A skewed view of Asian cinema from Cannes

Cannes

Festival largely overlooks non-European productions

By Derek Elley

CANNES, France--As I write this, the 59th Cannes Film Festival (17-28 May) is only starting to get into full swing, and it is still too early to reach any general verdict on the quality of this year’s selections. But if a stranger to the world of cinema took a look at the films on the program, he would get a rather skewed idea of the regional balance of international cinema.

Though some festivals have the power to delay a film’s release by demanding a world premiere, all are largely hostage to what is available at the time - and Cannes, more than any festival, can usually get most of the titles it wants. The worrying aspect is that many of the 4,000 journalists who attend, many of whom go to few other festivals during the year, use Cannes’ selection as the litmus test of the state of world production.

Looking at this year’s program, our stranger to film would get a reasonably fair view of U.S. cinema: large, inane studio productions ("The DaVinci Code," "X-Men: The Final Chapter") as separated from more intelligent, quality American fare such as Sofia Coppola’s "Marie Antoinette" and "Babel." a U.S. production by Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. The stranger would also conclude that European filmmaking is currently the most interesting version of the art form (50 percent of the films in Competition come from that region), while the whole of Asia, with only one film in the competition itself (actually a coproduction with France) and only half a dozen titles among the remaining 90 films to be screened, seems of very minor interest in the world of cinema.

Aside from France, which, as usual, dominates the festival, is Italian cinema so strong that it deserves four features in the Official Selection alone? In fact, Italian production has long been on the creative backburner - at the Berlin festival, a few months earlier, it was virtually non-existent - but by chance, several of Cannes’ favorite directors (Nanni Moretti, Marco Bellocchio) happened to have new films ready.

One of Cannes’ favorite territories, Iran, is entirely absent from the festival this year. The reason? Not that Iran has stopped making interesting movies, but that the Berlin Film Festival made a preemptive strike and grabbed almost everything of value from Iran before Cannes had a chance.

The case of Asia is even stranger. Japan is represented by only one tiny production by a little-known director; Hong Kong by a commercial horror movie ("Re-Cycle"); Taiwan by a big-budget ghost movie ("Silk"); and South Korea by one tiny independent production ("The Unforgiven") and a big-budget monster movie ("The Host"). None of these selections was deemed fit to compete for any prizes at Cannes.

Korean readers who are disheartened by Cannes’ selection this year can take succor in the fact that Asian cinema is likely to make a comeback at the autumn festivals, Venice in particular. The reason? Cannes’ Asian rejects are already starting to be snapped up by other festivals and Venice is currently programmed by Marco Mueller, an Asian specialist. Good news, then, for Asia - but still a long way from the real truth about the quality of worldwide production.