Cannes speaks English

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

CANNES, MAY 15. The Cannes International Film Festival, now into its seventh day here, may be unspooling at an essentially French town, but the language that one hears almost continuously here is English. Little wonder, then, that an Indian bureaucrat at yesterday's reception hosted in honour of the visiting Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Ms. Sushma Swaraj, wondered aloud whether it would be a better idea if the country's cinema was made in the English language. ``It would then have better visibility and acceptability in the West.''

India's 600 to 700 movies may or may not switch over to English, but there is an increasing tendency the world over to make pictures in that tongue. One was almost shocked to find even the Iranian director, Mr. Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Kandahar in English. In fact, there have been several films in this Festival that have freely adopted this language (and joint venture understanding) to survive in a world which is struggling to find a common lingua franca, especially for its celluloid stuff.

This year's Cannes Market Focus report says that ``the desire to increase budgets by signing co-producers has forced directors and others to widen the appeal of their movies by shooting in the English language''.

German producers have clearly grasped this. Last year, 23 per cent of the German films were made in English against 12 per cent in 1999. Even France, notorious for its anti-English sentiment (at the Press room in the Festival, the hostesses refer to the English computer key boards as American ones!), made 13 per cent of its pictures in English last year, compared to nine per cent the year before.

But, for Germany, despite its attempts to woo a global audience, this festival has been quite disappointing. For the eighth year running, not a single movie from that nation has been selected for Competition. One film executive from Germany says that ``after seeing the other films in Competition, I wonder why the German ones were rejected. I cannot see the justification for this.''

Although there seems to be no logical explanation for this, Germans are getting very depressed. One of them says that the festival has a certain prejudiced idea of what a German movie ought to be like. Perhaps, for the festival, German cinema means Fassbinder. Interestingly, the last German film at the Cannes Competition was the 1993 drama, Faraway, So Close, made by a Fassbinder contemporary, Mr. Wim Wenders.

In contrast, Mr. Tom Tywker, arguably Germany's most popular director now, has never been at Cannes. His latest, Run Lola, Run (a takeoff on Kurosawa's ``Roshamon'') was turned down by the Cannes selectors in 1998. This year, his Heaven was reportedly rejected.

In an apparent attempt to put pressure on the festival, the German Cultural Minister, Mr. Julian Nida-Ruemelin, met the Cannes's artistic director, Mr. Thierry Fremaux, and the president, Mr. Gilles Jacob. Later, Mr. Fremaux told a German weekly magazine that ``the country's films lacked style, and were yet to mature''.

Ms. Swaraj met the authorities yesterday with a view to getting more Indian pictures into the festival. The outcome of the meeting is not yet clear, but time will say how successful she has been.

Critics say the real reason for German or Indian cinema being passed over at Cannes is ``the sheer lack of quality''. They say that even in the Berlin Film Festival, very few German movies were selected for Competition. ``So why complain about just Cannes?''

This year, Mr. Murali Nair's A Dog's Day is the sole entry. It will be screened in `A Certain Regard' tomorrow. India can consider itself lucky, but what is imperative is that unless the nation's cinema makes an earnest effort to improve its technique and get hold of good, imaginative scripts, no amount of promotion - like putting up a pavilion at Cannes and flying in several bureaucrats there - is going to help Indian cinema find a footing at this French Riviera.

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Section  : International
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