Come on in, folks, the auteur’s fine

The invitations have been accepted, the guests are arriving, and the only question that remains is whether the 58th Festival de Cannes turns into the heroic “Return of the Jedi” or a dreaded “Night of the Living Dead.”

A return of some kind is definitely on the agenda for the festival, which opens tonight with “Lemming,” the new film from France’s Dominik Moll. This year’s competition lineup is literally half-filled by artistic types who’ve been here before and whose names (Michael Haneke, Hou Hsiao Hsien, Amos Gitai, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne among others) play better on the festival circuit than in Peoria. With four previous Palme d’Or winners in the group, Cannes’ artistic director Thierry Fremaux wasn’t kidding when he said, “This year is under the sign of cinema d’auteur.”

The selection committee viewed more than 1,500 films from 97 countries before making its final selections, which ended up with four films from the U.S. But no competing film is having the influence, inside and outside France’s film community, of one of the festival’s little out-of-competition items called “Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith.”

It’s not just that “Sith” was the Cannes cover of choice for most French film magazines -- Studio threw in a “collectible bracelet” and Premiere offered the choice of four “collectible covers” -- it’s that “Star Wars” imagery seems to be everywhere commercially. Walk by a France Telecom store and Darth Vader and Yoda are trying to sell you extra mobile phone minutes. Turn on the TV and Chewbacca is munching Pringles with a satisfied look on his face. The festival is doing its best to emphasize France’s cinematic heritage, including mounting a major photo exhibition focusing on Jean Renoir and his painter father, but it feels like a losing battle.

Especially since several non-American directors are here with films they chose to make in English. In competition are Dane Lars Von Trier’s “Manderlay,” the not-eagerly awaited sequel to “Dogville” with Bryce Dallas Howard subbing for Nicole Kidman, and German Wim Wenders’ “Don’t Come Knocking,” written by and starring Sam Shepard with Jessica Lange and Eva Marie Saint in supporting roles.

Those American in-competition films run the gamut from the comic book-derived “Sin City,” yet to open in Europe, to “Last Days,” Gus Van Sant’s meditation on Kurt Cobain. They include Jim Jarmusch’s “Broken Flowers,” starring Bill Murray as a bachelor revisiting old girlfriends to find out if he has a son, and “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada,” Tommy Lee Jones’ directorial debut from a script by “21 Grams’ ” Guillermo Arriaga. Aside from the “Star Wars” prequel, U.S. out-of-competition films include Woody Allen’s “Match Point,” his first feature set in Britain, and Shane Black’s fast-moving comic thriller “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.”

Also having a strong year with the English language is Canada, which has films from two of its top directors in competition. David Cronenberg’s Viggo Mortensen-starring “A History of Violence,” based on a graphic novel, has been described by its director as being in the John Ford mold, and Atom Egoyan stars Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon in “Where the Truth Lies,” a showbiz story about a legendary comedy team, journalism and murder.

Neither animation nor documentaries are represented in the official competition this year, but they can be found elsewhere. DreamWorks is involved with a tribute to Britain’s Aardman animation in anticipation of its forthcoming Wallace & Gromit feature, and interesting docs are hanging out in several parts of the festival, ranging from 88 minutes on James Dean to exactly twice that on Ingmar Bergman.

Other notables include “Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream” by Stuart Samuels; “Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul,” a music doc by “Head On’s” Fatih Akin; and the BBC’s “The Power of Nightmares,” Adam Curtis’ sure-to-be provocative look at how politicians use fear to stay in office.

In addition to the competition, Cannes has several auxiliary events, and they all have American participation. Un Certain Regard, the official section that showcases more personal films, has two from the U.S. “Down in the Valley,” directed by “Dahmer’s” David Jacobson, stars Edward Norton as what the festival program darkly describes as “a malevolent and charismatic stranger who insinuates himself into an already troubled family.” And Brit James Marsh’s debut feature “The King” is another unhappy family story set in Texas and starring Gael Garcia Bernal and William Hurt.

The Directors Fortnight, originally set up as a rival to the festival, has two unsettling American films that have had previous festival exposure. Lodge Kerrigan’s “Keane” was at Telluride and New York, and Kyle Henry’s “Room” was at Sundance, as was Greg McLean’s Australian horror film “Wolf Creek.” Critic’s Week will also feature two Sundance veterans, Miranda July’s loopy “Me and You and Everyone We Know” and Phil Morrison’s “Junebug.”

Cannes being Cannes, all these events are only part of the cinema available to be seen during a very hectic 12 days. Both the Directors Fortnight and the official festival show classic films in restored prints, and this year the choice is especially wide, ranging from 1922’s newly discovered “Beyond the Rocks” starring Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson to Satyajit Ray’s “Pather Panchali” to Sam Peckinpah’s “Ride the High Country.”

As if this wasn’t enough, the festival is also inaugurating yet another event for 2005, and building a new 190-seat temporary theater to house it. That would be “All the Cinemas of the World,” which will give seven countries -- Morocco, South Africa, Mexico, Austria, Peru, Sri Lanka and the Philippines -- a chance to showcase recent and classic films.

And, as always, there is the Marche du Film, known familiarly in English as “the market,” the huge commercial adjunct to Cannes where this year more than 2,500 companies will take part in the buying and selling of films that do not necessarily represent the pinnacle of cinematic art.

What is one to make of titles like “Blind Beast vs. Killer Dwarf,” “Confessions of a Sociopathic Social Climber” and “Too Much Romance & It’s Time for Stuffed Peppers.” Or the potential killer double bill of “Semen: A Love Sample” and “In Search of an Impotent Man.”

If Cannes didn’t exist, would anyone have the imagination -- or the nerve -- to invent it?

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Cannes Web diary

From the Cote d’Azur, Mary McNamara writes a daily online diary of the 57th annual film festival. Read it at www.calendarlive.com/cannes

Also online: Excerpts from film critic Kenneth Turan’s book, “Sundance to Sarajevo: Film Festivals and the World They Made”