Cannes 2012 Preview

Séamas McSwiney is our guest film correspondent with decades of experience in film journalism, and work published in some top international publications. Here he previews this year's Cannes film festival. 

"Moonrise Kingdom is this year's Cannes opener. It also opens in UK cinemas on May 25th, giving a welcome opportunity to keep up with the latest buzz from planet cinema, a world that systematically migrates to the French Riviera once a year in May. As usual it will have a Cannes competition programme that goes beyond the standard all-American multiplex fare and will again provide a wide range of celluloid offerings from the planet's finest filmmakers.

American Offerings

This said, Cannes 2012 also offers a particularly fine crop of quality contemporary American movies. For starters there is the afore mentioned opener, Moonrise Kingdom by Wes Anderson. On the surface it tells an all-American simple story of a little boy who loves a little girl in 60s USA, all trammelled with scout camping trips and indulgent parents, too dim to understand the essence they lost by growing up. But add the oddball, the quirky and surreal, the habitual tones of Wes Anderson's cine-palette, and you have quite a different and hilariously memorable experience.

Two other American offerings will up the red-carpet pizzazz count. Cannes-favourite Nicole Kidman stars in an erotic thriller called The Paperboy, while on the male side of the stellar scale, Brad Pitt is back also in town. After his memorable performance in last year's Terence Malick Tree of Life, he returns to Cannes with Killing Them Softly, a dark comedy gangster movie by Andrew Dominic with whom Pitt previously made top notch The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

Competition Places

Most of the 20 or so competition slots are occupied by the tried (no first-timers this year) and tested statesmen (no women this year, not a single one!) of the arty end of world cinema. Four of these illustrious ones have already won the coveted Palme d'Or. They include Romanian Cristian Mungiu who previously won with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and returns with Beyond the Hills- a monastic drama. Britain's Ken Loach (The Wind That Shakes the Barley) is in competition with The Angels' Share, Iran's Abbas Kiarostami who won with The Taste of Cherry will be there with a romance set in Japan called Like Someone in Love, and Austrian Michael Haneke comes with Amour, as ever surgically exploring the mechanics of emotional tension. The competition does not include so much fare from the far flung corners this year, as most of the classy line up comes from Europe and the US, though there are notable inclusions from Egypt and South Korea.

Director's Fortnight

Another prestigious Cannes section, Director's Fortnight, compensates for this somewhat with a large South American contingent, notably from Chile and Columbia, alongside a chunky French selection and a handful of Asian films. Edouard Waintrop is the new programme director for this section and he and his team viewed more than 1400 films for this year's Fortnight. To his disappointment, he could find nothing from sub-Saharan Africa. Nothing would have given him more pleasure, but, as Fremaux declared, when questioned regarding the absence of women directors in the Competition, the festival does not practice positive discrimination, it's looking for good films, no matter who makes them.

Despite being a teensy weensy bit less cosmopolitan than last year and a tad less diverse, Cannes is still the capital of World Cinema for 12 days in May. On its right wing perch (it voted 65% Sarkozy-Le Pen) on the French Riviera, Cannes dispenses with its nationalism and welcomes the planet in all its diversity -whether to show, to see, to fund or to buy films- to its table of plenty. Vive la France, just the same."

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