A selection of heavyweight titles from top-drawer auteurs has been unveiled for this
year’s Cannes film festival, with previous winners of the Palme d’Or, Jacques
Audiard, Michael Haneke and Ken Loach, all back in contention.
A competition lineup strong on European arthouse is leavened by the anticipated
presence on the Croisette of teenybop pinups Zac Efron and Robert Pattinson.
Pattinson, the British star of Twilight, tops the bill inDavid Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis,
tipped as one of the key titles to screen, while Efron takes the lead in Paperboy, the
new film from Lee Daniels, whose social drama Precious was a sleeper hit two years
ago.
Daniels is one of the few US directors on this year’s slate; he joins Wes Anderson,
whose 60s-set summer camp romance Moonrise Kingdom opens the festival on 16
May, and Jeff Nichols, whose Mud builds on the success of last year’s Take Shelter.
Brad Pitt stars in Killing Them Softly, a crime drama directed by New Zealander
Andrew Dominik, and another America-set title is On the Road, Walter Salles’s long-
awaited adaptation of the Jack Kerouac novel.
New films from Terrence Malick, whose The Tree of Life took the top prize last year,
and There Will Be Blood director Paul Thomas Anderson, were not ready in time for
inclusion, while Woody Allen’s latest, To Rome with Love, is anticipated to be added
to the lineup at a later date.
Loach is the only Briton on the list, and the film for which he has been selected, The
Angel’s Share – a whisky heist set in Glasgow – is a larkier effort than that for which
he last won the Palme d’Or, The Wind that Shakes the Barley.
The rest of the lineup looks distinctly darker. Love, which reunites Haneke with
Piano Teacher star Isabelle Huppert, is about a retired music teacher who has a
stroke, while Rust and Bone, Audiard’s first film since A Prophet, features Marion
Cotillard as an aqua park employee who loses her legs in an accident involving a
killer whale.
After the Battle, Yousry Nasrallah’s fictional representation of the aftermath of
Egypt’s revolution, looks to be the hottest political potato in the competition.
Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami and fellow old Croisette stagers Leos Carax,
Thomas Vinterberg, Cristian Mungiu, Matteo Garrone and Ulrich Seidl bulk up the
heft.
New wave veteran Alain Resnais will be a popular award contender. At 89 he has yet
to win a Palme d’Or, and his latest film, You Haven’t Seen Anything Yet, could be the
one that finally delivers.
Other titles announced out of competition include: the closing night film, Therese D,
by Claude Miller, the French director who died earlier this month; Me and You, a
new drama from Bernardo Bertolucci; and Madagascar 3, which looks to fill the
regulation animation spot (previous cartoons to do the honours include Up and Kung
Fu Panda).
Previously revealed were the president of the jury for the Un Certain Regard sidebar
(Tim Roth), the mistress of ceremonies (The Artist star Bérénice Bejo) and a redux
version of Sergio Leone’s 1984 film Once Upon a Time in America, which adds 40
minutes of footage to the original 229-minute running time.
Wednesday’s list diverges significantly from a false lineup released at the start of the
month, about the “leaking” of which Cannes artistic director Thierry Frémaux was
scathing.
“It’s disgusting to play with such a thing,” he told the film industry website Deadline.
“There is a code of conduct for Cannes and it must be respected. Those who don’t
respect the code will never come back to Cannes.”
Catherine Shoard – guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 April 2012 19.08 BST