CANNES FILM FESTIVAL Mixed agendas create odd parallel paths

The serious critics and filmmakers sometimes forget about the entertainers.
By DESSON THOMSON
WASHINGTON POST
CANNES, France -- While film critics, publicity agents, photographers and other festival-goers trod on each other's heels to get to works by David Cronenberg, Lars von Trier and sundry Serious Filmmakers, the people outside -- those perhaps less concerned with mise-en-scene, montage and other esoteric concerns -- had their own priorities.
For starters, George Lucas and his "Star Wars" cast, including Hayden Christensen, Samuel L. Jackson and a pretty much bald Natalie Portman (she lost her locks to film the Wachowski brothers' "V for Vendetta"), turned their official Cannes premiere Sunday into a larger-than-hype extravaganza. An orchestra thundered forth the movie's theme from its perch astride the red carpet at the Grand Palais, and then out trotted a heavy-breathing Darth Vader figure, his breath rasping over the public address system.
But wait, there was more: Paris Hilton pushing through a mob of ogle-razzi at the Carlton hotel to bring attention to her latest project.
"You're very rude!" she snapped at a South American journalist who had the poor taste to bring up her Internet infamy, in which her sexual exploits became the shot forwarded around the world. She was visibly upset. After all, there was serious purpose to her visit: She was here to promote "National Lampoon's Pledge This!"
Getting tough
Before his red-carpet appearance, Lucas and his stars faced a series of hard-hitting questions from the press. The Boston Herald's Stephen Schaefer asked the "Star Wars" creator how he had celebrated his 51st birthday the previous day. And then there was the Argentinean film critic who simply thanked Lucas for his films, on behalf of the people of Argentina. All of them love "Star Wars," he informed Lucas.
Lucas did talk seriously about critical interpretations that see references to the current Bush administration in "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith." (The movie depicts the loss of democratic freedoms when the Republic turns over power to a dictator because of fears of an evil outside force. At one point, Anakin Skywalker retorts: "If you're not with me, you're my enemy.")
Lucas wrote early treatments of the "Star Wars" screenplays during the tail end of the Vietnam era, he reminded reporters, when Richard Nixon was president. And as for his latest three, he wrote those when "we were funding Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction. We didn't think of him as an an enemy." But regarding parallels between the Empire in his film and the Bush administration, he allowed: "I didn't think it was going to get this close."
Not a basher
Von Trier was portrayed by many critics as an America basher at last year's Cannes festival for "Dogville," an allegorical film set in the 1930s about religious hypocrisy. He even seemed to relish the notoriety. But this time around, the Danish director, whose in-competition "Manderlay" is the second in his "America" trilogy, seemed less enthusiastic about the bad-boy role. But it didn't stop him from talking.
"America is kind of sitting on the world, no question about it," von Trier said during a press briefing Monday. "America fills up about 60 percent of my brain. But I can't go there to vote. I can't change anything because I'm from a small country. I have to just sit there and be an American. And that is why I make jokes about America. I don't think it's so strange."
The movie, which is in competition for the Golden Palm, this time targets slavery in America.
Strange events
In the film, a woman played by Bryce Dallas Howard (Ron Howard's daughter) comes into a fictional plantation in the 1930s Deep South and finds a community there that seems not to have noticed that slavery has been abolished.
Seizing power from the white landowners, the woman, Grace (who has a gangster dad and the firepower to back her up), tries to organize the workers (Danny Glover and Isaach De Bankole among them) to take command of their lives.
The movie is about more than idle America-bashing, von Trier insisted. It's about "political correctness" and uses African-American stereotypes to pose provocative questions that could prove as irksome to liberals as conservatives.
"The reality is [slavery] happened," concurred Glover. "So how do we address what happened in creative ways and talk about it? And that's what I think the film provided us."
Howard, who assumed the role of Grace that Nicole Kidman declined to reprise from "Dogville," said she would be available for the trilogy's final installment, should von Trier call on her again.
"I would amputate my toes to work with Lars again," she informed the audience.