PROFILES

A legend succeeds Steven Spielberg to head the jury of the 67th Cannes Festival from 14 to 25 May: Jane Campion, a woman who likes telling stories about women.

It's a fact, not a judgement, that female filmmakers are scarce on the Croisette. Last year only Valeria Bruni Tedeschi was on the cards for the Palme d’Or. The subject gives rise to regular polemics, as when the La Barbe collective published a protest in Le Monde in May 2012 under the heading "At Cannes women show their charms, men show their films." However, the festival's artistic delegate Thierry Frémeaux refuses any positive discrimination: "We will never select an undeserving film simply because it's made by a woman." He sees the crux of the matter as lying elsewhere: "There's no doubt there should be more women in cinema. But the problem isn't in Cannes in May, it's everywhere all year round." Only 10 out of 66 juries have been headed by women, the first no less than 18 years after the festival started! That was Olivia de Haviland, followed the year after (1966) by Sophia Loren, then Michèle Morgan in 1971, Ingrid Bergman, Jeanne Moreau and Françoise Sagan. There ensued a long barren period (1980 to 1994) devoid of female leadership, before Jeanne Moreau once again in 1995, followed by Isabelle Adjani, Liv Ullmann and in 2009 Isabelle Huppert. Jane Campion is the tenth woman.

QUEEN OF FESTIVALS
Campion has said she's "impatient" to take on the Festival's highest function. The only female director to have won the Palme d’Or – and the only person to have both a feature and a short Palme d'Or – is more closely connected with what she calls the "queen of festivals" than most. "Since I first went to Cannes in 1986, my admiration has only grown," she declared when her nomination was announced. "They combine and celebrate the glamour of the industry, the stars, the parties, the beaches, the business, while rigo­rously maintaining the festival's serious­ness about the Art and excellence of new world cinema." Campion was chosen to head up the 67th jury "for her talent and what she has done," emphasises Thierry Frémeaux, who sees her as "an equal of Doris Lessing and Marguerite Yourcenar". Feminist, militant, pacifist but always discreet, Lady Jane, as Gilles Jacob (whose last festival as president this is) dubs her, continues an original oeuvre (seven feature films) peopled by women in revolt against macho and stereo­typed societies. Campion's women are all intense and impassioned. Think Janet Frame, whose difficult path as a schizophrenic writer in 60s-70s New Zealand Campion tackled in An Angel at My Table (1990), or the impossible affair between the poet Keats and his muse Fanny Brawne in her recent Bright Star.