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running Cannes would award its illustrious Palme d’Or to a picture
that was booed till the rafters shook, and give the Best Actress prize to someone who shrugged and said she wasn’t planning to continue acting?
Yes, that’s what happened again at the curfew-ridden new Millennium edi- tion of the queen of film festivals when Lars Von Trier’s bizarre musical Dancer In The Dark walked off with the top prize and its star, singer Bjork, dropped her bombshell.
Meanwhile, the world shrugged. Ça alors! That’s Cannes for you.
Even beyond the planet of the Palais des Festivals, the film industry this year seemed to reach heights of previously unscaled naffness.
While masked raiders kept up a hideous volley of crime and violence, unrelated industry highlights of a less hideous kind included the All Saints girls strutting their stuff in uncondi- tional terms, and models in the flimsi- est of underwear from boutique Victoria’s Secrets baring all.
But, tiens!, only until midnight as Cannes Mayor, Maurice Delauney, had imposed a curfew for parties and rev- ellers on behalf of the citoyens of Cannes. So at the witching hour, the inevitable showdowns happened up and down the Croisette and celebrities fled to the safe confines of the Carlton or the Hotel du Cap in Antibes, a 30 minute taxi ride away.
If films were drab, celebs this year, at Cannes’ 53rd festival, were only marginally more starry. Apart from George Clooney,
there for the
53RD CANNES INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 12 - 21 MAY 2000
CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
DOES AND DOESN’T
DOES AND DOESN’T
W ho would have thought that for the second year
Coen Bros’ lat- est, O Brother, Where Art
Thou? and the sirenesque Uma Thurman, in for Vatel and Merchant- Ivory’s The Golden Bowl, the best glimpses caught were of Morgan Freeman, excited about his upcoming Nelson Mandela role, Nick Nolte still rebelling at 60 but who this time bared his soul not his bum, and Vincent Perez who revealed that his child was con- ceived up a tree in Africa while shoot- ing I Dreamed of Africa.
Then there was Chris Rock, Greg Kinnear, hot boy Jared Leto - Cameron Diaz’s latest ‘squeeze’ - and country singer Dwight Yoakam with his ‘squeeze’ Bridget Fonda, there for a film called South of Heaven, West of Hell and the lovely Monica Bellucci, not to mention France’s national icons Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu.
The Lizs’ Taylor and Hurley glammed up a 12-hour bash that raised 1.3mil for Amfar, the American Foundation for Aids Research (one of the auction prizes was lunch with Mandela) and other lovelies in town included the talented – and soon to be Bridget Jones - Renee Zellweger for Neil Labute’s Nurse Betty, Holly Hunter, Calista (Ally McBeal) Flockhart, Julie Walters, Andie MacDowell, the truly glamorous Penelope Cruz, Jennifer Jason-Leigh and Tumbleweeds Oscar nominee
Janet McTeer for their King Lear in the desert, The King Must Live.
Samira Makhmalbaf, at 20 is the youngest director to have had a movie in competition (Blackboards, a fable about itinerant school teachers in a desolate part of Iran) took the prize, sans doute, as the most beautiful director too.
But there was a surfeit of Big Breakfast types and as someone remarked, if Gregory Peck’s little grandson aged about two bricks high and there as part of the Peck Pack for Barbara Kopple’s excellent documen- tary A Conversation with Gregory Peck, can get himself on primetime telly, there must be some sort of seri- ous scarcity of showbiz glitter around.
Happily, The Golden Bowl, with Nolte, Thurman and Jeremy Northam gave the festival a welcome elegance it sorely lacked. But moving with the times, it would be fair to say that the gap was bridged by the dot.com rush where everything was put on-line from the carpets in the Majestic hall to the unveiling of the festival programme.
The highlight of my festival was being driven to the Hotel du Cap to do interviews in a bus helmed by a driver who thought we were tourists and stopped at every scenic beauty spot for us to take holiday snaps.
Being a French driver, he got us there on time too.
And perhaps the nicest perk of this century-launching festival was the dis- covery of the smallest film commis- sion in the world in terms of land cov- erage (but not scenery), the Isle of Man Film Commission.
Bobbing merrily on a boat in the old port alongside the listing Soho House boat - one that tilted badly from dawn till dusk, a fact no outsider could explain - the Manx connection was there with Thomas the Tank Engine, steaming along into the indus- try on all pistons. ■ MARIANNE GRAY
The Golden Bowl, lit by Tony Pierce-Roberts BSC, was originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative
Photos: Singer and winner Bjork in Dancer In The Dark; Nick Nolte in The Golden Bowl; Calista Flockhart; Catherine Deneuve; the Guardian’s film critic Derek Malcolm; Gerard Depardieu; festivaliers looking for the noiseless party; the Carlton Hotel on La Croisette the famed Eden Roc Restaurant and swimming pool at the Hotel Du Cap, Antibes; inappropriately attired Roger Sapsford on the Fuji boat; the Palais in full evening swing plus good old Thomas The Tank .
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