Wes Anderson’s films have premiered at a wide variety of
festivals, but after “Moonrise Kingdom” (2012), “The French Dispatch” (2021)
and his upcoming ensemble comedy “Asteroid City,” Cannes Film Festival is the
one he keeps coming back to. Last week, I asked Anderson what he finds so
compelling about a debut on the Croisette.
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“The reason to go to Cannes, I think, is because they said
yes,” he deadpanned. “After that, there isn’t really much to contemplate.”
Well, there is a little more to it than that, Anderson
admitted: For cinema lovers, there is no holier pilgrimage to make than to
Cannes, where movies are treated with the utmost reverence and routinely given
marathon standing ovations.
It is a place where great auteurs have been canonized, like
Martin Scorsese, who won the Palme d’Or in 1976 for “Taxi Driver” and will
return this year with his new feature “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and Quentin
Tarantino, a Palme winner (for “Pulp Fiction” in 1994) and Cannes habitué who
will be back at the fest this year for a wide-ranging conversation that may
touch on his upcoming final film.
“I look at Cannes in relation to the other movies I know
showed there, and I feel lucky enough to be included in the program that
debuted those films,” Anderson said. “For me, it’s a chance to be involved in
this movie history, which I love.”
A Cannes launch can be awfully expensive for a studio to
bankroll, since the airfare, star entourages, and five-star hotels alone all
add up. Still, the return on investment can be major. Last year, “Top Gun:
Maverick” launched with a fawning Tom Cruise summit and sent fighter jets
flying over the south of France, while Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” threw a rock concert
on the beach where drones traced Elvis Presley’s silhouette in the sky. Both
films leveraged their splashy debuts to become some of the best-performing
global hits of the year, and were nominated for the best-picture Oscar, to
boot.
This year, several star-driven films will attempt to
capitalize on a Cannes bow, including “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,”
which is being billed as Harrison Ford’s final appearance in his most iconic
role. Can it overcome the tepid response to the last sequel, “Indiana Jones and
the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” and the substitution of James Mangold (“Ford
v Ferrari”) for Steven Spielberg as director of the series? At least the
addition of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, in her most high-profile role since
“Fleabag,” will add a welcome jolt to the franchise.
Director Todd Haynes, who premiered “Carol” at Cannes,
returns to the festival with another female-driven two-hander: “May December,”
which stars Julianne Moore as a teacher whose scandalous relationship with a
former student is scrutinized by a movie star (Natalie Portman) preparing to
play the teacher in a film. Other star-heavy films include “The New Boy,”
featuring Cate Blanchett as a nun in her first role since “Tár”, and
“Firebrand,” with Jude Law as Henry VIII and Alicia Vikander as his last wife,
Katherine Parr.
And then there are “Asteroid City” and “Killers of the
Flower Moon,” the fest’s two most anticipated premieres. The former takes place
at a 1950s retreat for space-obsessed youngsters and stars Anderson staples
including Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, and Tilda Swinton, as well as
new recruit Tom Hanks, about whom Anderson said, “I couldn’t have had a better
time working with anybody.” Scorsese’s Apple-backed film charts the mysterious
murders of the Osage tribe in the 1920s and will bring stars such as Leonardo
DiCaprio and Robert De Niro to the red carpet.
(Still, weep for what might have been: Greta Gerwig’s
candy-colored July release “Barbie” will skip an early premiere at Cannes,
depriving us of a red-carpet fantasy to trump all others.)
In recent years, the winner of the prestigious Palme d’Or
award has often gone to a film with breakout-hit potential, like “Parasite” and
“Triangle of Sadness.” The director of the latter film, Ruben Ostlund, will preside
over this year’s competition jury, a group that includes Brie Larson and Paul
Dano, and they will be picking their favorite from an auteur-heavy lineup that
includes several former Palme winners.
Among them are Wim Wenders, who took the Palme for “Paris,
Texas” and returns with “Perfect Days,” about a Tokyo toilet cleaner, and
Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose new film “Monster” is the first film he has shot in
Japan since his Palme winner “Shoplifters.” No director has ever taken the
Palme three times, though Ken Loach could this year, if his new working-class
drama “The Old Oak” proves as acclaimed as “The Wind That Shakes the Barley”
and “I, Daniel Blake.”
This year’s Cannes has its fair share of long films —
“Occupied City,” Steve McQueen’s documentary about Nazi-occupied Amsterdam,
runs 4 hours and 6 minutes — but not every buzzy premiere will be
feature-length. The fest will also premiere shorts directed by Pedro Almodóvar
(“A Strange Way of Life”) and the late Jean-Luc Godard (“Phony Wars”), while
launching “The Idol,” an already-controversial HBO series from “Euphoria”
mastermind Sam Levinson starring Abel “the Weeknd” Tesfaye.
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