Cannes Film Festival: The only way is up

ONE look at the front of the Carlton Hotel is all it takes to realise that the 62nd Cannes Film Festival is going to be a year of extremes. High up on its façade, huge banners for Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds cheerfully proclaim that "Brad Pitt is a Basterd", "Eli Roth is a Basterd", "Diane Kruger is a basterd", "Michael Fassbender…" you get the picture.

Directly below them, at ground level, a colourful hoarding promotes Up (not to be confused with Russ Meyer's soft-porn movie Up!), the latest family-oriented offering from Disney Pixar, and tonight's opening-ceremony feature.

This is the first time in the history of Cannes Film Festival that an animated movie has been chosen as the inaugural screening. And, in keeping with current trends, the attendant celebrities and dignitaries, who, as protocol requires, will be dressed up to the nines, will have to don polarised spectacles to enjoy its 3-D effects.

Already dubbed "Pixar's Gran Torino', the film tells the story of a grouchy, 78-year-old retiree, voiced by Ed Asner, who tethers helium balloons to his house and flies away to the wilds of South America, blissfully unaware that he is carrying with him his biggest nightmare: a nine-year-old stowaway.

Animation has never been given such a prominent position at the festival, but neither has it ever been completely shunned by the selectors. The likes of Dumbo, Fritz the Cat, and Kung-Fu Panda, have all previously appeared in the Official Selection. In recent years, Shrek, the Iranian film Persepolis and Israeli documentary Waltz with Bashir even competed for the festival's coveted top prize, the Palme d'Or.

According to Thierry Fremaux, the festival's artistic director, Up's pole position is a combination of quality and timing.

"It is a perfect opening film," he said. "Light, moving, innovative, often funny, a good way to start a festival in a year of world crisis."

Ah, yes: the recession. The coming days will reveal how the festival is coping with la crise, but already there has been much speculation that Cannes 2009 will be a frugal affair compared to previous years. It is traditionally such a glitzy occasion, however, that the effects might be no more noticeable to the majority of people than if you removed a few mirrors from a glitterball. Of course, if you're someone used to swigging free champagne at the many parties held around town to woo business and clients, you might feel the strain more. But even this is yet to be seen.

That said, the sound of belts being tightened here this year has been hard to ignore. Companies renting out yachts have reported a decline in bookings while the cosmetics giant L'Oréal has cancelled its annual advertising campaign.

Meanwhile, Vanity Fair magazine has called off its high-profile black-tie ball – normally a highlight for the Cannes glitterati – which in 2008 boasted Penelope Cruz and Bono among its guests at the exclusive Eden Roc hotel in Antibes. Given this backdrop, it will be interesting to see to what extent ostentatiousness gives way to austerity, and where people draw the line between keeping up appearances and deciding what seems appropriate for our leaner times. Vulgar displays of wealth are, of course, part of Cannes. (Actually, vulgarity full-stop is a part of Cannes.) These days, though, the line between vulgarity and obscenity is arguably a lot thinner.

Cannes is about more than just glitz and glamour, however. Let's not forget that this is a competitive film festival and on screen, where it counts, the 62nd edition has a line-up as mouth-watering and heady as anyone one could wish for. Packed with auteur film-makers, the competition line-up looks set to give the jury – headed by Isabelle Huppert, and including Asia Argento, James Gray and Hanif Kureshi – much to think about.

The movies vying for this year's Palme d'Or include chill-fests such as Lars von Trier's Antichrist, starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg; Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon; Park Chan-Wook's vampire thriller Thirst; Quentin Tarantino's expectedly gory Inglorious Basterds; Gasper Noe's head-trip Enter the Void; and Ang Lee's flower-power comedy, Taking Woodstock. Britain is represented by Ken Loach's Looking for Eric (in which footballing legend Eric Cantona co-stars), Jane Campion's Bright Star, and Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank, starring Michael Fassbender.

Among the films screening out of competition, Sam Raimi's brilliant return to horror, Drag Me to Hell, and Terry Gilliam's eagerly awaited The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus – featuring the final screen appearance of Heath Ledger – look set to grab attention.

Tomorrow, all eyes will be on Tetro, the opening-night film of the Directors' Fortnight sidebar, which sees the return to the Croisette of veteran maverick Francis Ford Coppola.

The film almost never made it to Cannes after the Godfather director declined a non-competing slot in the official selection, saying: "…this is an independent film, self-financed and self released, and I felt that being invited for a non-competition gala screening wasn't true to the personal and independent nature of this film." A place in the Fortnight finally clinched the deal.

Elsewhere in the Fortnight, the openly gay rom-com I Love You Philip Morris, starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor, and Lynn Shelton's low-budget comedy Humpday, already a hit at Sundance, about two straight friends who attempt to make an amateur gay porn film, also look likely to set tongues wagging.

Clearly, whatever problems the festival might face as a result of the economic downturn, in terms of content this looks set to be one of the strongest and most exciting editions of the Cannes Film Festival in recent years. Lights! Camera! Action!

FIVE FILMS TO WATCH IN CANNES

Antichrist

LITTLE is known about Lars von Trier's competition entry, other than that it stars Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a grieving couple who retreat to an isolated cabin in the woods, where "things go from bad to worse". Dafoe recently told me that making Antichrist was one of the best experiences he'd ever had of working on a film. "It's a very demanding movie; how we approached it had a lot of mystery and I didn't quite know how it would work. But I didn't care," he said. "I have a lot of faith in Lars. He's a great film-maker."

Inglourious Basterds

QUENTIN Tarantino's last competition entry was a tediously extended version of his Grindhouse thriller, Death Proof. Will this Second World War epic about Jewish-American soldiers – led by Brad Pitt – killing Nazis in occupied France, mark a return to the glory days of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown? The trailers promise something bloody, trashy and potentially offensive. I predict a mixture of boos and cheers from the vocal Cannes critics.

Looking for Eric

KEN Loach returns with a feelgood movie about a world-weary postman, whose life gradually changes when he starts receiving advice from an imaginary Eric Cantona. The former Manchester United footballer is on excellent form as a version of himself, in a heart-warming comedy drama that extols the virtues of collectivism over individualism. Loach won the Palme d'Or in 2006 for The Wind that Shakes the Barley.

Tetro

Francis Ford Coppola's last film, Youth Without Youth, was a disappointing, self-indulgent bore, but this one looks much better. Shot in shimmering black-and-white, with colour sequences that at first sight recall the heightened romanticism of One from the Heart, the film focuses on two brothers, played by Vincent Gallo and Alden Ehrenreich, who face their family demons together after decades of separation. If the rest of the film is as good as the visuals in the trailer, we are in for a treat.

Drag Me To Hell

Sam Raimi's belated return to horror is a hugely entertaining tale of a bank loans advisor (Alison Lohman) who is cursed after she forecloses on an old gypsy woman's mortgage. Scary, funny and way, way over-the-top, this is one of the best horror features to emerge in years. Lohman throws herself into her role with the same reckless energy as Bruce Campbell in Raimi's Evil Dead trilogy.