The 68th Cannes Film Festival is currently under way in France, briefly transforming a dozy seaside town into the epitome of world class glamour and cinematic excellence. As the world’s auteurs and A-listers descend upon the croisette, they will be doing so under the image of the iconic Swedish actress, Ingrid Bergman, whose image bares down from this year’s festival poster. Recalling both European artistic ambition, and old Hollywood glamour, Ms Bergman’s image is indeed evocative. But what does it tell us?
It tells us how Cannes sees itself, or at least wants others to see it. European but international, glamorous but worthy, important but traditional. It reveals that Cannes is in crisis. Compare it to other festivals, and you can see how difficult it is to understand its modus operandi. Venice’s prestige, Berlin’s political engagement, Sundance’s low budget independents. Where does that leave Cannes? With glamour? It’s hardly the basis for a film festival.
For years, Cannes has been straining against the parameters it has defined for itself in order to reconcile its own demands with those of reality. The festival needs famous faces for exposure, but also great films to preserve its reputation, demanding progressive world talent but also conservative Oscar-bait. Cannes knows it needs awards movies, and in recent years has lent heavily on the infamous Harvey Weinstein to get them. But it needs them in May, when many distributors don’t even have an awards slate conceived off, let alone ready to premieÌ€re.
The programme is diverse. Stretching across the festival’s two competitions, from contest selections and midnight screenings, we have a global hodgepodge of worthy cinema, but without a curated direction. Hollywood premieÌ€res of the new Mad Max blockbuster and Pixar release sit alongside films from American masters Woody Allen, Gus Van Sant, and Todd Haynes.
Provocateur Gaspar Noe’s pornographic epic, Love, will share column inches with Natalie Portman, the latest high profile actor-turned-director whom Cannes has lured into its prestige star-trap. She’s been awarded an out of competition slot, likely to minimise the potential damage the notoriously rowdy critical body can inflict. And then there’s the vast Asian art-house contingent, featuring work from Naomi Kawase, Kurosawa Kiyoshi, and Jia Zhang-Ke. It’s easy to feel lost.
The press seems equally divided in its treatment of the festival. Is it a glamorous parade? Or a cinephile’s Mecca? Films frequently get lost amongst the couture dresses and red-carpeted steps. Compare this to NYFF, Tribeca, and BFI, where the films legitimise the festivals’ existence. But with Cannes, the festival makes the films, the films don’t make the festival. It’s not about cinema, it’s about strategy and exposure.
This isn’t to write-off the festival completely. It manages to bring disparate national cinemas to an international audience, with more easily overlooked fare being able to piggyback off the headline offerings. But operating as the epicentre of the European film market, where release strategies vary, how useful can this exposure really be? Many films from last year are only just washing up on these shores, long after the excitement they drummed up has abated.
Cannes is suffering from a crisis of identity. It clings to its past glamour, whilst attempting to reach for relevancy. This year’s high-profile snubbing of Idris Alba’s awards-tipped Netflix release, Beasts of No Nation, is a sign of Cannes’ fear to abandon the theatrical. But as the market stratifies further, Cannes’ linking of film with the iconic begins tolookincreasinglyoutoftouch.Cannes survives as a behemoth presiding over a milieu in disarray.
