Despite a well-rated shot by Raoul Ruiz at Proust's Time Regained and the technical forte of Chen Kaige's The Emperor and the Assassin, All About my Mother still holds the critics number one slot at the Cannes Festival.

A French-Japanese-Chinese co-production that is 2hours and 40min long, The Emperor and the Assassin by Chen Kaige featuring Gong Li is about united China's first leader in the third century before Christ, his assassin and the woman they both love. In the critics' view, the storyline is long and confusing and not at the level of the technical prowess with lavish sets and costumes that took four years to design and sew up. The decor has been left in place in the province of Zhejiang and has become a tourist attraction.

A very expensive period piece (64million francs), Le Temps Retrouve (Time Regained) by Chilean Raoul Ruiz, who among many before him, took a stab at bringing Marcel Proust to the screen based on "Remembrance of Things Past." It weaves in and out of the past, which is an essential element in Ruiz's work, and as the director says himself, "all my previous films have all been leading up to this adaptation of Proust." Shot in 14 weeks in and around the Normandy town of Cabourg and at Cinecitta in Rome, the royal cast includes Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Beart and Italian actor Marcello Mazzarella, a stage actor, who bears a striking resemblance to Proust.

Legion of Honor

In a ceremony at the Carlton Hotel, the French Culture Minister Catherine Trautmann conferred the title of Commandant dans l'Ordre de la Legion d'Honneur, one of France's top civilian decorations, on Cannes Film Festival President Pierre Viot. Accepting the honor, Viot replied, "What I discovered was not madness but something much more dangerous: a condition that is called passion for cinema. "

Elsewhere Catherine Trautmann was seen with Giovanna Melandri (Italy) and Michael Naumann (German) at a Culture Ministers' luncheon dicussing Europe's place in cinema for the third millennium.

Rumours that Festival programmer Gilles Jacob will step down after the year 2000 edition are being dismissed by many as simply rumours.

150,000 franc poster

That is the price set on the original first Cannes Film Festival poster being sold at the Galerie du Carlton.