Alan Parker’s Sentimental ‘Paradise’ a Hit in Cannes : Festival: After ‘Mississippi Burning,’ the English director softens his approach in dealing with the U.S. internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

When it was announced that Alan Parker was going to follow his hotly debated “Mississippi Burning” with a story about the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the general reaction among film journalists was: “Here we go again.”

While the historical and cultural accuracy of “Come See the Paradise” will have to wait until Columbia Pictures opens the film in the United States late in the year, the only debate prompted by its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival Sunday was whether Parker has gone soft.

“I think the film is much softer in attitude than my earlier films,” Parker said after the first screening of “Come See the Paradise.” “I deliberately wanted to do something that would show the more mellow side of me.”

Parker, an English director living and working in Los Angeles, acknowledged that the sting of criticism he felt over “Mississippi Burning” influenced the way he approached the subject of his newest film.

“It was deliberate, sure, it must have been,” Parker said. “I knew there would be a strong reaction to ‘Mississippi Burning,’ but the controversy got so out of hand that the film got left behind. I have to be much more sensitive.”

What fueled the backlash to “Mississippi Burning” was Parker’s depiction of white FBI agents as heroes in the investigation of Klan killings of civil rights workers in the South in the early 1960s. Although many critics thought that film was brilliantly made, most agreed with black leaders who accused Parker of turning history on its head, and the white heat of the debate took “Mississippi Burning” out of an Oscar race it otherwise might have won.

“I’m proud of that film--it did a lot of good (by creating that debate),” Parker said. “But the criticism was valid.”

Yet if Parker--who considers his views to be on the political left--let a good story get in the way of the truth on “Mississippi Burning,” he wasn’t about to repeat the mistake with “Come See the Paradise,” he said.

The new film condemns something few rational people would condone and is told in a way that seems about as provocative as “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.”

In “Paradise,” Dennis Quaid plays an angry pro-labor Irish-American whose marriage to a young Japanese-American woman is interrupted by World War II and the internment of his wife and her family in a camp in the desert of California.

The first half of the film deals with the developing love story; the second half deals with the effects of the internment on his wife’s Japanese-American family.

Parker said he set out to show the cultural conflicts in an interracial marriage of first generation Americans, then decided to set it against the backdrop of the camps.

Critics here were divided by the film’s unabashed sentimentality, but one-third of the way into the 12-day festival, “Paradise” has easily been the biggest hit with general festival-goers.

“I guess I’m getting old,” Parker joked when asked at a press conference why he had abandoned the violence and hard-edged tone of such films as “Midnight Express” and “Angel Heart.” “Normally, the question is, ‘Why do I show so much violence?’ This is the first time I’ve been asked why there isn’t more.”

People looking for contemporary issues in “Paradise” will be making work for themselves too, said Parker. Although the film clearly points up that the internment of the Japanese-Americans was as much an act of economic racism as a response to the paranoia about Japanese agents in our midst, he said he did not intend it as a comment on the current wave of anti-Japanese xenophobia.

“The parallel may be there,” he said. “Certainly, the Japanese-American community was gaining up economic strength when the war broke out. But we can’t overlook the obvious--the U.S. was at war with Japan.”

Parker said that, partly because of the “Mississippi Burning” experience, he sought out the opinions “of thousands” of Japanese-Americans across the country before finishing his script for “Paradise” and that he’s confident of its accuracy. Three of the Japanese-American actors--Tamlyn Tomita, who plays Quaid’s wife, Sab Shimono, her father, and Stan Egi, one of her screen family brothers--agreed with him.

“Alan made such an effort to tell the story truthfully and correctly,” said Shimono, who spent part of his early childhood in an internment camp. “It’s not just a movie for a movie’s sake.”

Parker said that he doesn’t expect a backlash to “Paradise” but that he isn’t taking anything for granted anymore. “In the end, it’s the members of the Japanese-American community who will make the judgment (about the accuracy of the movie).”

“Come See the Paradise” is the third Alan Parker film to compete for the Palm d’Or Award. The others were “Bugsy Malone” and “Midnight Express.”

At his press conference here, Parker joked that he envisions himself at age 80 being presented with a special Palm d’Or “for the most films ever at Cannes never to win.” There are many here who think his losing streak is about to end.

Does watching foreign-language films at Cannes sound like fun to you? Consider: When non-French language films are shown here, the subtitles are in French and English-only viewers follow along with earphones through which a translator relays information and dialogue.

In addition to the sanitized slang (“Oh you jerks, oh you darn jerks!”), the translators often forget to turn on their microphones, leaving English speakers wondering what’s being said.

At a screening of the Soviet film “Taxi Blues,” the translator lapsed into a recitation of the Mt. Fuji episode of “Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams” before righting herself and returning to Moscow.

“Come See the Paradise” is the early audience favorite here, but critics have been more taken with Pavel Lounguine’s “Taxi Blues” and Ryszard Bugayski’s “The Interrogation.”

“Taxi Blues” is a Soviet film about a taxi driver who develops an odd relationship with a passenger who runs off without paying. “The Interrogation” is an 8-year-old Polish movie about a woman wrongfully imprisoned as a spy during Stalin’s inquisition.

“The Interrogation” was banned in Poland and smuggled out on videotape by Bugayski when he defected to Canada several years ago. The film finally premiered in Poland last fall. Krstyna Janda, who plays the imprisoned woman, is the early favorite here for the best actress award.

Looking ahead, the most anxiously awaited film of this year’s festival--at least for Americans--is David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart.”

The success of Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” TV series has pushed the quirky director into the spotlight, and “Wild at Heart” is his first feature film since “Blue Velvet.”

“Wild at Heart” stars Nicolas Cage and real-life mother and daughter Diane Ladd and Laura Dern. Interest in the film was further piqued here Monday with rumors that Lynch is headed for a fight with the MPAA ratings board over the specter of an X-rating.