The Cannes-Do Spirit

Some administrations find it hard to admit mistakes; ask George W. Bush. Others find it hard not to; ask Thierry Frémaux, chief programmer of the Cannes Film Festival. The films in competition at Cannes last year provoked such widespread derision that some sort of revamping was essential. So Frémaux declared that Cannes 2004 would cast a wider net. In other words, more Hollywood glamour. More films with a perky pulse. And no Brown Bunny — the Vincent Gallo road movie that, from the moment of its screening last year, became the code phrase for pretentious junk.

Sure enough, Cannes 2004 was brighter and more fun. The Hollywood stars came out in style, with Tom Hanks, Uma Thurman, Cameron Diaz, Brad Pitt, Charlize Theron, Sean Penn and Julie Andrews gracing the red-carpeted steps of the Grand Palais. The film selection held some sweet surprises, such as Paolo Sorrentino’s deadpan crime comedy Consequences of Love, and a 4 hr. 38 min. Palestinian drama, Yousry Nasrallah’s The Gate of the Sun, which overflowed with passion, smart dialogue and a knowing, dreamy poignance. Jean-Luc Godard’s Our Music, about the Israel-Palestine conundrum, concluded its dark ruminations by sending its lead character to a heaven patrolled, without apparent irony, by U.S. soldiers. Even the annual French essay in angst, Agnès Jaoui’s Comme une Image (Look at Me), displayed a tender wisdom toward its characters.

Some popular genres — the thriller, the martial-arts epic, Japanese anime — made rare appearances at Cannes. Asia’s strong showing included a mainstream Korean revenge-a-thon (Park Chan-wook’s Old Boy), a Hong Kong media melodrama (Johnnie To’s Breaking News) with an elaborate five-minute tracking shot of a shootout, and a gorgeous animated feature (Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence) from the company that did the smashing anime segment of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol. 1. You’d almost think the films had been chosen to suit the video-store tastes of this year’s jury president Quentin Tarantino.

The Tarantino jury was true to its interests: all eight prizewinners were either American, East Asian or French. Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 became the first documentary to win the best-in-show Palme d’Or since Jacques Cousteau’s The Silent World 48 years ago. Two of the best films couldn’t win an award, since they were shown out of competition: Pedro Almodóvar’s Bad Education and Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers. Almodóvar, after the consecutive masterpieces All About My Mother and Talk to Her, plunges into film noir territory with a melodrama about a Madrid schoolboy molested by a priest in the ’60s. The theme of child abuse could be treated soberly — and was, in a half a dozen or more Cannes films this year — but that wouldn’t suit Almodóvar’s cine-showmanship. The story spins backward four times before landing on its subject, then skips assuredly from comedy to horror, with a pretty plot twist at the end. It’s all prime Pedro.

Like Bad Education, House of Flying Daggers marks a relaxation, but not a reduction, for a world-class director. Hero, Zhang’s kung fu classic of 2002, was a meditative, superbly color-coded parable of love and death. Daggers is a jauntier piece, as renegade killer femmes do fantastic battle with the 9th century cops who pursue and fall in love with them. The Almodóvar and Zhang films foregrounded a crucial movie element often lost in Cannes’ ponderous auteur gazing: star quality. Bad Education’s lead actor is Mexico’s Gael García Bernal, who rocketed to international celebrity in Y Tu Mamá También, and who plays the young Ernesto Guevara, pre-Che, in Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries. Salles makes icons of the struggling (but always beautiful) poor of South America until the movie becomes a kind of liberal cornography, but García Bernal commands the screen with a winsome power.

The main Dagger doll is Zhang Ziyi. Four years after Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, she has become the petite embodiment of Chinese beauty and resilience. Her competition film was Wong Kar-wai’s 2046; she plays a 1960s-era mistress with a panoply of pouts, flirtations and surrendering smiles. It’s a spectacular star performance in a rapturous ode to love and loss set in China’s past, present and future. The year is still young, but — in its passion, its craft, its belief in the grace and pain of love — 2046 may be the film of 2004.

If Cannes’ solid program lacked anything, it was an old-fashioned film scandale. In another venue, Fahrenheit 9/11 might have done the trick; but since nearly everyone at Cannes is left wing, the debate was minimal (except for Godard, who impishly said the film would help re-elect Bush). British director Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs, with its hard-core porn elements, showed only in the Marché du Film, so it was ineligible for an Outrage award. So Cannes settled for annoying the American right. Even before the Palme d’Or was announced, two participants on stage praised Moore’s film and denounced the President. But when the victor faced the press, he had a few kind words for Bush: “He’s got the funniest lines in the film. I’m eternally grateful.” Cannes wants Hollywood stars to give it light, but it rewarded the nonbeautiful person who could light a political fire.