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 With huge yachts bobbing in the Mediterranean and luxury
boutiques along the famous La Croisette boulevard making
finishing touches to their displays, the 12-day pageant that is
the international film world's answer to Hollywood's Oscars
kicks off with the world premiere of "Grace of Monaco".
"I think the selection has so many talents now that it's like
(being) a kid in a candy store," Danish director Nicolas Winding
Refn said as he arrived on Tuesday.
Winding Refn is one of nine judges on a majority female jury
headed by New Zealand director Jane Campion, the only woman ever
to win the festival's top Palme d'Or prize.
There are 18 films in competition for the Palme d'Or, which will
be handed out along with other prizes at the end of the festival
on May 24.
It is a huge draw for the industry and public alike, with an
estimated 127,000 visitors expected, plus 30,000 accredited
professionals, 4,000 journalists and 700 technicians, according
to a periodical distributed by the festival.
Benedicte Bourdon, 30, visiting for the first time with her
parents from the northwestern French city of Cherbourg, said she
had no idea which stars would show up on the other side of a
security cordon where she was standing outside a hotel, but
being there was a thrill.
"It's great fun to be here," Bourdon said. "Films can make you
feel emotion or laugh, and some make you reflect on life."
Last year some of those who attended the festival were less than
welcome, having made off with jewels worth several million
dollars.
The security presence this year is conspicuous, with
dark-jacketed men standing outside or immediately inside fancy
boutiques, but it is no more than usual, a security guard said.
"It was already at the maximum," said the guard who did not want
to give his name for what he said were "security reasons".
The opening film stars Nicole Kidman as the Hollywood actress
Grace Kelly who became the Princess of Monaco when she married
Prince Rainier, and died following a car crash in 1982 in the
hills of the principality, not far from Cannes.
RED CARPET
Kidman and other stars will ascend the famous red carpet on
Wednesday night to the cinema inside the Palais des Festivals et
des Congres for the glittering opening event under the watchful
eye of the world's media, which has staked out viewing spots and
parked stepladders for photographers days in advance.
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Trade talk of a dispute between the film's French director, Olivier
Dahan, and its American distributor, producer Harvey Weinstein, has
only served to reinforce the reputation of Cannes for producing a
scandal or two, which festival artistic director Thierry Fremaux
sees as a good thing.
"Controversy by the way is also something which built Cannes and
which makes people focus on films. And these are not really really
strong or - how can I say - in a way it's nice, it's part of the
folklore of Cannes, it's part of the passion of cinema," Fremaux
told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
Since the selection of the 18 films to be presented in competition
was unveiled in April, critics have said the festival this year
might suffer from a lack of stars on its red carpet. But Fremaux
said he was happy with the selection.
"The choices we have made are the choices we have made and now we
are going to deliver the selection to the press and I feel quite
comfortable because first we love the movies we've picked up, we
think we did the best with the films which were submitted to us," he
said.
Even if Cannes remains the one event on the crowded film festival
calendar that the big players most want to attend, a senior editor
at U.S. entertainment magazine Variety said it was scaling back.
"You see Cannes scaling back. And you see it ... for Cannes, for
Cannes standards it's a little smaller than Cannes usually is,"
Ramin Setoodeh said.
"That said, it's still a very big festival, you have stars from
Nicole Kidman to Robert Pattinson, to Kristen Stewart, Ryan Gosling
had his directorial debut here at Cannes. So it's still a pretty big
festival, it's just not as big as Cannes has always been."
(Additional reporting by Matthew Stock, Mike Davidson and Rollo
Ross; Writing by Michael Roddy; Editing by James Dalgleish)
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