Favorites and New Faces

As the slogan of choice for the 53rd Festival International du Film, “Cannes 2000” has all the right moves. It looks good on the event’s striking poster of a harlequin figure morphing out of a screen to film the audience as well as on a wide assortment of T-shirts, like the one that boasts in English “The Place to Be.” And it positions the festival as it likes to be seen, confidently looking toward the future.

And why shouldn’t Cannes be confident? It is easily the most important of world cinema events, a media magnet that last year attracted 3,893 journalists, 221 TV crews and 118 radio stations, bringing the word to a total of 81 countries. It opens a new 70,000-square-foot building, Espace Riviera, with a 300-seat theater named after Luis Bunuel, and it shows so many films so many times in its several venues that a movie business Web site has put up a billboard with the mocking suggestion, “3,000 films in 10 days? Have fun!”

But in another sense, Cannes 2000 is the end, not the beginning of an era. It’s the last time picking films for festival head Gilles Jacob, who’s had the job for 23 years and who’s moving upstairs without a successor in place. And the shape of this year’s festival, starting as per usual tonight with a big-budget French-financed film (“Vatel,” directed by Roland Joffe and starring Gerard Depardieu as a 17th century Wolfgang Puck) looks quite familiar.

That’s because many of the works in competition are by festival favorites whom Cannes has smiled on in the past, like highly regarded French directors Arnaud Desplechin and Olivier Assayas, here with the 2-hour-37-minute “Esther Kahn” and the 3-hour “Les Destinees Sentimental,” respectively. And Denmark’s Lars von Trier, whose “Breaking the Waves” debuted here, is back with “Dancing in the Dark,” starring Catherine Deneuve and Icelandic singer Bjork, seen making a face on the cover of Studio, one of the top French film magazines, under the headline “A Volcano on the Croisette.”

Yet Cannes is so big that doing some new things almost becomes inevitable. About a third of the films in competition are from Asia, something that has never happened before, and the directors range from usual suspects like Japan’s Nagisa Oshima (“Gohatto”) and Hong Kong’s Wong Kar-wai (“Untitled”) through Im Kwon Taek, whose “Chunhyang” is the first Korean film ever in competition.

The competition films by American and British directors are an equally eclectic lot, with the most anticipated being the Coen Brothers’ “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” a spoof on movie versions of the South, and social activist Ken Loach’s “Bread & Roses,” a prescient look at labor strife among Los Angeles’ Latino janitors.

Also in competition are “The Golden Bowl,” directed by James Ivory from the Henry James novel; “The Yards,” a gritty drama from independent director James Gray; and Neil LaBute’s “Nurse Betty,” starring Renee Zellweger and Morgan Freeman in a cautionary tale of what can happen if you take soap opera watching much too far.

Freeman also stars, along with Gene Hackman, in Stephen Hopkins’ thriller “Under Suspicion,” one of several potentially interesting official festival selections showing out of competition. Others include “Cecil B. Demented,” John Waters’ take on Hollywood vs. the independents; “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” a return to Chinese subjects for Ang Lee; and “Requiem for a Dream,” the new film by director Darren Aronofsky, whose “Pi” was an indie hit after winning a prize at Sundance.

Prestigious Poster Locales Advertise Absent Movies

This year’s Sundance co-winner, Karyn Kusama’s “Girlfight,” shows up in the Directors’ Fortnight, a rival to, rather than a part of, the official Cannes selection. Two other American films also made the cut here: Edo Bertoglio’s “Downtown 81,” a fictional piece about the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, and E. Elias Merhige’s “Shadow of a Vampire,” which stars sunshine boys John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe in a story centering on F.W. Murnau and the making of his silent horror landmark “Nosferatu.”

Two other Cannes films have Park City connections. Frank Novak’s “Good Housekeeping,” a prizewinner at Slamdance, is the only American film chosen for the Critics’ Week event, and Sundance veteran “Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her,” directed by Rodrigo Garcia, opens the festival’s Un Certain Regard sidebar.

Also of potential interest in Un Certain Regard are “Famous,” directed by Griffin Dunne; “Asi Es la Vida,” by Mexican veteran Arturo Ripstein; and Fina Torres’ “Woman on Top,” whose star Penelope Cruz can be see around town getting cozy with a hot pepper on posters for the film.

The Cruz poster is the exception around Cannes this year rather than the rule, for most festival display space is being used by studios to expose the event’s captive audience to advertising for upcoming Hollywood products nowhere to be seen at Cannes. The place of honor in front of the Carlton Hotel is taken by “M:I-2,” the “Mission: Impossible” sequel, but Jim Carrey, going “From Gentle to Mental” in “Me, Myself & Irene,” is not far off, and neither is “Eddie Murphy is the Klumps,” all five of them, in the “Nutty Professor” sequel.

Most intriguing is an enormous display for Bryan Singer’s upcoming “X-Men,” which offers a crash course in the powers of the group. Which skills would come in handiest at Cannes? It’s probably a tie between Mystique, who “transforms herself into any person,” and Storm, who specializes in “weather control and hand-to-hand combat.” Definitely a good combination for the South of France.

On an even more frivolous note, the most unintentionally charming poster, because it’s such a throwback to a long-gone era of shameless pirates, is a small one in a few hotel lobbies for--you heard it first here--”Elian, the Gonzales-Boy Story.” Emanating from former mogul Menahem Golan (“the producer and director of ‘Delta Force,’ $100,000,000 in world box office”) “comes to the screen the explosive, dramatic and human story that captured the world.” Illustrated with a clunky photo re-creation of Elian’s rescue at gunpoint, this film is “shooting now in a secret location.” You have been warned.

In the same spirit, it’s fun to look at the trade press advertising for films like “Horror 101: Failing Could Be Deadly” and “Zoo: Love Is a 4-Legged Word.” Or how about “Secret Society,” wherein an overweight housewife becomes, that’s right, a sumo wrestler? Don’t look for this in a theater near you. It won’t be there.