Beyond the Multiplex

May 16, 2007 | CANNES, France -- Pollen is falling from the trees in great golden drifts, the weather (forecast to be gloomy) has so far been glorious, and the beautiful people -- some of them pretty darn ugly -- have arrived. In the last 24 hours, this alternately ritzy and seedy seaside town has been transformed by thousands of arrivals -- and on Wednesday night, the 60th Festival de Cannes kicks off what looks like a hot year with one of its most anticipated premieres, Wong Kar Wai's English-language debut "My Blueberry Nights."

On board my connecting flight from Frankfurt to Nice, I was seated near a couple of other festivalgoers, a 30ish saleswoman from Texas and a handsome young filmmaker from Jordan. She was heading to the Riviera with a group of girlfriends, confided the blond Texan to the fashionably dressed Jordanian (having enlisted him to heft her enormous snow-white suitcase), but strictly for the parties. "We don't come to Cans [pronounced just like that] to watch movies," she assured him in tones of scathing irony.

Whether further currents of cross-cultural communication flowed from that liaison I don't know. But that woman's insight has burned itself into my brain. Who among the 30,000 or so professional insiders, know-it-alls and hangers-on who have descended here for two weeks of overcaffeinated, sun-struck stupor really comes to Cans to watch movies? Granted, we'll see quite a few -- there are 22 in competition for the Palme d'Or, each of those a subject of murmur and speculation, 20 others in the Certain Regard sidebar competition, several more screened out of competition and another couple of dozen between the International Critics' Week and Directors' Fortnight festivals. (That's not counting the hundreds more, completed, in-progress or merely contemplated, that are for sale in the Cannes Film Marketplace. People spoke in tones of wonder last year about a Spanish film whose title translates, I believe, as "They Stole Hitler's Dick." This year there's a German student film called "The Golden Nazi Vampire of Absam: Part II." Since I haven't seen Part I, I may skip it.)

It's physically impossible for the most dogged cinephile to see even half of those, and Cannes can sometimes seem like a convention of meteorologists or econometrics experts, using flawed and incomplete information to forecast future developments that are, by their very nature, unpredictable. Films premiere here and create worldwide headlines, but what happens to them later has very little to do with what the Cannes jury or the 3,000 critics assembled think of them. Last year's jury gave the Palme d'Or to Ken Loach's Irish revolutionary drama "The Wind That Shakes the Barley," an attractive, overly didactic period piece that will not be remembered among Loach's best films. Meanwhile, Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" left here empty-handed -- embraced by a few North American critics and other vulgarians -- and went on to become one of the biggest international art-house hits of recent years.

One thing was absolutely, ironclad for sure about this year's festival: Wong Kar Wai would be back. In 2006, he presided over the jury that showered such mysterious love on Loach's film, and a huge billboard for Wong's in-production "My Blueberry Nights," depicting star Norah Jones in languorous repose, hung from the façade of the Noga Hilton, one of the most prestigious addresses on the beachfront Boulevard de la Croisette. Lo and behold, the Hong Kong art-film god's excursion into open-road Americana, starring the screen-untested Jones alongside Jude Law, opens the festival this year, and, sight unseen, becomes the morning-line favorite for the Palme d'Or. (This year's jury president is Stephen Frears, English director of "The Queen" and many other films. I'll have more on the jury in a future dispatch)

Is this an inside job? Sure it is. But as much as I fear the art-film-does-America thing (as in Emir Kusturica's "Arizona Dream," or Bruno Dumont's "Twentynine Palms," or the entire recent career of Wim Wenders), at least "My Blueberry Nights" is a film people are excited to see. Cannes is a sufficiently cynical environment; we don't need another Hollywood butt-licking extravaganza like last year's premiere of "The Da Vinci Code." Whatever you make of Wong's rapturous, often decadent and sometimes incomprehensible spectacles ("Chungking Express," "In the Mood for Love," "2046"), they simultaneously channel European, Asian and American cinema traditions into an especially Cannes-friendly blend.

I'll have a report on "My Blueberry Nights" shortly. I missed Wednesday morning's first press screening thanks to the day's other major French news event, the inauguration of newly elected right-wing president Nicolas Sarkozy, which occasioned a one-day wildcat strike by many railroad workers. Sarkozy has vowed to rebuild the French relationship with the United States, but Cannes chief Thierry Frémaux and his staff are way ahead of him. While not officially an American film, Wong's road romance kicks off a rich and exciting lineup that's the most conspicuously Yank-centric in recent memory.

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