URBAN GUIDE

Treading the 69th Film Festival's blood-red carpet: seven French-language films out of 20 in competition, vampires, a cannibal and a host of smiling stars.

It's hard to keep everyone happy when, like the Cannes Festival's General Delegate, you're in charge of choosing 50-odd films for the international line-up of the world's most famous and celebrated cinema event. At the April press conference that officially kicks off the Cannes season, patriotic and disappointed Chinese, Italian and Arabic journalists grimaced at an apologetic Thierry Frémaux explaining that he just wasn't able to content all of UNESCO's 195 member countries plus nine associate mem­­bers. A dilemma indeed, but resolved with honesty, the dynamic GD insisted, reminding us that "anyone who has recently made a feature film can submit it for inclusion in the Festival". This year 1869 films were "all viewed" by Frémaux and his team, who only finalised the list for the official competition (11 to 22 May) the day before the press conference.

A francophone festival
In and out of competition, in midnight and special screenings, in Un Certain Regard, the 49 films making up this 69th Festival list 28 nationalities and a similar geographical diversity. However, certain countries we've become used to seeing (e.g. Italy and China) aren't in evidence and al­though Frémaux emphasises his festival's universal character, the 2016 selection does look rather francophone, with four French films plus French-language films by Canadian director Xavier Dolan and Dutch director Paul Verhoeven in the running for Palms (out of 20). For Juste la fin du monde (It's Only the End of the World), young director Dolan, who was cinematographically born in Cannes, chose an appetising all-French cast including Marion Cotillard, Léa Seydoux, Vincent Cassel and Nathalie Baye. After Mommy, a smash hit in France, for his sixth film Dolan challenged himself to "a somewhat perilous adaptation", as he describes it, of the play by the hugely popular playwright Jean-Luc Lagarce. A literary adaptation for Paul Verhoeven too with Elle after Philippe Djian, bringing the director of Basic Instinct back to the Croisette 25 years later with world-cinema star Isabelle Huppert. Representing Belgium, French actress Adèle Haenel, described by some as "the new Huppert", plays the "unknown girl" of brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne's La fille inconnue.

The French cock crows
Of the eight European films in competition, four are French. For his ghost story Personal Shopper Olivier Assayas engaged Kristen Stewart, whom he directed with Juliette Binoche in Sils Maria. Nicole Garcia, four-times competitor since she took up directing, is presenting Mal de pierres with Marion Cotillard and Pierre Niney. Bruno Dumont, another regular who created a buzz last year with Li'l Quinquin (originally a TV mini-series), is in the running again with Ma loute (Slack Bay), which looks as if it might amuse the Croisette (and public), being a madcap crime comedy set in 1910, in which, we're told, Fabrice Luchini and Juliette Binoche will surprise us! And Alain Guiraudie, a new arrival boosted by the success of his Stranger by the Lake in 2013, symbolises the ever-marginal-despite-everything auteur in Rester vertical chronicling the ups and downs of a filmmaker lacking inspiration.

American stars
The competition includes three US films, with a crowd of stars whose careers haven't necessarily been in movies – e.g. Iggy Pop, subject of Jim Jarmusch's Midnight Screening documentary Gimme Danger – set to walk the red carpet. The unpredictable director of Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) returns to the competition too with Paterson, a road movie featuring Hollywood's latest darling, Adam Driver. Croisette regular Sean Penn is backed up by Charlize Theron, Javier Bardem and up-and-coming young French actress Adèle Exarchopoulos in The Last Face, a love story set during a humanitarian mission to Africa. Jeff Nichols, likewise much appreciated since Take Shelter and Mud, comes back with Loving based on the true story of a mixed-race couple sentenced to prison in Virginia in 1958. For the third time Woody Allen, that most European of American directors, does the honours of opening the festival with Café Society (simultaneously re­leased in cinemas) starring Kristen Stewart ("queen of the 2016 Festival" according to Thierry Frémaux), Jesse Eisenberg and Steve Carell. And in the superstar class, unlikely to pass unnoticed are the out-of-competition films by Steven Spielberg (Disney’s The BFG) and Jodie Foster (Money Monster), the latter with an unbeatable pairing of George Clooney and Julia Roberts, on her first visit to Cannes!

More seats plus vampires
"The Festival doesn't live solely on the presence of stars," its GD explained, "even though the red carpet is a fundamental element. Cannes is just as much about celebrating auteur cinema and a healthy Marché du Film – as you know, business is conducted in the Palais's basement –, which is showing encouraging signs this year to its director, Jérôme Paillard. Buyers and sellers all over the world continue to think, like us, that a film should be seen and shared on the big screen. Which is heartening in this era of the all-virtual and the supremacy of internet markets." For this 69th Festival additional screenings are programmed and the city council's announcement of a new 500-seat cinema on the Croisette for 2019 has reassured the organisers. "Cannes must continue to be essentially about enjoyment," Thierry Frémaux concludes. With a touch of fear thrown in? This year spirits, vampires and cannibals feature in no less than three films! In Un Certain Regard the very secret The Transfiguration by American director Michael O’Shea deals with vampires in New York, while in competition Olivier Assayas brings Kristen Stewart's lost twin back to life in Personal Shopper. But undoubtedly the worst is to be expected from Nicolas Winding Refn, recognised by the Croisette for Drive, who's back with The Neon Demon, a thriller about a cannibalistic supermodel!