Doing the Cannes-Cannes

CANNES, France — Anticipated to the point of dread, the 50th edition of the Cannes International Film Festival, described by a fearful local cabdriver as “la grande boom,” opens tonight with the world premiere of the most expensive French film ever made, the Bruce Willis-starring “The Fifth Element.”

Not a place to overlook a chance to dress up and party, Cannes has spruced itself up for the big event. A river of twinkling electronic stars has been placed above the Rue d’Antibes, one of the city’s main streets, and if you look at them from the right spot, they seem to be headed out toward infinity.

Willis will take time out from the major party Gaumont is throwing for “The Fifth Element” to open Cannes’ own Planet Hollywood. Example 1 in the “decline of civilization as we know it” department is the side-by-side placement of the plaster handprints of Willis, Mel Gibson and other stars with a preexisting monument to Charles DeGaulle. Example 2 is the huge display for the Beavis and Butt-head movie outside the august Carlton Hotel, complete with the sentence, “Huh-Huh, You Said Oui Oui.” And they say Gallic wit is no more.

Perhaps because it is the 50th Cannes, more attention seems to be focused on the parties than the films this year, with everyone from the Spice Girls to Claudia Schiffer to Howard Stern (maybe that’s not such a wide spectrum after all) scheduled to be the focus of the event. If more star power is wanted, a local gallery is selling paintings by Tony Curtis at prices starting at $6,000. No wonder a French magazine headlined “Trop de Promo Tue le Cinema,” too much publicity is killing cinema.

The most notable touch of elegance turns out to be this year’s festival poster, a large gold palm on a bright red background with just two words next to it: 50th Cannes. This history theme is carried forward in the Palais, which has exhibits of posters of all the winners plus the front pages of contemporary newspapers announcing the awards.

“The Fifth Element,” directed by Luc Besson, is a shrewd choice to open this kind of cross-cultural madhouse, joining an American-size budget, estimated at upward of $90 million, to a distinctly European sensibility. Silly, chaotic, unapologetically cartoonish, this sci-fi story of a fight to save the world from unimaginable evil combines showy and stylish visuals with a complete disregard for even a shred of dramatic believability.

There are several American films in competition for the Palme d’Or, but only one, Warners’ “L.A. Confidential,” comes from a Hollywood studio. Directed by Curtis Hanson from James Ellroy’s novel and starring Kim Basinger, Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito, plus Australians Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce, this riveting look at the dark side of 1950s L.A. is expected to benefit from the French love of all things noir.

Other U.S. entries in competition include Ang Lee’s “The Ice Storm” and Nick Cassavetes’ “She’s So Lovely” (previously called “Call It Love”), also taken from a 15-year-old script by father John. Two actors also make directing debuts, Johnny Depp with “The Brave,” about an unemployed father who decides to appear in a snuff film, and Gary Oldman’s autobiographical “Nil by Mouth.”

Of the non-American English-language films in competition, the most anticipated are “The Sweet Hereafter,” directed by Canadian Atom Egoyan from the Russell Banks novel, Michael Winterbottom’s “Welcome to Sarajevo,” and “The End of Violence,” in which Wim Wenders manages to combine violence, Los Angeles and Andie MacDowell.

Wenders is not the only big-name auteur competing this year. Also in the running are Hong Kong’s Wong Kar-wai (“Happy Together”), Japan’s Shohei Imamura (“The Eel”), and, from Italy, both Francesco Rosi (“The Truth”) and Marco Bellocchio (“The Prince of Homburg.”) France’s favorite is local hero Mathieu Kassovitz (“La Haine”), whose “Assassin(s),” based on an earlier short film, deals with a hit man wanting to pass along the secrets of his profession.

Making even more news this year than the directors and films that are here are those that are not. The festival wanted Abbas Kiarostami’s “The Taste of Cherry,” but it’s been banned by the Iranian government. And after Zhang Yimou’s “Keep Cool” was scheduled for the competition, the Chinese government refused permission for the film to be shown.

The Chinese were reportedly miffed because another Chinese film, Zhang Yuan’s “East Palace, West Palace,” which deals with the taboo subject of homosexuality in today’s China, was selected for the festival’s Un Certain Regard sidebar event. Benefiting from the uproar was costume drama “The Serpent’s Kiss,” the directing debut of Oscar-winning cinematographer Philippe Rousselot, which was moved from Un Certain Regard to a slot in the competition.

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Still in Un Certain Regard are two American films that debuted at Sundance, Jonathan Nossiter’s Grand Prize-winning “Sunday” and Neil Labute’s corrosive “In the Company of Men.” Joining them will be John Madden’s “Mrs. Brown,” starring Judi Dentch as the Queen Victoria you never knew. Also from Sundance, though in the festival’s Critic’s Week section, is “This World, Then the Fireworks,” adapted by Larry Gross from a work of Jim Thompson’s and directed by Michael Oblowitz.

The only American film in the Directors Fortnight, which competes with the festival for films, is “Kicked in the Head,” starring Linda Fiorentino and James Woods and directed by Matthew Harrison, whose super-low-budget “Rhythm Thief” turned heads at Sundance a few years back.

Familiar as some of this may sound, Cannes is breaking new ground. The Austrian film in competition, Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games,” is that country’s first in 35 years, and, in Un Certain Regard, Eric Khoo’s “Twelve Storeys,” is the first film ever to be accepted at Cannes from Singapore. And tiny Burkina Faso has two films at Cannes: Idrissa Ouedraogo’s “Kini & Adams” in competition and Gaston Kabore’s “Buud-Yam” in the Fortnight.

As far as the estimated 1,400 films to be screened for sale to the world at this year’s marche are concerned, it’s something of a hobby among festival-goers to find the one with the most outlandish title. Early competitors include “Johnny Skidmarks,” “Bring Me the Head of Mavis Davis,” “Topless Women Talk About Their Lives” (described by the New Zealand Film Commission as “a contemporary drama, which is also very funny”) and “I Woke Up Early on the Day I Died,” with a script by, yes, Edward D. Wood Jr.