Cannes leaves room for Tarantino
Gabriel D'Almeida Freitas, left, and Quebec filmmaker Xavier Dolan star in Matthias and Maxime, Dolan’s sexual-identity drama.
The early-morning reveal Thursday of the official selection for the 72nd Cannes Film Festival should have been subtitled “Waiting for Tarantino.”
Artistic director Thierry Frémaux and Cannes president Pierre Lescure had plenty of film goodies to announce for the fest’s competitive and non-competitive programs, the latter including the world premiere of the Dexter Fletcher’s Rocketman, a biopic about Elton John, with the superstar rocker attending.
They also confirmed the opening film for the May 14-25 fest will be Jim Jarmusch’s zombie satire The Dead Don’t Die, a competition entry starring Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chloë Sevigny and many boldfaced undead.
The Cannes heads also named a record-tying four films with female directors in the Palme d’Or competition: Jessica Hausner’s Little Joe, Mati Diop’s Atlantique, Justine Triet’s Sibyl and Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire. There are nine other femalehelmed films in the official selection, for a total of 13, and maybe more to come.
There was good news for fans of Canadian film and Quebec filmmakers in particular: Xavier Dolan’s sexual-identity drama Matthias and Maxime will have its world premiere in the Palme race, competing alongside new works by Terrence Malick ( A Hidden Life), Pedro Almodovar ( Pain and Glory), Ken Loach ( Sorry We Missed You), Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne ( The Young Ahmed) and other global auteurs.
Meanwhile, Monia Chokri, Dolan’s fellow Canuck and his female lead from his 2010 Cannes film Les Amours Imaginaires (Heartbeats), will unveil her feature directing debut A Brother’s Love in the Un Certain Regard sidebar.
But what most of the journalists in attendance at the Paris presser really wanted to know about was the whereabouts of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, his star-studded paean to the magic and menace of 1960s Los Angeles. It wasn’t among the films currently selected for the Palme d’Or slate.
Starring Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie, and loosely connected to the 1969 Manson Family slayings of actress Sharon Tate, coffee heiress Abigail Folger and five other people, the film had until recently been considered a lock for Cannes 2019.
And it probably still is, if you read between the lines of Frémaux’s remarks about its current MIA status. He said he’s seen portions of the film, which he declared to be “fantastic,” and he’s eager to have it in the Palme competition. He also mentioned that Tarantino told him he’d love to screen it in the Grand Théâtre Lumière, the largest theatre inside the Palais des Festivals.
But tradition-minded Tarantino shot the film on 35mm celluloid rather than digitally, Frémaux said, and as a result the editing is taking longer than expected. So while it couldn’t be included among the films announced Thursday, “we hope that we will have good news” soon that it will be added to the Palme.
There are currently 19 films competing for the Palme, and Cannes traditionally has between 20-21. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood could easily be slotted in there, with the preferred world-premiere date being May 21, as that would mark the 25th anniversary of the Cannes premiere of Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, which won the 1994 Palme.
Frémaux has another lapin he might pull out of his hat: Greta Gerwig’s iteration of the muchtold Civil War drama Little Women, starring Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Emma Watson, Meryl Streep and Timothée Chalamet.
This would make for quite the star-studded march up the red stairs of the Palais, and the film comes from Sony, the same studio releasing Tarantino’s movie. There was much excitement online earlier this week when rumours began circulating that Sony might offer Little Women as a consolation prize for Cannes, if Tarantino’s opus failed to beat the clock.
Gerwig’s feature, her second as solo director after the Oscarnominated Lady Bird, is also in still in the editing suite but apparently further along than Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Wouldn’t it be great if both films could premiere at Cannes next month? It’s not out of the question, and having Little Women on board would give Cannes a record five femaledirected films in the Palme comp, a bit of extra magic for a festival deliriously devoted to the wonders of cinema. Stay tuned.