Meaning of life and problems of power in Cannes festival selection

This year’s Cannes Film Festival official selection aims to please - from characters questioning the meaning of life to those in power wondering if they can cope with the strain. The 20 films are vying for the Palme d’Or (the Golden Palm), the top prize for the best film, as veteran actor and director Robert de Niro presides over the jury at the 64th movie bonanza on the Riviera.

It took a year to surface, but Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, and Sean Penn is prominently featured at Cannes. The movie was supposed to come out at Cannes last year, then released in the UK this year, but this

The selected films are:

The Skin I Live In Pedro Almodovar

L’Apollonide - Souvenirs de la Maison Close Bertrand Bonello

Pater Alain Cavalier

Hearat Shulayim (Footnote) Joseph Cedar

Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da Nuri (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia) Bilge Ceylan

Le Gamin au Vélo Jean-Pierre et Luc Dardenne

Le Havre Aki Kaurismaki

Hanezu No Tsuki Naomi Kawase

Sleeping Beauty Julia Leigh

Polisse Maiwenn

The Tree of Life Terrence Malick

La Source des Femmes Radu Mihaileanu

Ishimei (Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai) Takashi Miike

In Film Nist (This is Not a Film) Jafar Panahi

move would have scuppered the Cannes selection. The quixotic trailer shows a boy who grows up to be the Sean Penn character, a lost soul who tries to understand why he is on earth.

Malick’s work will be battling with Danish depressive Lars Von Trier, whose entry Melancholia appears just as dreamy and star-packed as Malick’s. But Von Trier, famous for his hard-hitting themes, promises a play on light and dark. The movie features a wedding, family squabbles … and the possibility of the end of the world, as planet Melancholia barrels towards earth. Charlotte Gainsbourg returns after her turn in Von Trier’s demented Antichrist, along with Kirsten Dunst, Stellan Skaarsgaard, and Charlotte Rampling.

And that’s not the only movie generating buzz. Festival favourite Pedro Almodovar returns with The Skin I Live In, the story of a plastic surgeon who is obsessed with creating indestructible skin after his wife is badly burned in a car accident. This project reunited the director with Antonio Banderas, who takes up the leading role as the doctor who looks for a guinea pig to try out his invention.

In quite a different light, cult Japanese director Takashi Miike (known for Ichi the Killer 2001) takes on the subject of dying, specifically ritualistic suicide, in Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai. Hanshiro, played by Ebizo Ichikawa, a down-and-out samurai, asks to commit hara-kiri in the House of Ii. Before he can complete his task, he is told a similar story about a ronin, a samurai with no lord of master. But the suicide request is not as simple as it seems.

Italian director Nanni Moretti, whose movies range from dark to extremely humorous or a mix of the two, is back with Habemus Papam, the story of  newly-elected pope who needs counselling in order to deal with his overwhelming responsibilities. Cue a psychiatrist, played by Moretti himself.

Woody Allen continues his love affair with Paris in the festival opening movie, but not in the competition, Midnight in Paris. Starring Owen Wilson and Marion Cotillard with France’s own leading lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, in a controversial bit part, the main character finds a little Parisian magic on the streets of the City of Light one evening.

A last-minute - but not least - addition to the official selection is convicted Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s documentary In Film Nist (This is Not a Film). Made without approval of the Islamic Republic, Jafar created a video diary of the days of his life as an artist not allowed to work, according to a statement from festival organisers.

Panahi, convicted of “propaganda against the system” for his film depicting the unrest around the disputed presidential elections in 2009, was sentenced to six years in prison. He, along with filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, are not allowed to make films for 20 years. They are both showing movies at Cannes this year, but are prohibited from leaving their homeland.

In all, 20 movies make up the official selection for this year’s 64^th Cannes Film Festival, with both Julia Leigh, director of Sleeping Beauty, and Markus Schleinzer, who directed Michael, as first-time feature film directors.