It's indie movies vs Indy's movie at the Cannes Film Festival.

As the French Riviera blitz of movies, parties and industry schmoozing started yesterday, the question was whether the independent movies beloved by Cannes critics could hold their own against the media bombast for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which plays in Cannes this weekend.

On opening day, the festival's dual nature was apparent for anyone strolling down Cannes' main drag, the Croisette. On one side is Cannes' official poster: indie filmmaker David Lynch's arty photo of a mysterious blond bombshell. On the other is a hotel facade dressed up for Indiana Jones festivities to look something like a plastic temple of doom.

While critics may gripe that Cannes has succumbed to Hollywood, the festival prides itself on having something for everyone.

Take yesterday. The festival opens on a serious note with Blindness, Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles' tale of an epidemic that causes people to lose their vision, starring Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Gael Garcia Bernal and Danny Glover and based on a novel by Portuguese Nobel laureate Jose Saramago.

While critics pondered the symbolism of Blindness in a darkened cinema, paparazzi were hitting the beach to capture funnyman Jack Black pulling a publicity stunt for Kung Fu Panda, DreamWorks' tale of a pudgy panda with a love of martial arts.

Black made a dramatic Cannes entrance by boat, then strolled down a pier among 40 people inside giant panda suits. Black, who provides the voice of the title character, showed off some kung fu moves on the pier as the pandas crowded in behind him. The movie has its Cannes premiere today.

Kung Fu Panda and Indiana Jones are not competing for prizes. The jury, led by Oscar-winning American actor and director Sean Penn (Into the Wild) and including Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men), American actress Natalie Portman (The Other Boleyn Girl) and comic book artist-director Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis), will hand out awards at a ceremony May 25.

Blindness, which is up for the top prize, was an unusually dark choice for an opening film, which is usually more festive, glitzy or crowd-pleasing - past openers include The Da Vinci Code and Moulin Rouge.

The theme of mayhem, mass hunger and displacement in Blindness revived memories of familiar crises, including Hurricane Katrina. The movie is about "the fragility of civilization," the director said.

One highlight of films vying for the top prize, the Palme d'Or, is Clint Eastwood's Changeling, a missing-child drama starring Angelina Jolie. Eastwood is a regular at Cannes - he led the jury in 1994 and showed films here including Mystic River - but he has never won the top prize.

Agencies

(China Daily 05/15/2008 page12)