CANNES, France– The image gracing this year’s 75th anniversary Cannes Movie Celebration poster originates from “The Truman Show,” specifically that climactic moment when Jim Carrey’s Truman climbs up a staircase versus a domed wall painted to look like a cloudy blue sky. This is the external edge of a carefully constructed set that has been his lifelong house and jail. It’s likewise a grand illusion, a reminder of how movies and TV programs construct a deeply carrying simulacrum of reality. And due to the fact that this is Cannes, that stairs to paradise also evokes the famous red-carpeted actions leading up to the Palais des Festivals, the long time headquarters of the grandest cinematic showcase in the world.
I have not tired my metaphors yet. Going back to Cannes for the first time in 3 years thanks to the pandemic, I confess I find myself feeling a bit like Truman, stretching out my hand as though I don’t quite trust what my eyes are informing me, and feeling both fired up and worried about taking my first few steps out of the bubble. That’s an exaggeration, of course.
For beginners, this journey hardly counts as my very first tried return to some state of normalcy (and Cannes, a bubble to end all bubbles, is no one’s definition of normalcy to start with). There’s likewise the fact that, after canceling its 2020 occasion, Cannes recuperated in 2015 with a resurgent program that included the bests of “Annette,” “Drive My Automobile,” “The French Dispatch,” “Red Rocket” and “The Worst Individual on the planet,” among others.
That particular edition of Cannes, the first of the COVID-19 period, unfolded (I’m told) under a weird cloud of enjoyment, anxiety and mindful optimism. Participants used masks throughout screenings and took time in their busy schedules to get regular PCR tests. This year’s edition, for much better or even worse, is moving full steam ahead. The majority of last year’s security protocols have actually been relaxed (too soon, I suspect), though a few of us have come as prepared as possible, with masks and rapid-test sets in our suitcases and a 2nd vaccine booster dose running through our veins.
Maybe we ought to have kept away, leaving the celebrations to the truly festive-minded. However how could we? One year without a Cannes was bad enough, and two was far even worse; 3 would have been unimaginable. And this is Cannes’ 75th birthday, an event for which the celebration’s longtime director, Thierry Frémaux, and his selection committee have gathered a characteristically comprehensive program.
As ever, their choices advance an argument for the irrepressible vitality of movie theater as an excellent, long-lasting public pastime– a reason, even in these eras of international plague and streaming-platform domination, for movie fans from all over the world to come together, screen together and, yes, breathe the very same air together.
Their points of convergence at this year’s celebration will include a presumptive smash hit, “Leading Weapon: Radical,” the Tom Cruise-starring action follow up that was postponed for two years due to the pandemic; it makes its opening night Wednesday at Cannes and opens May 27 in theaters worldwide. Some will doubtless be excited for a very first take a look at Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis,” an artist biopic whose mere mix of subject and filmmaker conjures exactly the vision of glamour, glamour and go-for-broke auteurism that is this festival’s raison d’être. (Still others might make time for– what else?– “The Truman Program,” which will evaluate tonight on the beach as part of the celebration’s yearly Movie theater de la Plage program.)
Event motion pictures are often seen as the medium’s last excellent hope, potential ticket office juggernauts in the making. But the art can’t make it through by Hollywood alone, and I’m especially curious about the movies that arrive here on less grandiose swells of advance hype, the ones from terrific filmmakers whose work I’ve loved in the past and wish to like again.
Here, in alphabetical order by title, is a not-even-close-to-comprehensive list of 12 motion pictures I’m thrilled to see at the 75th Cannes Movie Celebration:
Banks Repeta and Anthony Hopkins in the movie “Armageddon Time.”
(Cannes Film Celebration)