Every May in the southern French city of Cannes, the stars align for one of the world’s largest, oldest, most storied film festivals. Since 1946, the Cannes Film Festival has played host to some of the world’s greatest directors in the race for its elusive top prize, the Palme d’Or. Based on the list released this past week, this year’s festival will follow Cannes’ famed trend but with a twist: several Hollywood stars will take new roles, diverting from their usual fares and set to surprise audiences everywhere.
The 2014 edition of Cannes will open May 14 with the premiere of “Grace of Monaco,” starring Nicole Kidman as American starlet Grace Kelly, who went on to become the princess of Monaco. Like last year’s opener, the dazzlingly visual “The Great Gatsby,” “Grace of Monaco” was originally slated to open last December, before being pushed back due to tension between the studio and director. The 10 days of showings that follow will bring together films from all over the world to the Promenade de la Croisette, but the star power present should make for an intriguing competition.
Following in the steps of 2009 festival opener “Up” and screening out of competition is the anticipated “How to Train Your Dragon 2.” While an animated film may seem out of place, fans of the first film will no doubt be anxious to see how its sequel is received when it premieres.
Screening in the Un Certain Regard section – the festival’s second-tier competition – is Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut, the fantasy “Lost River.” Gosling is no stranger to Cannes; his collaborations with Nicolas Winding Refn, the neo-noir “Drive” and boxing gangster drama “Only God Forgives” director, both premiered at the festival. While Gosling does not appear in the film, he directs a stellar cast of various talents – including “Drive” co-star Christina Hendricks and former “Doctor Who” star Matt Smith – from his own script, about a single mother whose son finds the gateway to a mysterious underwater utopian society.
Meanwhile, in competition, the range of premieres will finally bring some of 2014’s most anticipated films to the big screen. “Twilight” stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart both star in competing films for the Palme d’Or: Pattinson performs as a limo driver who befriends a pyromaniac (Mia Wasikowska) with family issues in David Cronenberg’s eerie-looking “Maps to the Stars,” and Stewart stars as the devoted assistant to an aging starlet (Juliette Binoche) who retreats to the Swiss Alps after losing a role to a young upstart (Chloe Moretz) in the no doubt “All About Eve”-inspired “Clouds of Sils Maria” by Olivier Assayas.
French starlet Marion Cotillard, who has an Oscar to her name for “La Vie en Rose,” stars in the intriguing drama “Two Days, One Night” from brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. The Dardennes have won two Palme d’Or awards in the past, and their collaboration with Cotillard – who plays a woman forced to convince her coworkers to give up their bonuses so she can keep her job – could put them in the running for a third. Also depicting a race against time is Tommy Lee Jones’ “The Homesman,” an adaptation of Glendon Swarthout’s novel, starring Jones as a claim jumper helping a pioneer woman (Hilary Swank) escort three women to a mental hospital in 19th-century Nebraska. If any film at Cannes smells like Oscar bait, “The Homesman” would be it.
The film everyone will be watching has the strangest casting of all: Bennett Miller’s “Foxcatcher,” a true story starring Steve Carell as a millionaire with paranoid schizophrenia who shot and killed an Olympic wrestler (played here by Mark Ruffalo) on his estate in the 1990s. Miller, who previously directed the acclaimed “Capote” and “Moneyball,” is no stranger to drama. The surprise, however, is Carell’s casting. Although he’s touched on drama before with “Little Miss Sunshine” and “Dan in Real Life,” this is Carell’s first truly dark, dramatic role that could be either a smash hit or massive bomb. Based on the short teaser trailer that hit the web earlier in 2013, it looks like he nailed it.
