East meets rest on the Riviera

“Ah, Cannes,” the cabdriver at the Nice Airport said, worry in his voice, when he heard his passenger’s destination. “The festival, is it going to be OK?”

That’s what it had come to this year for the celebrated Festival de Cannes: anticipation about the films to come has to compete with anxiety about the possible actions of les intermittents, a potent coalition of part-time show business employees so furious about a change in their unemployment benefits they’ve wreaked havoc at cultural events across France. With a new motto of “KO-Cannes,” les intermittents had everyone wondering if the local daily Nice-Matin would prove prescient with its banner headline proclaiming “Battle of Cannes.”

Late Tuesday, on the eve of the festival, those fears seemed to subside after festival organizers reached a deal with workers.

All of which is a relief because the festival, opening tonight with Pedro Almodovar’s “Bad Education,” looks to be one of the most interesting of recent years.

Artistic director Thierry Fremaux, in his first year in full charge of the selection, has placed heavy emphasis on Asian films and on works by directors new to the official competition as opposed to simply showing the latest work by an anointed few.

Six of the 18 films competing this year come from Asia, and a full 12 are by filmmakers who’ve never contended for the Palme d’Or before, such as Argentina’s Lucrecia Martel, here with “La Nina Santa,” Britain’s Stephen Hopkins (“The Life and Death of Peter Sellers” with Geoffrey Rush in the title role) and Brazil’s Walter Salles and his Che Guevera-themed Sundance hit, “The Motorcycle Diaries.” As festival president Gilles Jacob said when the list was announced, “Audiences won’t put up with boring auteur cinema anymore.”

That doesn’t mean that all Cannes veterans have been heartlessly exiled.

Emir Kusturica, a two-time Palme winner, is back with “Life Is a Miracle,” Michael Moore has returned with his already controversial political documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11,” as is the less divisive, more green star of “Shrek 2,” which joins “Innocence,” a new anime from “Ghost in the Shell’s” Mamoru Oshii, as fellow cartoons in competition.

More and more, however, Cannes is using its Out of Competition category the way Sundance uses its Premiers section, to take account of films by directors either too well known or too commercial to put in the race for the Palme.

Here can be found new works by Jean-Luc Godard, Abbas Kiarostami and Zhang Yimou (the wonderfully titled “House of Flying Daggers”), as well as the monied American quartet of “Kill Bill Vol. 2,” “Troy,” “Dawn of the Dead” and “Bad Santa.”

“Kill Bill’s” director, Quentin Tarantino, is also president of the Cannes jury this year, and when you include star Uma Thurman, the combination has been impossible for French film magazines to resist. Q.T. is on more covers than anyone else (“Troy’s” Brad Pitt and Almodovar are distant seconds), with Premiere coming up with the best headline: “Kannes 04/ Kill Bill 02/ Tarantino Preside/Thurman Liquide (Tarantino Presides, Thurman Liquidates.)”

There is only one American film in the festival’s sidebar event, Un Certain Regard, but given that it’s called “The Assassination of Richard Nixon” and stars Sean Penn and Naomi Watts, Niels Mueller’s debut is very much an anticipated one.

The American presence is stronger in the official festival’s rival, La Quinzaine des Realisateurs, or the Director’s Fortnight. Four American films are here, including three that made a mark at Sundance: Nicole Kassell’s “The Woodsman,” Jacob Aaron Estes’ “Mean Creek” and Jonathan Cauette’s “Tarnation.” The lone newcomer is Asia Argento’s “The Heart Is Deceitful ... Above All Things,” from the J.T. LeRoy novel.

Breaking with tradition, the festival and another of its rivals, the Critic’s Week, will cosponsor a film, “Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinematheque,” a documentary on the legendary archivist. Other docs of note in the various sections include “Mur,” an examination of Israel’s new wall, and two films of particular California interest: Jonathan Nossiter’s “Mondovino,” which includes a look at wine culture in the Napa Valley, and Xan Cassavetes’ “Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession,” which examines the fate of the late, lamented L.A. cable outlet.

The festival is also inaugurating an extensive program of revivals that’s being called, naturally, Cannes Classics. Among the most anticipated is a considerably longer version of Sam Fuller’s “The Big Red One” and Buster Keaton’s “The General,” featuring a new score by Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi.

If the classics are the artistic end of Cannes, the commercial side is more than represented by the Marche du Film, the sprawling film market in which all kinds of movies that would never be in competition anywhere are sold to thousands of buyers from 73 countries.

It’s at the market that connoisseurs of unusual film titles get to indulge themselves. Looking particularly enticing this year are “Hamlet Unzipped,” “A Tale of Two Pizzas,” “Honest People Live in France,” “My Stepbrother Frankenstein,” “The Holy Virgins vs. the Evil Dead,” “Killer Barbys vs. Dracula,” and, though it is still in the development stage, “Hairy Putter,” the story of an orangutan on the professional golfer’s tour. The product placement opportunities alone are staggering.

In a year of changes, the festival saved one of the biggest for last. For the first time in its nearly 60 years, Cannes will give its awards on Saturday night instead of Sunday, the intention being to make the event more glamorous and get it into the larger Sunday papers in Britain and the U.S.

The closing night film is yet another American effort, “De-Lovely,” Irwin Winkler’s Cole Porter biopic starring Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd.

Adding to the glamour factor will be a post-event party where Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morissette, Natalie Cole and others are scheduled to sing Porter standards.