Pre-festival, all the talk about Cannes was gloomy: how were the party animals supposed to cope with la crise? Without canapés or corporate sponsors? Without stardust?
Those who came to Cannes this year for the glamour may have been disappointed, we hear. The US studios and super-agencies chopped the number of staff they sent, so the dearth of American accents was noticeable. The billionaires stayed away, too: floating skyscrapers masquerading as yachts were in short supply. And the absence of big branding led to unusually low levels of attendance by giraffe-legged, napkin-skirted models. Some may have seen this as a disadvantage, but at least it was possible to walk across the Croisette without fear of being penned in like a sheep.
Film fans were in heaven. Cannes 2009 was a festival to savour. Several “alpha male” directors came to town to do just that, among them Michael Haneke and the Danish papa terrible Lars von Trier – who arrived carrying his film reel under his arm.
With the sun reddening shoulders on the Riviera, the French maestro Jacques Audiard staked his claim for the Palme d’Or with A Prophet, starring a shining new talent, Tahar Rahim. Von Trier presented his two-hander Antichrist by telling the press, “I’m the best film-maker in the world.” And the double Cannes prizewinner made it hard to argue; his competition entry was the most talked-about of the festival, again. Ken Loach’s Cantona vehicle showed no sign of troubling the judges, but the poet footballer’s presence was apparently fun.
Nor were female directors to be outdone. Andrea Arnold’s new feature, Fish Tank, is even more impressive than her debut, Red Road. Jane Campion’s Bright Star straddles the thin line between poetry and pretentiousness with aplomb, despite her stars’ failure to generate even a proton of electricity between them.
If this was Cannes in a time of crisis, maybe the film industry should think about having a crise every year.
