Cannes set to open, with fans, stars and tight security

The 12-day pageant will kick off with the world premiere of Grace of Monaco.

FRANCE:

Film fans already are standing outside security cordons with no idea which stars may show up, and security guards are keeping a constant vigil for potential jewel thieves as the 67th Cannes Film Festival prepares to open on Wednesday.

With huge yachts bobbing in the Mediterranean and luxury boutiques along the famous La Croisette boulevard making finishing touches to their displays, the 12-day pageant that is the international film world’s answer to Hollywood’s Oscars kicks off with the world premiere of Grace of Monaco.

Winding Refn is one of nine judges on a majority female jury headed by New Zealand director Jane Campion, the only woman ever to win the festival’s top Palme d’Or prize.

It is a huge draw for the industry and public alike, with an estimated 127,000 visitors expected, plus 30,000 accredited professionals, 4,000 journalists and 700 technicians, according to a periodical distributed by the festival.

Benedicte Bourdon, 30, visiting for the first time with her parents from the northwestern French city of Cherbourg, said she had no idea which stars would show up on the other side of a security cordon where she was standing outside a hotel, but being there was a thrill.

Last year some of those who attended the festival were less than welcome, having made off with jewels worth several million dollars.

The security presence this year is conspicuous, with dark-jacketed men standing outside or immediately inside fancy boutiques, but it is no more than usual, a security guard said.



“It was already at the maximum,” said the guard who did not want to give his name for what he said were “security reasons”.

The opening film stars Nicole Kidman as the Hollywood actor Grace Kelly who became the Princess of Monaco when she married Prince Rainier, and died following a car crash in 1982 in the hills of the principality, not far from Cannes. Kidman and other stars will ascend the famous red carpet on Wednesday night to the cinema inside the Palais des Festivals et des Congres for the glittering opening event under the watchful eye of the world’s media, which has staked out viewing spots and parked stepladders for photographers days in advance.

Since the selection of the 18 films to be presented in competition was unveiled in April, critics have said the festival this year might suffer from a lack of stars on its red carpet. But festival’s artistic director Thierry Fremaux said he was happy with the selection.

“The choices we have made are the choices we have made and now we are going to deliver the selection to the press and I feel quite comfortable because first we love the movies we’ve picked up, we think we did the best with the films which were submitted to us,” he said.

Even if Cannes remains the one event on the crowded film festival calendar that the big players most want to attend, a senior editor at US entertainment magazine Variety said it was scaling back.

“You see Cannes scaling back. And you see it ... for Cannes, for Cannes standards it’s a little smaller than Cannes usually is,” Ramin Setoodeh said.

“That said, it’s still a very big festival, you have stars from Nicole Kidman to Robert Pattinson, to Kristen Stewart, Ryan Gosling had his directorial debut here at Cannes. So it’s still a pretty big festival, it’s just not as big as Cannes has always been.”

Published in The Express Tribune, May 15^th, 2014.

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