Rock around La Croisette: an action--packed Cannes strikes a fresh chord

Tributes to pop greats – David Bowie, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis – are leading the charge at the world’s premier film festival. Tim Robey reports

Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, David Cronenberg, K-Stew. The Cannes organisers have certainly rallied the A-list troops for the rabidly anticipated 75th edition of the film festival, which kicks off today. After last year’s Covid instalment – an understandably muted, half-mast affair – the promise this year is a full blast of Cannes delirium, with rumoured controversies, proper parties and paparazzi galore.

If this suggests a rocking good time, selectors are tripling down on that threat with air-guitar largesse, by unveiling a hat-trick of high-profile features about deceased music legends: Elvis Presley, David Bowie and Jerry Lee Lewis. The latter two are documentaries, while Elvis is a full-blown jukebox biopic from Baz Luhrmann, who hasn’t made a film since 2013’s Cannes curtainraiser The Great Gatsby.

First up is Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind, a breezy-looking, 73-minute portrait of one of rock ’n’ roll’s original wild men, whose career nose-dived when he married his 13-year-old cousin. Not since his own 1989 biopic Great Balls of Fire! has Lewis had a whole feature to call his own, although it is unlikely that the 86-year-old will be hotfooting it to the Riviera.

Just hours later, in a midnight spot on Sunday, Moonage Daydream will be a massive hot ticket. It promises nirvana for Bowie fans, who will be champing at the bit from the moment it’s unveiled. What makes it so buzzy is the fact that it’s not a standard digest, but an impressively dynamic piece of heady, visually wild, sonically electrifying cinema, with not a platitudinous talking head in sight.

In fact, the person doing most of the talking, as the film powers through the whole span of his career, is Bowie himself. Director Brett Morgen was granted unique access to the late icon’s complete personal archives from his estate, and has woven them into a sort of mosaic-cum-explainer, packed with so many incisive juxtapositions per minute you could get dizzy. Previously unseen footage from shows – there’s a live Let’s Dance that handily beats the one on record – gets pride of place. I’m lucky enough to have already seen it, but hang tight: the film will get a theatrical release in awards season, before heading to HBO next spring.

Finally, Elvis, which will be one of the last major premieres to grace Cannes next Wednesday. This is Luhrmann gunning for his slice of that Rocketman/Bohemian Rhapsody hoopla, centring on a much-hyped, James Dean-like performance from Austin Butler. Early word says it’s all about the struggle for The King’s creative soul – the battles he fought to stay his own man, while manager Col Tom Parker (Hanks) tried to milk his talents for commercial gain. Reactions flooding in here will be all-important to the film’s awards hopes, but the wait for it to come out, you’ll be grateful to hear, is much shorter – it’ll be in cinemas everywhere from late June.

While Cannes has loved to rock in years gone by (Asif Kapadia’s documentary Amy in 2015, Elton John biopic Rocketman in 2015), the festival has never quite gone to town with music flicks like it’s doing this time. Rock on.

‘Moonage Daydream’ features unseen footage from Bowie’s personal archive