Allen and Cronenberg among familiar faces at Cannes

The Cannes Film Festival is back in the hands of comfy old friends with a line-up that includes such familiar filmmakers as Woody Allen, David Cronenberg, Gus Van Sant, Wim Wenders, Lars von Trier and Atom Egoyan.

A year ago, Cannes presented a wild mix of big Hollywood tales (Shrek 2, Troy, Dawn of the Dead) and edgy films (Wong Kar-wai’s 2046 and Pedro Almodovar’s Bad Education), led by the rabble-rousing Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore’s White House assault that won the festival’s top honour.

The schedule looks more subdued this time, though it does not lack for dramatic depth.

The 58th Cannes festival opens on Wednesday night with Lemming, featuring Charlotte Rampling, Laurent Lucas, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Andre Dussollier in a domestic drama from French director Dominik Moll, who made the hit thriller With a Friend Like Harry.

The festival’s highest profile belongs to Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, screening outside the main Cannes competition days before its May 19 theatrical debut.

“This is the finishing chink to a rather epic adventure that has taken me 30 years to do,” Star Wars creator George Lucas said.

“And apart from Lord of the Rings, there isn’t anything that’s actually an episodic mini-series that is released in theatres, so I think Cannes is kind of celebrating that.”

Also playing out of competition is Match Point, the latest from Allen, whose Hollywood Ending opened Cannes in 2002. Departing from his usual Manhattan locales, Allen shot Match Point in London with a cast that includes Scarlett Johansson, Emily Mortimer and Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

Among films in the festival’s main competition are Cronenberg’s A History of Violence, starring Viggo Mortensen as a diner owner whose deadly encounter with burglars brings two shady characters (William Hurt and Ed Harris) into his life; Egoyan’s Where the Truth Lies, with Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth as an estranged musical-comedy duo whose break-up years earlier is shrouded in mystery; and Van Sant’s Last Days, featuring Michael Pitt in an introspective study of a rock star’s final hours, inspired by the death of Kurt Cobain.

During the 12-day festival, the 21 competition films will be dissected, handicapped, championed and trashed by the 4,000 entertainment reporters and photographers attending Cannes.

“It’s kind of rough, like people running for office. You get writers that kind of slag you,” said Van Sant, whose Elephant – inspired by the Columbine school massacre – won the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize, two years ago.

Cronenberg, a past president of the Cannes jury that picks winning films, said he enjoys being in competition at Cannes because of the attention it draws to his films. A History of Violence is Cronenberg’s third film in competition at Cannes, following Crash and Spider.

“Cannes is fabulous. The best platform to launch from,” Cronenberg said.

“Press and distributors from all over the world come to Cannes, and especially when you’re in competition, there’s a spotlight on your film. Which is what you want. Then it’s up to the film to carry it, because you can’t hide after that.”

Also in competition are Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s visual extravaganza Sin City, with Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke and Jessica Alba in an adaptation of Miller’s noirish graphic novels; and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, the directing debut from Tommy Lee Jones, who also stars with Barry Pepper in the story of a Texas ranch foreman on a strange journey to fulfil the last wishes of a dead friend.

Some years bring strong crops of new directors to Cannes, but this year’s main competition shapes up as a showcase for experienced hands.

Along with Egoyan, Van Sant and Cronenberg, the competition features such Cannes veterans as von Trier with Manderlay, his follow-up to Dogville starring Bryce Dallas Howard in the role originated by Nicole Kidman; Wenders with Don’t Come Knocking, featuring Sam Shepard, Sarah Polley and Tim Roth; Jim Jarmusch with Broken Flowers, starring Bill Murray, Jessica Lange, Sharon Stone and Tilda Swinton; Michael Haneke with Cache, a domestic thriller starring Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche; Amos Gitai with Free Zone, starring Natalie Portman in a road-trip drama in the Middle East; and Hou Hsiao-hsien with Three Times, featuring Qi Shu and Chen Chang in a love story told in three different time periods.

“We are delighted about the return of big names at the top of their art,” said festival director Gilles Jacob.

“It’s not a question of showing all of an auteur’s films, but about rifling through the chapters of a body of work, following a simple and tried-and-true principle: It is often the same people who make the best films.”