Woody Allen’s new film Café Society will open the Cannes Film Festival this year, Deadline reports. This is a record-breaking third time that an Allen movie will be the first screened at the festival, following 2002’s Hollywood Ending and 2011’s Midnight In Paris. And as usual, Allen’s latest will be shown out of competition, mostly because it doesn’t want to be part of any club that would have a movie like it as a member.
Café Society is about a young man arriving in Hollywood during the 1930s with hopes of working in the film industry. There, he falls in love and gets swept up in the café culture that “defined the spirit of the age.” Sure, it sounds too precious, but, being an Allen film, it probably has a healthy dose of misery and remorse to balance things out. The film stars Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Blake Lively, Parker Posey, Steve Carell, and Corey Stoll. You won’t see Bruce Willis though, who deserted the project last summer so that he could star in a Broadway play, as serious actors who thought The Whole Ten Yards was a good idea are wont to do.
Allen’s new movie is being released domestically by Amazon, marking the company’s first time handling a Cannes-opening film. This is also the first time the director has paired with legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now, The Last Emperor), so, even if Café Society turns out to be minor Allen, you probably won’t regret staring at it for two hours.