This year's Netflix-free Cannes lineup is part killer, part filler
Cannes, the world’s most prestigious film festival, announced its selections earlier today, including the Official Competition (which competes for the top prize, the Palme d’Or), the Un Certain Regard undercard, and a handful of special, midnight, and out-of-competition screenings.
The Official Competition lineup has its share of exciting titles: Spike Lee’s Jason Blum and Jordan Peele-produced Blackkklansman (formerly Black Klansman), based on the strange-but-true story of a black police officer who successfully posed as a white supremacist in the 1970s; Le Livre D’Image, the latest from the gnomic Franco-Swiss film icon Jean-Luc Godard, whose classic Pierrot Le Fou is featured on this year’s festival poster; Burning, the first film by the great South Korean writer-director Lee Chang-dong since Poetry; David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows follow-up Under The Silver Lake; new movies from Jia Zhangke, Jafar Panahi, Hirokazu Koreeda, Alice Rohrwacher, Matteo Garrone, Ida director Pawel Pawlikowski, and the embattled Russian theater director Kirill Serebrennikov. Asghar Farhadi’s Spanish-language Everybody Knows will be the opening night film.
But if any Cannes slate is bound to be read for its omissions, this is it. The festival—which at this point is as well-known for its internal politics as for its glamour, and is no stranger to picking fights—is currently in the middle of a public feud with the streaming giant Netflix, which had a looming presence in last year’s lineup. A number of presumed competition entries are conspicuously absent (not to mention the long-awaited, Netflix-financed restoration of Orson Welles’ The Other Side Of The Wind), and the Un Certain Regard slate, which usually includes a few world-cinema notables, is packed with unknowns. (The biggest name is the twenty-something Chinese director Bi Gan, who will be premiering his follow-up to Kaili Blues.)
To a cynical Cannes-watcher, it looks an awful lot like some movies may have been promoted into Official Competition at the last minute. But only time—and the announcement of the lineup for Director’s Fortnight, a parallel festival that sometimes serves as a home for official selection refugees and pariahs—will tell. While Cannes is known to add competition titles at the last moment, the current absentee list is long, as the likes of Mike Leigh, Terrence Malick, Olivier Assayas, Mia Hansen-Løve, Lars Von Trier, Harmony Korine, Brian De Palma, Luca Guadagnino, and Paolo Sorrentino are all known to have wrapped their latest films.
The missing title that seems to be on everyone’s lips is Claire Denis’ English-language sci-fi film High Life, long presumed as a contender for the Official Competition. But then again, Denis, one of France’s preeminent film artists, hasn’t had a movie compete for Palme d’Or since her debut, Chocolat, way back in 1988.
The Cannes Film Festival will be held May 9-19. The A.V. Club will, as always, be there.
Opening Night
Everybody Knows (Asghar Farhadi)
Official Competition
Asako I & II (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
Ash Is Pure White (Jia Zhangke)