The spectacle ahead will -- hopefully (cinema sages are an optimistic bunch) -- be spectacular. The 72nd Cannes Film Festival opens tonight and there are all manner of curiosities to look forward to: an army of hipster zombies; Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate; Korean parasites; a Maradona doc; an Elton John biopic; Islamic extremism in Belgium; British miserabilism (Brexit and other demons); and, of course, Elle Fanning on the red carpet for 11 days straight, performing jury duty at the world's most reported, most hyped and most influential film festival.
With a fairly healthy mix of the usual suspects (Quentin Tarantino, Ken Loach, Pedro Almodóvar, the Dardennes, Jim Jarmusch, Terrence Malick) and emerging talents (Ladj La, Mati Diop, Justine Triet) come the 21 titles in Cannes Film Festival's elite Competition line-up. Elsewhere, the selection brings us mid-career auteurs with distinctive styles and sensibilities from different corners of world cinema: monster-loving Bong Joon-ho, dramatist Arnaud Desplechin, the sensitive Ira Sachs, Chinese film-noir specialist Diao Yinan, Euro-arthouse star Jessica Hausner, Brazilian metaphysicians Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles.
For all the quibbles about Cannes' insistence on putting their favourite alumni in Competition, we have to give them credit for one or two bold choices every year. Putting Corneliu Porumboiu's The Whistlers in the top section, for example, is a welcome move (at least in one corner of the cinephilic universe); Porumboiu is an expert in Romanian absurdity and inscrutable humour whose previous films include Police, Adjective (about a police chief wielding a dictionary as a bureaucratic subterfuge) and the eccentric football documentary Football Infinite. The Whistlers, another absurdist procedural, is about a Romanian policeman who has to learn a local Spanish dialect in order to capture a thief in Spain.
Besides Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die, a zombie escapade that opens the festival tonight, Tarantino's Once Upon A Time In Hollywood looks like the hottest ticket in Cannes. The film, starring Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and a lengthy list of stars, is a Hollywood satire set in 1969 that revolves around the murder of Sharon Tate by the Manson Family. The film was initially not going to be finished in time for a Cannes premiere but was added into the Competition roster at the last minute. (Shot on 35mm, Tarantino said the post-production was more time-consuming than usual).
Good news for Thai Tarantino fans: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood will open here in July. Another title with a Thai release in a few months is Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life, a World War II drama about a conscientious objector who refuses to fight for the Nazis. Malick, known for his poetic cinematography and characters who drift in an existential void (or some other kind of void), won the Palme d'Or in 2011 with The Tree Of Life and returns to Cannes for a shot at his second trophy.
Cannes loves big names. Some other ones making a return to the red carpet this week are the Dardennes brothers with Young Ahmed, which looks at the seed of radicalism in Europe; Almodóvar, with Pain And Glory, starring Penelope Cruz and Anotonio Banderas; Ken Loach with Sorry We Missed You, a tale of working-class struggle from the master of the genre; and Marco Bellochio with The Traitor, a drama about a mafia boss. We're also eager to see Kleber Mendoncao and Juliano Dornelles' Bucurau, about documentary filmmakers who encounter a strange tribe in the Amazon, and Jessica Hausner's Little Joe, a bioengineering suspense-horror, or at least that's what it sounds like on paper.
Among the Out of Competition titles, two stand out, and are likely to make their way to cinemas around the world, including Thailand. Rocketman, an Elton John biopic starring Taron Egerton (Kingsman) in the lead role, will aim to emulate the worldwide success of the Freddie Mercury epic Bohemian Rhapsody. Maradona, meanwhile, is a documentary about the legendary Argentinian footballer directed by Asif Kapadi, whose previous work was the widely popular and utterly heartbreaking Amy, about Amy Winehouse.
This isn't a good year for Asian films -- after last year's Shoplifters from Japan won the Palme d'Or and Thai film Ten Years Thailand premiered Out of Competition. For the 2019 edition, there are only two Asian films in the Competition: South Korean Bong Joon-ho, last seen on the red carpet with Okja before Cannes ditched Netflix, is back with a sci-fi thriller Parasite, and Chinse Diao Yinan with The Wild Goose Lake, about a gangster on the run. And there's only one feature-length Southeast Asian film: Lav Diaz's The Halt will play in the sidebar Directors' Fortnight programme, while two Singaporean short films, Pieces Of Meat and Adam, are selected in the Directors' Fortnight and Cinefondation, respectively.
The jury is led by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and includes directors Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite) and Pawel Pawlikowski (Cold War), as well as actress Elle Fanning. They will award the Palme d'Or on May 25.
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