Michael Jackson and Bruce Willis left Cannes today, leaving room for a new lot of stars : Martin Scosese, Liv Tyler, Pedro Almodovar, Claude Lelouch and a special spotlight on Claudia Schiffer. She shares the leading role with Beatrice Dalle in this evening's out of competition film The Blackout by Abel Ferrara. Apparently those who attended the advanced press screenings were not impressed with Schiffer's first acting role.
Abel Ferrara said about his film, "Every year Cannes has to have some midnight freak show and this year it is my film". The film is about a sort of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde movie star, played by Matthew Modine, who takes drugs, alcohol and sex to obssesive limits, an ex-girlfriend who haunts him (Beatrice Dalle) and his current do-gooder love (Claudia Schiffer).
Robert De Niro was also among today's stars arriving in Cannes. The French Foreign Minister Hervé de Charrette, replacing the Cultural Minister who was stabbed while campaigning this week, awarded him with the chevalier of The Legion of Honor during a gala dinner held at the Carlton Hotel. Also receiveing the chevalier were the directors Pedro Almodovar and André Téchiné. Elsewhere, Wim Wendors in a radio interview declared the Cannes Festival the belly button of cinema.
The two films in competition were highly appreciated even though neither billed big name stars. Western by Manuel Poirier (Fr) is a moving yet humourous story about two desperados, one Spanish and the other Russian, who roam the region of Brittany, far from the cowboys and indians that the title would literally imply.
Welcome to Sarajevo by British director Michael Winterbottom is a mix of documentary and fiction dealing with a frustrated television reporter in Sarajevo while the city was under seige. It was actually filmed in Sarajevo and munition experts had to be called in to clean up landmines at shooting locations. Winterbottom hoped that his film would make people react in a way that the news coverage of this struggle was unable to do during three and a half years of war and 275,000 dead or missing.
A monument in Italian cinema died from a heart attack today in Paris, a couple of days before his 69th birthday. Marco Ferreri, known for La Grande Bouffe which made a scandal at Cannes in 1973, added derision and provocation bordering on the absurd into some thirty films marking his career.
Hundreds of billboards decorate the Croisette. The Carlton facade has been degraded by the presence of Beavis and Butthead, America's favorite cartoon duo. Another cartoon character adorns the Majestic : Gerard Depardieu as Obelix the Gaul. T-Rex is promoting Spielberg's Lost World, the sequel to Jurassic Park and other hoardings such as Martin Scosese's Kundun and the latest James Bond feature film abound
The line-up for 10 MayOfficial Selection:
A Certain Regard:
Directors Fortnight:
Critics Week:
