Cannes: Day One
The 56th Cannes Film Festival opened on Wednesday with Fanfan Le Tulipe, an ever-so-disappointing period piece starring Vincent Perez and Penelope Cruz.
By Mark Salisbury
Cannes Film Festival: Wednesday, May 14, 2003
And so, after all the talk of the war having soured French-U.S. relations, of the SARS virus that was going to keeping away the Far Eastern contingent, of the transportation strike that crippled the airlines and caused so many attendees to miss their flights to France on Tuesday, the 56th Cannes Film Festival—still the most glamorous place on earth to watch movies—opened on Wednesday with a gala screening of Fanfan Le Tulipe starring Vincent Perez and Penélope Cruz. Shown out of the main competition, this big-budget, glossy remake of the much-beloved 1952 French classic that starred Gerard Philipe and Gina Lollobrigida, was cowritten and coproduced by Luc Besson and directed by Gerard Krawczyk, whose résumé boasts Taxi 2 and Taxi 3.
In this ever-so-disappointing period piece, which opened across France yesterday, Perez plays the eponymous Fanfan, a dashing philanderer in 18th-century France who joins Louis XV's army to escape marrying one of the many young maidens he's been carrying on with. Tricked into joining up by Cruz's Adeline, a supposed palm-reading gypsy who predicts (falsely, obviously) that fame and fortune and the hand of the King's daughter will befall him if he becomes a soldier, Fanfan is soon living his dream, after saving the very same royal personage from an attack in the woods.
Heralded as a swashbuckling adventure with a modern twist, Fanfan Le Tulipe is the very definition of fluff. Richard Lester, with his Musketeer movies, did this kind of stuff so much better and with much more wit back in the '70s. While Perez does indeed have charm—he's athletic and quick on his feet and engages in some fancy swordplay—the film lacks that crucial ingredient, needing a lightness of touch to succeed that neither the script nor Krawczyk's direction ever manages to attain. Cruz, typically, looks radiant but, acting in French, doesn't really convince. The Spanish actress says she'd like to make more movies in France. Let's hope they're better than this.
More Cannes Coverage:
Weekend Wrap-Up:
One of the joys of Cannes is uncovering those movies that don’t come equipped with a multi-million promotional budget but yet still hope to make a splash.
Day Two:
The biggest splash was made by The Matrix Reloaded which screened on Thursday night on the back of some mixed stateside reviews.
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