The Rites of Spring

Sweet spring is your time is my time is our time / for springtime is lovetime / and viva sweet love!, e.e. cumming wrote. Who doesn't love spring? Exhibitions of color everywhere on trees, in parks; nature shining! Spring also brings blossoms to film lovers everywhere. In the United States the Tribeca Film Festival began showing its buds last week, with the announcement of many fascinating films. But it is to Europe that most of us film lovers look at this time of year for our goodies, because this is the time of year that Cannes announces its competitors. 

The retro poster for the Cannes 2014 Film Festival may be mirroring the films announced this week in competition for this coveted prize. The poster features the Italian actor Marcelo Mastroianni in Federico Fellini’s Film 8 ½, which was entered into the Cannes competition back in 1963. This year the directors up for competition include some legendary directors of old. To begin with, non-other than Jean-Luc Godard, who is 83, is among the nominees with a very modern 3D film Adieu au Langage (Farewell to Language). Judging from the trailer on YouTube, Godard continues his New Wave style, but with a very present-day feel. No aging there.

Jimmy's Hall

Not quite in the same generation, but in a similar league, two British directors are also up for competition this year: Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. Leigh, the director behind such wonderfully rich yet at the same time every-day-person oeuvres like Vera Drake, Secrets and Lies, Happy Go Lucky and Another Year is presenting his film Mr. Turner about the painter JMW Turner; hence going further back in time to 19^th century England when this –back then- controversial Romantic landscape artist lived. Ken Loach has already won the Palme for The Wind that Sakes the Barley, in 2006. This time he presents Jimmy’s Hall, which is rumored to be his last film, a movie set in 1930 Ireland that deals with James Gralton, the political activist who challenged the Catholic Church’s restriction of free speech.

Mr. Turner

Cannes darlings, Belgian directors and brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are back, which is always good news. The Dardenne brothers won the Palme d’Or for Rosetta (1999) and L’Enfant (2005), as well as best screenplay 2008 for Le Silence de Lorna and the Grand Prix 2011 for Kid with a Bike. The film they present is Two Days, One Night, starring the fabulous Marion Cotillard (Academy Award winner for La Vie en Rose) who plays a woman who has a weekend to convince her colleagues to give up their bonuses so she can keep her job.

Two Days, One Night

Canadian director, David Cronenberg (Eastern Promises, A History of Violence) takes on the topic of the culture of celebrity in Hollywood and our modern day infatuation with it in his movie Maps to The Stars. The movie includes, among others, Julianne Moore, Robert Pattison, John Cusack, Mia Wasikowska.

Maps to the Stars

Moving down in North America, two acclaimed American actors come to Cannes as directors this year. Tommy Lee Jones, who has directed three movies before this, two for television and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada in 2005, directs and acts in The Homesman, a western about a claim jumper and a pioneer woman who team up to escort three insane women from Nebraska to Iowa. His cast even includes Meryl Streep.

The Homesman

The other actor is the much younger Ryan Gosling and this is his first time behind the camera. Lost River is the name of the film for which he is participating in the Un Certain Regard section. The movie has quite an amalgam of actors; it stars Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks, young Dr. Who himself Matt Smith, and Saoirse Ronan, among others. It deals with a single mother of a troubled teen age boy and their journey into a dark underworld.

Also from the United States, New York born director Bennett Miller (Moneyball, Capote) is in competition with Foxcather. The movie stars Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffallo and deals with the story of wresting champion Mark Schultz, who won Olympic gold with his brother Dave in 1984. Dave was murdered by multimillionaire paranoid schizophrenic John Eleuthère du Pont, the founder of "Team Foxcatcher".

Jane Campion

But I’ve left the spring flowers for last. Cannes has received criticism in the past about not favoring films directed by women. This year, to begin with, Jane Campion, the New Zealand director, producer and scriptwriter (her film The Piano won the Palme d’or in 1993) will preside the Jury. Additionally, Japanese director Naomi Kawase’s is in competition with her film Still the Water; Italian director Alice Rohrwacher is participating with The Miracles; and Austrian director Jessica Hausner is participating in the Un Certain Regard section with Amour Fou.

The festival takes place from May 14-25 but its influence shapes movies and audiences for the rest of the year. Let the fun begin!