The experience of watching a few dozen or more films inside two weeks at the Cannes Film Festival can be jarring, exhilarating and exhausting 鈥� even for those who live and breathe cinema.
Jessica Chastain, an actor and regular attendee of the French Riviera festival, last year reflected on her time spent on the Cannes jury shortly after they selected Ruben Ostlund鈥檚 The Square as the Palme d鈥橭r winner. She was both overwhelmed and disappointed.
鈥淭his is the first time I鈥檝e watched 20 films in 10 days, and I love movies,鈥� said Chastain. 鈥淭he one thing I really took from this experience is how the world views women, from the female characters that I saw represented. And it was quite disturbing to me, to be honest.鈥�
On the cusp of the 71st Cannes, which begins today with the premi猫re of Asghar Farhadi鈥檚 Everybody Knows, with Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, Chastain鈥檚 piercing criticism still hovers over a festival that finds itself, unlike it has in decades, in tumult.
This year鈥檚 selections, including three female directors among the 21 Palme contenders, have done little to quell pleas by Chastain and others for more female storytellers at the world鈥檚 most prestigious film festival. Questions of gender equality are especially pointed at Cannes, which for the past 20 years had been a seaside playground for Harvey Weinstein, long one of the festival鈥檚 most ubiquitous operators. Cannes remains perhaps the most supreme and heightened realm of moviedom, but its rarified stature has been increasingly challenged by both the era of #MeToo and the age of Netflix.
鈥淭here have been seismic, tectonic changes in the industry that are still unfolding,鈥� says producer Simon Chinn, who will be premi猫ring the Whitney Houston documentary Whitney 鈥� 鈥渁 corrective to the tabloid story,鈥� he says, and shopping a documentary on Weinstein titled Citizen Weinstein. 鈥淭his will be a very different Cannes without Weinstein.鈥�
Festival director Thierry Fremaux, who called the Weinstein revelations an 鈥渆arthquake鈥� for Cannes, has promised this year heralds 鈥渁 great renewal.鈥� He has stocked the competition lineup with eight first timers. He has banned selfies from the red carpet, irritated by their interruption to the highly orchestrated, star-studded procession on the most famous red carpet next to the Oscars. He has, after a public scuffle, accepted the absence of Netflix films from the festival after being unable to secure theatrical releases for its entries. And he has brought Star Wars back to Cannes for the megawatt premi猫re of Solo: A Star Wars Story.
He also announced Monday that the festival would improve the male-to-female ratios of its selection committees, name more women as jury president and in the future select more films directed by women.
And he said Saturday that about 100 women will walk the red carpet in a symbolic gesture to 鈥渁ffirm their presence.鈥�
Cannes, a feverish pageant of celebrity and cinema, is trying to both rigorously guard tradition and adapt to fast-changing times. The festival this year even altered its sacred schedule to eliminate morning press screenings ahead of premi猫res 鈥� a strategic switch intended to blunt the effect of press-corps boos marring film premi猫res, a practice that had emerged as a kind of blood sport at Cannes.
Yet some say it鈥檚 not enough for Cannes to change its clocks. Critics says the festival has lagged in gender equality (only one female director, Jane Campion, has won the Palme; in 2015 a minor scandal erupted when women not wearing heels were denied entry to a premi猫re), and that Cannes is overly in the thrall of male auteurs.
Cannes has regularly been home to Roman Polanski (he premi猫red his Based on a True Story at Cannes last year), even while other institutions 鈥� such as the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences 鈥� have distanced themselves from the director. This year, Cannes welcomed back Danish director Lars von Trier, who is premi猫ring his The House That Jack Built, starring Matt Dillon and Uma Thurman. Von Trier, who was declared 鈥減ersona non grata鈥� at the festival in 2011 after making sympathetic comments about Nazis, was last fall accused by Bjork of sexually harassing her on the set of Dancer in the Dark, a charge von Trier denied.
This year鈥檚 jury is headed by Cate Blanchett, an outspoken member of the Time鈥檚 Up movement. Her jury of nine includes Ava DuVernay, Kristen Stewart, Lea Seydoux and Burundian singer Khadja Nin. Among the films vying for the Palme are Spike Lee鈥檚 BlacKkKlansman, Pawel Pawlikowski鈥檚 Cold War, Nuri Bilge Ceylan鈥檚 The Wild Pear Tree and David Robert Mitchell鈥檚 Under the Silver Lake, with Andrew Garfield.
Also in the mix: Happy as Lazzaro by Italian Alice Rohrwacher; Girls of the Sun, by French director Eva Husson; and Capernaum, by Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki. Asked if she was proud to be one of the three women in competition, Labaki replies: 鈥淚鈥檓 proud but I鈥檓 proud to be there, full stop.鈥�
鈥淭his is recognition for my work as a filmmaker, not for my work as a female filmmaker,鈥� says Labaki. 鈥淔or me, I don鈥檛 think that the choice should be made because of that. It has been irritating to me to think that I鈥檓 in Cannes because I鈥檓 a woman filmmaker and that now, with everything that鈥檚 happening, the world has decided to put females in the spotlight.鈥�
