Kiddies, it's the most wonderful time of the year! Why? Well, Manohla and Tony are laissez-faire-ing the strand--La Croisette--and revving their engines for the start of the Cannes film festival. Yay!
Was it only a year ago that 'Nohla was belly-aching about being shut out of a morning screening of Broken Flowers in that ill-considered NYT "Cannes blog"? Good times.
This year, the Gray Lady's co-chief film critics wisely dispense with all the folderol and submit a joint bylined preview [though it'd be fun to run it through that gender-detecting computer program]. Here's the lede:
Every year you hear the same complaints: from purists who accuse the Cannes Film Festival of selling out its tradition of artistic prestige for the glamour and lucre of Hollywood, and from the more commercially minded scenesters [ed.--totally Manohla] who wonder why Cannes lavishes so much attention on esoteric, difficult films bound for an ever-shrinking audience of cognoscenti.
But both forms of grousing miss the point and the glory of this festival, which since the beginning — this is its 59th edition —has mingled the lofty and the crass with particular Gallic flair. Way back in the 1940's, for example, the competition found room for both Walt Disney and Roberto Rossellini, and it continues to hold a place in its heart for blockbusters as well as potential masterpieces [ed.--and there's A.O.].
Well and good, but the cinetrix would argue that the star of the Times' Cannes coverage thus far is International Herald Tribune film critic Joan DuPont, who reveals herself as--wait for it--an old-skool royalist in the festival video preview, where she describes Sofia Coppola's film Marie Antoinette as a
vision of a young queen in the wrong job, and certainly at the wrong time, poor thing.
Indeed! Comment dit-on "Let them eat cake" again?
