FESTIVALS

’French Can-Cannes’ – 51. festival international du film ’98.

A sort of a ’festival disease’ can be detected in some of the film critics at the Cannes Film Festival. An obsession to be present at each and every projection, either of the films in competition or of those featured in many of the Cannes’ additional programmes since that is where the greatest discoveries can be made. And these artistic discoveries are the essence of the festival – the Cannes Festival is basically a cinephile festival and not an Academy Awards indication of box office success. The permanent feature of the Cannes Film Festival is a constant presence of some of the »legendary« auteurs: e. g. Anghelopoulos, Loach, Boorman, De Oliveira, Imamura, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming Liang etc.

Although this could be irritating for those who have made Cannes a place of their pilgrimage, it can help in gaining a better insight into the evolutionary currents within the Cannes Festival. As this years Festival advanced, it became obvious that there is a prevailing fascination with dreams or dreamlike scenes: Liang’s The Hole, Benigni’s La vita e bella, Miller’s La classe de neige, Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine, Hartly’s Henry Fool, Joshua’s Slam etc., all these films show either distinct oneirism or direct dream sequences. The trend of dealing with ’taboo’ themes, set in the previous years, continues. This year the subject was paedophilia. More shocking scenes could be seen in the Cannes film programmes then in Hot d’Or porno awards party, which attracted the greatest publicity at the time.

All in all, hot festival atmosphere greatly corresponds to the final sequence of Rennin’s French Cancan, its hilarious spectacle of colour and movement. This year »French Can-Cannes« has not been a disappointment: it presented some interesting films, four masterpieces (Danish and Taiwan duo), and that is quite satisfactory.

Dragan Rubeša