The 69th Cannes film festival has what it takes to be a vintage edition despite security concerns as glamour looks set to prevail over fear on the French Riviera.
The May 11-22 cinema extravaganza opens on Wednesday for the third time with a Woody Allen movie, ‘Cafe Society’ featuring Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart, who has already been dubbed the ‘Queen of Cannes’ by organisers.
Although he has never been in competition, Allen is a Cannes darling — one of several familiar faces to grace this year’s festival.
“When we will be old we will tell our children you know I was living at a time when Woody Allen’s films were coming out and I think he’s one of the greatest auteurs,” festival director Thierry Fremaux told Reuters.
“This year the competition is mostly Cannes favourites, Cannes darlings,” Variety critic Jay Weissberg told Reuters.
“Fremaux is someone who likes to reward his friends he’s somebody who likes to have the people he knows come back year after year after year.”
Several directors in the main competition this year have already been primed on the Croisette.
The Dardenne brothers, who present ‘The Unknown Girl’, have won the highest distinction, the Palme d’Or, twice, Ken Loach, in Cannes with ‘I, Daniel Blake’ has won it once while Bruno Dumont (Slack Bay), Jim Jarmusch with ‘Paterson’ and also a documentary on Iggy Pop (Gimme Danger), Park Chan-wook (The Handmaiden) and Pedro Almodovar (Julieta) have all been previously rewarded with other distinctions.
Jarmusch’s films are two of five distributed by Amazon as the Service of Video on Demand (SVOD) giant makes its first appearance in Cannes.
Not up for disctinction but still much awaited is Steven Speilberg’s ‘The BFG’, based on the novel by Roald Dahl.
The festival will be filled with stars as Julia Roberts makes her Cannes debut in Jodie Foster’s out-of competition film ‘Money Monster’ alongside George Clooney, and Javier Bardem and Charlize Theron star in Sean Penn’s ‘The Last Face’.
Oscar winner Marion Cotillard also stars in ‘It’s Only the End of the World‘ by Xavier Dolan but it is indie film star Kristen Stewart who has been labelled Queen of the festival as she features in ‘Cafe Society’ as well as Olivier Assayas’s ‘Personal Shopper’, a film vying for the Palme d’Or.
For all the gloss and glitter, security will be intense as France is still facing a high risk of attack, French Interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Tuesday.
According to Cazeneuve, 400 private security officers will control the Palais des Festivals entry points while “hundreds” of police officers will be deployed and special forces units will be ready to intervene as France is still in a state of emergency after last year’s Paris attacks killed 130 people.
The atmosphere was relaxed ahead of the opening ceremony, however, with just a few extra security cordons around the Palais des Festivals.
“Glamour will always outweight the security concerns people will always come to Cannes no matter what the security issues are,” said Weissberg, who has covered a dozen Cannes festival.
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2016.
