CANNES -- At 62, the Festival de Cannes is at a critical crossroads.
Attempting to stay relevant and maintain its reputation at the world's most prestigious and influential film festival, Cannes is trying to be cutting edge and mainstream, all at the same time.
So the official program this year is top-heavy with big-name directors.
They bring big-name films that offer just enough big- name star power to turn heads in the international media, including North America.
It is a tough way to do business here on the French Riviera.
The key programmers are also trying to include just enough emerging directors and new talent that Cannes will not be considered too mainstream, too traditional, and too boring for youth audiences.
But some of those titles are found in Un Certain Regard, the parallel program to the official competition.
And there are even more of them lodged in the Directors Fortnight, the festival within the festival, which has maintained an independent voice at Cannes since 1969.
The Directors Fortnight was set up to appease protesters who closed the 1968 Cannes festival down as part of the world-wide student uprisings.
That was a bitter pill for Cannes officials to swallow, considering they originally tried to launch the French festival as a reaction to the way Italian fascists controlled the Venice film festival before the Second World War.
Most of the 2009 heavyweights are vying for the Palme d'Or as best film in the official competition. Among well-known directors returning to Cannes with their latest films are: Pedro Almodovar (Broken Embraces/Los abrozos rotos), Jacques Audiard (Un Prophete), Marco Bellocchio (Vincere), Jane Campion (Bright Star), Isabel Coixet (Map of the Sounds of Tokyo), Michael Haneke (The White Ribbon/Das weisse band), Ang Lee (Taking Woodstock), Ken Loach (Looking for Eric), Gaspar Noe (Enter the Void), Park Chan-Wook (Thirst/Bak-jwi), Alain Resnais (Les herbes folles), Elia Suleiman (The Time that Remains), Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds) and Lars Von Trier (Antichrist).
Some of them have won the Palme d'Or before, including Campion for The Piano in 1993; Tarantino for Pulp Fiction in 1994; Lars Von Trier for Dancer in the Dark in 2000; and Loach for The Wind that Shakes the Barley in 2006.
Yet Resnais, the most venerated of all filmmakers who have entries among the 20 in competition this year, has never won. It is exactly 50 years since his masterpiece Hiroshima mon amour played in competition and lost. In 1980, Resnais' Mon oncle d'Amerique was the unanimous winner of the Grand Prize of the Jury. But still no Palme d'Or. Resnais turns 87 in June.
The Directors Fortnight program could be home to some of the most interesting upheavals this year.
Among the fare is I Love You Phillip Morris, a romantic comedy by co-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa. Jim Carrey co-stars as a flamboyant gay man who is desperately in love with his cellmate, played by Ewan McGregor. He will do anything it takes to stay with him, including breaking out of jail and committing fraud. Reportedly, the film's hot gay scenes have scared off major American distributors, who saw it at the Sundance Film Festival. So it will play at Cannes with a "For Sale" sign.
Almost as interesting is the potential fate of Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro, a risky co-production from Argentina, Spain and Italy. With Vincent Gallo as the biggest name on the marquee, it will officially open Directors Fortnight.
In contrast, a Disney-Pixar animated film will open the festival proper tonight. Pete Docter's Up is the whimsical story of an elderly American man who ties balloons to his house so he can float up from his yard and head towards the wilds of South America. It plays out-of-competition, typical for opening-night films.
The official closing-night entry is Jan Lounen's Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky, a romance starring French actress Anna Mouglais as the young Coco and Danish star (and former James Bond villain) Mads Mikkelsen as the Russian composer.
This film also plays out-of-competition, unspooling after Cannes announces its Palm Awards on the night of May 24.
