Or on Sunday week.
"Diplomacy is not a word I find inspiring," she said. "We are not in the ministry of foreign affairs; we are here at a film festival. There may be conflict and differences of opinion. It is like a chemical reaction – things will happen that we can't forecast."
The glamour of the Croisette remained firmly untouched as talk of deals and film financing all around the Côte d'Azur replaced global issues such as swine flu.
The premiere of the opening film was a Pixar animation - the cutting edge outfit responsible for Monsters Inc and Finding Nemo – entitled ‘Up’ which involved a futuristic experience courtesy of 3D glasses and claimed the honour of being the first animated film to open the 62nd festival.
John Lasseter, Pixar's chief creative officer confirmed all new Pixar and Disney animations will be made in 3D going forward, but he urged creators to be cautious about their use of technology and not to simply use powerful advances in this arena to create a wow factor.
He also made a surprising tribute to the hand-drawn animations of the past such as ‘Snow White’- made in 1938 - and heralded the return of this kind of animation this winter with a musical, ‘The Princess and the Frog'.
"It was an absolutely beautiful art form...3D has a tendency, especially when it's the 'comin'-at-you' stuff, to obscure the story...animation is a phenomenal art form. If you do it right, it will last forever, I would encourage all film-makers to look at animation. But it's very painstaking, you don't get anything for free."
The press screening of ‘Up’ was followed by the first competition entry, ‘Spring Fever’, opening on playful banter between two young men who, within minutes, are passionately making love. It transpires that one is bisexual and that his wife has hired an opportunist who diligently follows and photographs them.
Such a scenario may not raise many provocative eyebrows here, but ‘Spring Fever’ was shot covertly in the Chinese city of Nanjing, is set in present-day China and depicts complicated sexual relationships with a candour that ensures it certainly won't be released there.
Its director Lou Ye is the poster child of Chinese censorship with his first movie, ‘Weekend Lover’ being censored, his second, ‘Sezhou River’ banned in China (but still won the Rotterdam Film Festival) and, in 2006, his third, ‘Summer Palace’, which had scenes referring to the Tiananmen Square protests, was withdrawn from Cannes competition at the last minute because the Chinese government did not approve it.
Lou was then banished for five years and relied on financing from France and Hong Kong for ‘Spring Fever’.
At a news conference, Lou didn't want to talk much about what it means to be banished in Chinese cinema and preferred to look forward and championed the art of free speech.
"As a director, I make films, so I continued doing my job as usual," he said. "It shouldn't be possible to ban film directors, or anyone else, from making films. . . . I hope all the young Chinese film directors will be able to make films freely."
Most of this year’s competition movies dare to exceed the two-hour mark with Quentin Tarantino producing the longest, ‘Inglourious Basterds’, which clocks in at 160 minutes and Lars von Trier venturing into the horror genre with ‘Antichrist’, which screens on Monday.
Von Trier is currently seeking solace in the most expensive hotel on the Riviera in Antibes - the Hotel du Cap – because he finds the chaos of Cannes “too claustrophobic”.
British hopes will rest on Ken Loach's charming Eric Cantona inspired tale, ‘Looking for Eric’, in which a Manchester United fan receives counsel from his hero and shows a gentle break away from the archetypically dark genre Loach is famed for.
Loach is no stranger to the magic of Cannes prizes after picking up the Palme d'Or for a notably less upbeat film, ‘The Wind That Shakes the Barley’, in 2006.
There is also excitement surrounding the British director Andrea Arnold, whose second feature, ‘Fish Tank’ is being tipped for greatness after her first full-length film, Red Road, won the jury prize at Cannes, also in 2006, showcasing a delicate depiction of relationships in Glasgow from the eye of the city's multiple CCTV cameras.
Hopes are also being pinned on the UK-Australian film, ‘Bright Star’, by Jane Campion, starring Ben Wishaw as the lovelorn John Keats.
photo credit: Gemma Brosnan
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