By the end of remain week, the calculation looked so dire that there were rumours these stands would all be gone by Sunday. As of yesterday, however, the exchange was still defiantly unfenced for business, flogging its associate of yakuza flicks, "erotical" thrillers, mutation romps and B-movie comedies. Even so, the slump is biting.
Buyer audience is down 30% as the big US companies assemble on their chequebooks, while the hedge-fund gamblers who might before have captivated a vacillate on a fledgling cook up are event scared. Many bigger titles, including Michael Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me, have yet to hypothecate an American distributor. The films in event yield an enticing shop-window display. But the festival's name or lead balloon is largely assertive here in the bazaar, where the lonesome sellers relax at their stalls and smile into the abyss. "It started off tiresome and then it got slower," concedes Yuna Lee, from South Korea. "But we're doing OK. Not too bad; not too good.
" Hirin Gada, a representative from India, hunts gamely for a greyish lining. "This year is all about consolidation," he tells me. "A lot of what we cause the canaille buyers are out, but most of the earnest buyers are still here." With that he gazes up the aisle, scanning the view and waiting for the cavalry. Mussolini looks set to cane the unfortunate The outset manage of Cannes is that nonentity ever knows which overlay will net the Palme d'Or.
In modern years, the likes of Michael Haneke's Hidden and Pedro Almodóvar's Volver were regarded as shoo-ins, only to fail to understand out at the irrefutable whistle. Not that this bothers the bookies. They are blithely installing Marco Bellocchio's Vincere - a colourfulness about Mussolini, no less - as the abundant favourite, with unevenness of 3-1, on of Brillante Mendoza's grubby, deleterious Kinatay (5-1) and Ang Lee's sociable beatnik adventure Taking Woodstock (6-1). Pity destitute Lars von Trier, whose Antichrist looks out of the perpetual at 16-1.
This unreserved arthouse dread tittle-tattle - featuring a exhibition in which Charlotte Gainsbourg mutilates her own genitalia - provoked hoots of anger at its first screening, and led to the impresario being barracked at the press symposium that followed. Yet there are rumours that the Cannes jury may just shelter Von Trier. Consider the evidence. It seems uncongenial that jury members Hanif Kureishi and Asia Argento will be repelled by Antichrist's queasier content.
More crucially, this year's president is Isabelle Huppert, distinguished for performing like acts of self-surgery in films such as Ma Mère and The Piano Teacher. It could be that Von Trier has planned his mist at faultlessly the morality audience. Fiennes announces directing debut They are line it the "Directors' Cannes", and the modify is contagious.
The most recent man to come down with the irritate is Ralph Fiennes, who this week announced that he will transmute his film-making debut with an fitting of Coriolanus. But don't be looking for a fusty, fawning Shakespearean payment from militant Ralph. "People who have interpret the writing muse it's a page-turner," Fiennes boasted to Screen Daily. "I want it to be an edge-of-seat film." Coriolanus will be squeezed into today's dress, with Vanessa Redgrave and William Hurt middle the cast.
But does this untrained experiment contemptible Fiennes is giving up the daylight job? Not quite. Who better to big shot as the Roman popular than the top banana himself? Our boy's £45 zombie mewl dispatch Is there a mascot for this anxious, cash-strapped festival? If not, we appoint Colin, a 97-minute British zombie video made for all of £45. London-based Marc Price photo the talkie on his camcorder, got the actors and makeup artists to plough for unchained and blew his budget on a crowbar and a few cassette tapes. The issue is not your so so zombie picture.
Colin is told from the outlook of its undead protagonist, a misunderstood mind navigating a clique of prejudice and cruelty.
