Editorial - 64th Cannes Film Festival 2011
Prestigious film-industry faces swarm the streets in glitzy gowns, passers-by bedazzled by the sight. Small arms go off as the explosion fizzles out and revenge for the dictator's dead son blows up. Cafés and bars masquerade as swanky and ritzy, poised to embrace the mundane razzmatazz for twelve days. Troops are stationed on rooftops, ready to launch an artillery barrage on the insurgents. Some Chanel is flouncing down Little Cross Drive and a red carpet rolls out; the marching band have arrived. Radioactive water keeps oozing into the Pacific as dolled-up girls pout near the Palaise, and the number one item on the FBI’s Most Wanted List slowly sinks to the bottom of the Atlantic. The Croisette floats in a frenzy just like Deraa, Misrata, and the Prefecture of Fukushima. Only in a slightly different way. Raging social unrest reigns, people push back against crippling oppression. History is evolving in the Middle East, but some gilded circles in the West are still slumbering, staring at Casino Municipal with dreamy eyes. The western world's Public Enemy Number One has expired, rebel fighters beat the life out of the dictator’s son while radioactive contamination floats from Japan to America. Quite a year! And we haven’t even reached halfway.
Cannes has responded in a predictable fashion and invited Egypt to be its first guest country, while hoping that this year's heavyweights – Almodóvar, Malick, Lars Von Trier, the Dardennes and Kaurismaki – with an infantry of young talents armed with flashy artillery, will explode big guns. We're rowing in uncharted waters, this year everything can happen. ‘It's a strange world, Sandy!’
