By Ron Holloway
(from the 2009 Festival de Cannes)

The 62nd Festival de Cannes (13-24 May 2009) had already shifted into high gear on May 11th, two days before its official launch on May 13th with Pete Docter's 3-D Disney-Pixar animation comedy Up. All the national and cable TV channels were booming the joys of last year's Golden Palm win for French director Laurent Cantet's Entre les murs (The Class), a school-room drama that stole the show from some worthy competition entries by prominent Cannes veteran directors. On one channel you could see Sean Penn announcing the Grand Prix rather proudly to an eruption of applause from the audience. Another major channel interviewed President Gilles Jacob and Artistic Director Thierry Frémaux on the state of film art today, topping this with a spotlight on this year's jury president Isabelle Huppert, currently the doyenne of the French screen.

After the strong lineup at last year's Cannes festival, the question arises: How do you keep the wind in the festival's sails with another stellar line of auteur directors, cross-cultural aesthetics, political statements, innovations and experiments, independent cinema, and a flair for the oddball and kinky in today's computerized age?

In an open letter released to coincide with this year's official selection, Gilles Jacob let it be known that "the only question I find important is that of the future of independent, auteur cinema - and thus the future of film festivals, as they are basically the same thing." Take him at his word, and auteur cinema is probably best defined as Cannes cinema. He emphatically demeans the argument among certain "Anglo-Saxon" critics (no names mentioned) who claim that auteur cinema is already dead. He counters this argument by saying that "the center of independent auteur cinema is in permanent movement." It can be found almost anywhere - in Bucharest, in Seoul, in Beijing. "Particularly in the East and Far East, where new generation filmmakers do not have any form, laws or traditions to obey."

Ask Gilles Jacob if he has a favorite among this year's Cannes entries, and he will likely name Alain Cavalier's Irène (France) in the Un Certain Regard section. "Cavalier is as free as a lark with a tiny camera and no money to explore our innermost being." His point is well taken, for back in 1968 he programmed Cavalier's Thérèse in an afternoon slot and stunned critics with this spiritual portrait of St. Thérèse of Liseux, the "Little Flower," who had entered a strict Carmeline convent with the freshness of a teenager to explore in her diary the depth of her spiritual being. Irène, at this writing, appears to take up where Thérèse left off. The film begins with a private journal that was left behind and now resurfaces years later.

Who are the frontrunners at Cannes 62?

Look at the list of auteur directors, and several films pop up.

First of all, there's The White Ribbon from Austrian director Michael Haneke, whose Cannes record of entries extends all the way back to the 1980s. He also cast Isabelle Huppert in the remarkable The Piano Teacher (2001) and psycho-thriller Time of the Wolf (2003). Thus, some sort of Palme laurel appears to be a given for a film that explores repression at a Protestant school of northern Germany on the eve of the First World War.

Indeed, nearly a dozen Cannes veterans are worth noting for the Golden Palm recognition:
- Jane Campion's Bright Star (UK), the story of 23-year-old poet John Keats' infatuation with his next-door-neighbor in 1818 London.
- Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock (USA) , a fiction documentary on how Hippies flooded upstate New York for the Woodstock music festival at White Lake back in 1969.
- Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (USA) , a wacky, butt-kicking escapade into Nazi moronics set in occupied France in 1940.
- Lou Ye's forbidden Spring Fever (China), whose Summer Palace (2006) (also forbidden) raised the ire of Chinese censors for daring to present the film at Cannes without allowing them even a glance at the screenplay beforehand.
- Lars von Trier's Antichrist (Denmark), a spiritual journey of a grieving couple set in an isolated cabin in the woods.
- Pedro Almodóvar's Broken Embraces (Spain), an introverted sketch of a burnt-out film director trying to piece together his broken life after a car accident that killed his wife.
- And Tsai Ming-liang's Visage (Face) (Taiwan), his quaint film transplant of the Salome tale to the Louvre, with a signature reference to iconic French director François Truffaut in the casting of Fanny Ardant as Herodias and Jean-Pierre Léaud as Herold.

The films I want to see?

Two off-the-beaten-auteur-path: Elia Suleiman's The Time That Remains (France), on the fate of the Palestinians over the past 60 years. And Marco Bellocchio's Vincere (Italy), the story of Benito Mussolini's secret love affair that's generally ignored in the biographies of Il Duce.

Altogether, a great lineup of films by recognized names in world cinema. Yet the Golden Palm may not go to any of the films on my list. That's the fun of attending a genuine auteur film festival. The next new talented young auteur may be lurking just around the corner. -MPM