May 21--Trudging up the aisle just now, at the conclusion of the crazy little 3D widescreen hard-core Gaspar Noe film called "Love," my thoughts turned from porno guitar chords to "The Da Vinci Code."
Yep, "The Da Vinci Code." No sex in that one. That was the one starring Tom Hanks as the Harvard "symbologist" and Audrey Tatou as the gamin-diety. It was first film I ever saw at the world's most famous film festival 10 years ago. Director Ron Howard's picture served as the out-of-competition opening night presentation in 2006, before Twitter, before lots of things.
At the press screening earlier that day, the movie (not a good movie) received a pretty rough response, boos and catcalls filling the air at the Debussy the second the closing credits began.
I didn't yet realize this was fairly common at Cannes. I thought, "Well, this thing cannot possibly overcome such a reception." After the press screening, I ran headlong into a phalanx of videographers and interviewers waving microphones, desperate for a comment. So I commented, like the rube I was, trying to look presentable even with my temporary grotesque eye infection, which made me look slightly scarier than Matthew Broderick doing his Quasimodo act in "Election."
Here's the lesson. Cannes is a megaphone, announcing to the world the next big noise, the arrival of a potentially great new filmmaker. But it's also a bubble. It's the island in the old TV show "The Prisoner," with better food.
"The Da Vinci Code" went on to make $758 million worldwide. The critical response at Cannes meant nothing in the aggregate.
It has been that way with the majority of the out-of-competition hunks of American cheese premiering at Cannes since then, from "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" to "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides." The Cannes premiere of such products is simply the product launch, with the stars looking swank on the most photographed stretch of red carpet in existence, the carpet leading up the stairs to the festival's biggest venue, the Grand Theatre Lumiere.
The festival always has paid attention to schlock and art, to fashion (especially this year, with the tiresome, distracting controversy about women wearing flats on dress-up night) and to filmmakers who exist, defiantly, out of fashion, out of time and a universe away from the likes of "The Da Vinci Code."
In the early '50s, and ever since, Cannes became synonymous with sex, when a little-known starlet named Simone Silva went topless for a photo shoot featuring Robert Mitchum. At the very same festival, however, a Turkish adaptation of Chekhov's "Winter Sleep," a film destined to make nearly $758 million less than "The Da Vinci Code," can go home with the top prize, the Palme d'Or. Which is exactly what happened last year.
On Sunday the 2015 jury co-chairs, Joel and Ethan Coen, will announce the winners for this year's main competition slate. There has been some fine, fierce work so far. Of the ones I've seen, the Auschwitz-set "Son of Saul" stands out as remarkably assured work from Hungarian newcomer Laszlo Nemes. Other highlights we owe to proven masters, working near the top of their game, from Jia Zhang-ke ("Mountains May Depart") to Hou Hsiao-Hsien ("The Assassin") to Todd Haynes ("Carol") to comparative newcomer Yorgos Lanthimos ("The Lobster").
And what of "Love," the Noe film about the surly American in Paris who can't help but act like a jealous idiot in between orgasms? It's not competing. It's a sidebar offering playing out of competition. It's also pretty exasperating even when it's coldly impressive, compositionally and otherwise. Noe's latest falls well below the more selective and insinuating provocations of his previous film, "Enter the Void." As an asterisk I think the festival officials missed an opportunity with "Love." If only the dulcet-toned prerecorded announcement heard prior to each official premiere screening had been revised to suit the film at hand! Ladies and gentlemen, will you please take your seats? The sex scenes are about to begin.
Now I must run to catch up with a competition title, "Valley of Love" with Gerard Depardieu and Isabelle Huppert. No 3D for this one; this one likely take place one valley over from Noe's. Like the song says: It's a many-splendored thing.
The closing ceremonies for the 68th Cannes Film Festival are Sunday evening.
Phillips is a Tribune critic.
mjphillips@tribpub.com
