As the Palais guards polish their boots, the restaurant owners hike up their prices and the billboards go up, it's that time of year again. Welcome to Cannes, where the question on everyone's lips is, of course, who else is going to be here.
The rumour mill has already thrown up some A-list names who are expected to be flying in - Bruce and Demi, Tom and Nicole, Nicolas and Patricia, Quentin, Madonna with child, Al Pacino, Holly Hunter, to name just a few. Cannes is still considered the world's biggest press conference.
For security reasons, the stars' schedules remain unconfirmed - just as Gilles Jacob kept everyone in suspense until the last minute with his official selection.
Nowadays, even though the market dwarfs the competition in terms of size and importance for most of the 50,000 who will travel down here, the competition remains crucial to the whole ethos of Cannes. And the Palme d'Or is, after the Oscars, probably the best-known award in world cinema.
The prize does not offer any guarantee of success at the box-office. But commercially, for every Underground or Best Intentions there is a Pulp Fiction or a Piano. And Cannes remains a bastion of cinema as artistic endeavour. As Warners' relationship with Stanley Kubrick (see page 2) shows, even Hollywood the Majors recognise the value of cinematic genius, even if it doesn't always put bums on seats in Des Moines, Iowa.
At this year's festival, there are several contenders on paper for the main prize. Liv Tyler, star of Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty has already staked her claim to be the face of Cannes 96, while the director has yet to win here. Jaco Van Dormael's Le huitième jour has blown away hardened hacks at previews. Stephen Frears' The Van also looks set to be a favourite, as do Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies and Robert Altman's Kansas City.
A jury that includes Francis Coppola, Atom Egoyan, Tran Anh Hung and Fassbinder's cinematographer Michael Ballhaus should have the stomach for some of the stronger material on offer, such as Fargo, and David Cronenberg's weird but apparently wonderful Crash. By contrast, a lower-key film such as Hou Hsiao-hsien's Goodbye South, Goodbye or Flora Gomes' Po di sangui may sneak it. You see, it does matter, after all.
Nick Thomas
