What To Expect At Cannes Film Festival 2014

With Jane Campion (who won the Palme d’Or in 1993 for The Piano) serving as this year’s Jury president on the Croisette, one would expect a great lineup of female directors in the main competition. It was announced that Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation) and Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank, Wuthering Heights) were amongst a plethora of females on the juries across the festival’s programs: consequently stirring excitement for equal representation for women in this year’s Cannes Film Festival lineup. In 2012, Cannes boasted an entirely male-directed lineup to much controversy, and it seems they haven’t really attempted to make amends.

This year’s festival is set for 14-25^th of May, and despite the lack of female representation, there are still a great number of exciting films. I find it difficult to believe that female films weren’t good enough to make an appearance this year at the Croisette, but there’s still some welcoming LGBTI representation at least. Last year, Blue is the Warmest Colour (a love story between two girls) was awarded the top prize by Steven Spielberg on the same day as an anti-marriage equality rally in Paris. The festival has awarded the ‘Queer Palm’ since 2010 to the best film with queer themes.

The opening night film, Grace of Monaco, had critics on Indiewire predicting Nicole Kidman as a Best Actress contender for last year (along with Naiomi Watts for Diana, and look how that turned out), but the film was subsequently postponed for a 2014 release. The Great Gatsby was the opening night film last year and wasn’t received particularly well by critics when it premiered: Alonso Duralde from The Wrap accused Baz Luhrmann’s style of becoming ‘self-parody’. With fights over the final cut for Grace of Monaco between filmmaker Olivier Dahan and US distributor Harvey Weinstein, the voracious Weinstein has threatened to drop distribution entirely. Cannes may be shaping up to open with a misstep, but the presence of a Grace Kelly tribute may none-the-less prepare the cinephilic audience for a week and a half of dazzling cinema.

In the main competition this year, there is a surprising appearance by legendary filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard (Pierrot le Fou, Breathless). A pinnacle in the French New Wave movement, Godard’s influence has spread over numerous directors since, although his more recent projects are often regarded as ‘an edgy art installation’ over actual films. His Cannes entry Goodbye to Language will be screened in 3D, and one thing that you can bet on this film is that it will be different from anything else we’ve seen.

However, the most exciting entry for me personally is Xavier Dolan’s 5^th feature film Mommy (pictured). Dolan, at 25, has previously had three films screened in the Un Certain Regard subsection at Cannes: I Killed my Mother, Heartbeats, and the stunning Laurence Anyways. Last year, he had made the move to Venice Film Festival, where he was finally recognised in competition with Tom at the Farm. In 2014 he’s finally made it into the main Cannes competition with Mommy, staring Antoine Olivier Pilon (who Dolan directed in his spectacular music video for Indochine’s ‘College Boy’). If there’s one to watch in the lineup, this is my number one; and, regardless of how it stands with critics there is no doubt it will be unique and probably feature cool tunes from Karen Dreijer Andersson.

Additionally, I’m looking forward to the Clouds of Sils Maria directed by frenchman Olivier Assayas (Summer Hours), starring Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart. Kristen Stewart is a phenomenal actress whose image has certainly been jaded by the Twilight series, and her performance in Camp X-Ray earlier this year at Sundance has been almost universally praised. It’ll be interesting to see how she performs along side the brilliant Binoche.

In terms of keeping an eye out for Oscar contenders, Foxcatcher starring Channing Tatum and Steve Carrell concerns itself with the murder of Olympic champion Dave Schlutz, and has suspiciously received a release date in America for November: right in the middle of awards season.

With The Immigrant last year and Rust and Bone the year before, Marion Cotillard will return to Cannes under the helm of the Dardenne brothers who won the Palme d’Or in 2005 for L’enfant. In 2011, their film The Kid With a Bike was nominated for a Golden Globe and has since made its status as a Criterion Collection title. The collaboration between a powerhouse actress and two magnificent sibling directors will surely be a spectacle. The film, Two Days, One Night (pictured) appears to be a social commentary on the recent European economic crises as we follow protagonist Sandra: who has one weekend to convince her co-workers to sacrifice their bonuses so she can keep her job.

Another frontrunner for the internationally coveted prize is Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter Sleep. This is his sixth nomination for a Palme d’Or (including one for a short film in 1995), and after collecting two Grand Jury Prizes and one FIPRESCI prize at Cannes in the past, there’s no wonder why everyone’s looking forward to his latest film that runs at 196 minutes (the longest in the 2014 lineup). Little has been disclosed about the plot, but so far we can tell from the one trailer that’s been released is that it features some stunning visuals. Ceylan has commented that ‘Winter Sleep is about humans.’ I’m not quite sure what that even means because you could argue every film is about humans (except maybe the anthropomorphic Racing Stripes from 2005) but I’m hoping we’ll see a delicate reflection on human psychology and motivation: much like we did in the past with every other Palme winner.

However, this is merely the in-competition lineup that we’ve discussed, and one cannot discuss Cannes without recognizing its ‘Un Certain Regard’ section that focuses on unearthing ‘original and different’ filmmaking. Last year this section featured Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring and Alain Guiraudie’s Stranger by the Lake (a film which topped numerous foreign language best-of lists last year and won a César a few months ago). In 2014, as with James Franco’s As I Lay Dying last year, we will see a prominent Hollywood actor turn to directing with Ryan Gosling’s Lost River (previously titled How to Catch a Monster).

Judging by the few film stills we’ve seen for Gosling’s directorial debut, there is some influence from the visual flair of co-worker Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive, Only God Forgives). Regardless of what he produces, it appears Gosling has ditched the Hollywood formulae and gone with something entirely unique. He is no stranger to the Croisette and there is no doubt that he understands the Cannes audience and knows what they’ll respond to.

Opening film Party Girl (directed by Marie Amachoukeli, Claire Burger and Samuel Theis) sounds like an interesting project that tells the true story of Angélique, a 60-year-old nightclub hostess who decides to settle down. The protagonist is played by the real life Angélique, and it sounds like it’s going to be a great meditation on the line between liberation and conformity. 

On top of the main competition and Un Certain Regard, there’s plenty more to look forward to at the festival with Critic’s Week and Director’s Fortnight sections. Even this year’s Cannes Classic lineup boasts incredible films like Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas and Fellini’s 8 ½ (which is featured on the official Cannes 2014 poster).

Like every year, there appears to be a fine lineup of fine films that define international filmmaking. It’s always bootless to predict a Palme d’Or winner; last year for example I had my money on Refn’s Only God Forgives, which tore critics and now holds a 37 score on Metacritic. Regardless of what wins this year, you can be sure that we’ll see some stupendous cinema. If you can’t wait until the films receive an Australian distribution (most never do), you can expect to find a large portion of the lineup at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival. Ultimately though it would be nice to see some more female representation on the Croisette in future years, and it’s a bit of a let down when the first female to win a Palme d’Or is in charge of a lineup that’s pretty damn male-orientated.

Words by James J Robinson

All images courtesy of IndieWire