Don't be surprised if the 61st Cannes Film Festival snubs movies that will go on to win Oscars and box-office millions when judges hand out the Palme d'Or and other awards May 25.
It happened last year, when Joel and Ethan Coen's “No Country for Old Men” left Cannes with bupkiss. Then the Western thriller snatched up four Oscars, including best picture, best director and best supporting actor, and grossed more than $159 million worldwide. The Palme d'Or winner, the excruciating Romanian abortion tale “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” grossed $9.6 million worldwide.
Cannes officials defend the yearly awards as well as the selection process, of course, saying the festival focuses on art, not commerce. And when they say “art,” they usually mean European films, some of which receive government subsidies or grants.
But Cannes doesn't hesitate to capitalize on commerce while showing its art. It loves Hollywood glamour and often selects high-profile titles to screen out of competition, and hence out of the running for awards, regardless of how artful they may or may not be.
The point, of course, is to lure major stars to town. And Cannes loves to bring in the high-wattage likes of Sharon Stone, who rarely walks up the red carpet to the Palais without blowing at least 100 air kisses. Woe be unto the actresses who venture to join her in the parade.
This year, the festival selected such high-profile titles as DreamWorks' animated “Kung Fu Panda,” Woody Allen's “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” and Steven Spielberg's “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” to screen out of competition.
For the Cannes faithful, it's all about the top art films selected in the main competition. That's where Euro-snobbery comes into play.
As with “No Country for Old Men” last year, serious snubbing occurred again in 2006, when former Austinite Guillermo del Toro's “Pan's Labyrinth” screened in competition but was ignored. It went on to become the highest-grossing Spanish-language movie ever, with $83.3 million worldwide. It also won three Oscars, for art direction, cinematography and makeup.
The Palme d'Or winner that year was Ken Loach's “The Wind That Shakes the Barley,” which grossed $22.9 million worldwide and won no Oscars.
And in 2003, in one of the most egregious oversights in recent years, Clint Eastwood's “Mystic River” was overlooked, while Gus Van Sant's “Elephant” won the Palme. “Mystic River” went on to win Oscars for best actor Sean Penn and best supporting actor Tim Robbins, while grossing $156.8 million worldwide. “Elephant,” meanwhile, wasn't even nominated for an Oscar and grossed $10 million worldwide.
This year's festival, which starts tomorrow , screens 22 films in competition for the Palme d'Or, and four U.S. directors will be vying for the prize. Longtime U.S. favorite Eastwood, who has never won a Palme d'Or, will present “Changeling,” a 1920s thriller about the disappearance of a boy in Los Angeles. Based on a true story, the movie stars Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich.
Steven Soderbergh, who won the Palme for 1989's breakthrough indie hit, “Sex, Lies and Videotape,” will show his two-part biopic of Che Guevara under the title of “Che,” which runs – yeow – four hours and 28 minutes. Benicio del Toro stars as the revolutionary leader.
“Adaptation” screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, in his directorial debut, will screen “Synecdoche, New York,” with Philip Seymour Hoffman as a New York theater director who buries himself in what he thinks will be his masterpiece.
And James Gray will show Cannes his romantic drama, “Two Lovers,” starring Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow.
Other international favorites include Canada's Atom Egoyan, with “Adoration”; Argentina's Lucrecia Martel, with “The Headless Woman”; Italy's Paolo Sorrentino, with “Il Divo”; Brazil's Fernando Meirelles, with “Blindness”; Germany's Wim Wenders, with “Palermo Shooting”; and Belgium's Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne with “Lorna's Silence.” (The Dardenne brothers won the Palme d'Or in 2005 for “L'Enfant,” beating Jim Jarmusch's “Broken Flowers,” David Cronenberg's “A History of Violence” and Tommy Lee Jones' “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.”)
In addition to the main competition, the festival holds a series of official screenings in a sidebar called Un Certain Regard, which means that the festival holds the movies in “special regard.” These movies aren't considered for the major awards but nonetheless bear the Cannes imprimatur.
Kelly Reichardt's “Wendy and Lucy” made the cut this year.
The closing-night film this year will be Barry Levinson's “What Just Happened?” It was poorly received at Sundance, but it stars Robert DeNiro, a longtime Cannes favorite. And, hey, the guy delivers star power. Just what the French ordered.
