Staying Home? Don’t Feel Bad . . . Really : If you thought Cannes was the hot spot to be, check out a few of the films in the world’s premier film event

You’ve heard a lot about the Cannes Film Festival, which opens Thursday, and though you would like to know what all the fuss is about, you know there are problems with finding out.

It’s expensive to get over there, a challenge to find an acceptable hotel room that hasn’t been booked a year in advance, daunting to face the prospect of the shoving matches that are predictably necessary to get into the festival’s hottest films. Isn’t there an easier way to gain insight into this, the world’s premier film event?

This year, there is. You can go to a multiplex nearest you and buy a ticket (don’t worry, there won’t be a line) to “Splitting Heirs,” a dim, standard-issue British comedy written by and starring ex-Monty Pythonite Eric Idle. An inoffensive joining of mistaken identity comedy with “No Sex Please, We’re British” jokes that are older than the dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park,” this film was regarded so lightly by its distributor that it was barely screened for critics.

Yet some time in the next two weeks, the creme de la creme of the international film community will put on tuxedos and party dresses, climb up the elaborate stairs of the Grand Palais, settle into the most comfortable theater seats anywhere and watch 90-some minutes of dopey tea-bag humor. For “Splitting Heirs” is one of the 23 films selected to be officially in competition for the festival’s super-prestigious Palme d’Or. And to understand why is to understand the essence of Cannes.

Though you might be tempted to think so, “Splitting Heirs” wasn’t picked because there was nothing else to choose from. In fact, festival director Gilles Jacob told a Paris press conference that he saw 633 films in his quest for entrants, including “a mixed bag of terrible scripts, second-rated television films, and vulgar drawn-out opuses.”

No, there is a method behind “Splitting Heirs’ ” selection and that is to have a festival that is as all-inclusive as possible. For while film festivals in places such as Telluride and New York put considerable work into carefully weeding out unworthy selections, and even bigger-than-a-breadbox festivals such as Los Angeles’ look unkindly at blatantly commercial cinema, the quality that makes Cannes’ unique is that it tries to embrace all of cinema, all the time.

So while on the one hand this year’s festival may see the first public unveiling of scenes from Bernardo Bertolucci’s no-doubt poetic “Little Buddha,” it will also host a first look at footage from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s much more real-world “Last Action Hero.” Schwarzenegger himself is scheduled to make a brief visit to Cannes and, if he can pull himself away from a busy schedule of wreaking havoc in “Demolition Man,” so might Sylvester Stallone.

Sly’s latest film, “Cliffhanger,” directed by Renny Harlin, turns out to be showing Out of Competition at the festival, which puts it in the same category as “The Baby of Macon,” the newest effort from Peter Greenaway, a British director so ethereally incomprehensible he may not even have heard of Stallone, let alone seen one of his films. And so it goes.

Aside from its melting pot aura, Cannes is notable for the sheer volume of films available to be screened, more than any human, no matter how cinema-addicted, could possibly see, all divided into several discreet categories.

To be officially in competition is the preferred way for a film to be shown at Cannes, and the three American films in the group of 23 are a curiously diverse lot, united only by previous ties to the festival.

Michael Douglas, who was a big hit last year in “Basic Instinct,” is back starring in “Falling Down,” which has yet to open in Europe. Yet to open even in this country are both “Body Snatchers,” from Abel Ferrara, director of “Bad Lieutenant”--a much-talked-about film in the 1992 festival--and “King of the Hill,” the latest from Steven Soderbergh, whose “sex, lies, and videotape” took the Palme d’Or a few years back.

Out of Competition is not a description in Cannes; it is an official category for films that don’t want to be judged but are too big to fit anywhere else. In addition to “Cliffhanger,” Hollywood will be represented in this bunch by John McNaughton’s offbeat “Mad Dog and Glory.”

Un Certain Regard is the next broad category, for films of which the festival thinks highly enough to select but doesn’t consider quite as imposing as the ones in competition. Of the three American films in this group of 25, Michael Steinberg’s “Bodies, Rest & Motion” has already opened, Philip Haas’ version of Paul Auster’s “The Music of Chance” is about to, and Jim McBride’s “The Wrong Man” was made for Showtime.

Probably the most adventurous films to be officially part of Cannes go in the Directors’ Fortnight, yet another sidebar event that last year featured such American films as “Bob Roberts,” “Mac” and “My New Gun.” This year three U.S. efforts made the cut, including Victor Nunez’s Sundance Festival co-winner, “Ruby in Paradise,” and two films that deal with gang life right here in Los Angeles, Allison Anders’ “Mi Vida Loca” and “Menace II Society,” by twin directors Allen and Albert Hughes.

What is finally the most maddening thing about Cannes is that all these films in all these categories are only a fraction of the new product available to be seen at the festival. Under the general umbrella term of “the marche,” or marketplace, hundreds of films of all types get bought and sold under the benevolent Riviera sun. There is never any way to tell what kind of a surprise the marche will produce; last year saw everything from the audience-friendly “Like Water for Chocolate” to the corrosive “Man Bites Dog” emerge from the morass.

The only thing that is dead sure about Cannes is that most of the world’s film community, and especially the film press, is sure to descend on it. Which is probably the reason that Elizabeth Taylor will be spearheading a series of fund-raising events to benefit AmFar (the American Foundation for AIDS Research) at the festival.

There will be a sale of vintage and contemporary movie photographs, a cocktail party and an elaborate dinner at Roger Verge’s celebrated Le Moulin de Mougins restaurant. Even at their breathtaking prices ($2,500 per person, $25,000 for a whole dang table) these should be some of the hottest tickets at a very crowded festival.

Maybe staying home and seeing “Splitting Heirs” isn’t such a silly idea after all.