CANNES, France, May 12, (Agencies): Russell Crowe fired the opening shots at the Cannes film festival Wednesday with “Robin Hood” co-star Cate Blanchett, while Sean Penn and the Rolling Stones were among others due on the red carpet.
Crowe and Blanchett flew in for the film’s world premiere late Wednesday, kicking off the 12-day festival which features films by directors such as Woody Allen and Jean-Luc Godard.
Movie fans and industry suits were also massing in the palm-lined French Riviera resort for the launch of the festival, whose heady cocktail of commerce, glamour and art makes it the top film event of the year.
The Australian stars of “Robin Hood” lead the charge against French invaders in Ridley Scott’s muddy, bloody epic, but for a glossy blockbuster there is remarkably little overt lovemaking between the two 40-something stars.
The characters had “a very adult love affair... they come to their love slowly,” Crowe told a news conference alongside Blanchett, who was dressed in a soft pink jacket and dress.
The movie shifts away from previous film versions of the legend, inventing the archer-turned-outlaw’s personal history as a repentant soldier returning from conquests in the Middle East to defend a disunited England.
Crowe played down the notion of geopolitical references in this story.
“At Robin’s heart is a simple thing: he is distressed by the unnecessary suffering of other human beings,” he said. “I think that is an age-old thought process.”
On the other hand, “if Robin was alive today he would be looking at the monopolisation of media as the greatest enemy,” he added. Robin might also be “looking at Wall Street... and the subprime mortgage crisis and all that”.
Celebrity-spotters set up deck-chairs opposite the Cannes waterfront palace, the hub of the festival which this year probes topical subjects such as the financial crisis and the Iraq war.
Diggers shifted sand on the beach where industry reps set up tents to flog their films and workers started rolling out the red carpet.
Like “Robin Hood”, Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” screens out of competition, while major arthouse names like Iran’s Abbas Kiarostami and Britain’s Ken Loach lead the race for the Palme d’Or top prize.
Loach, who scooped the Palme in 2006, made a late entry on Monday into this year’s race with “Route Irish,” a movie about British security contractors in the Iraq war. The only US film in competition for the Palme this year, “Fair Game” by “The Bourne Identity” director Doug Liman, starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts, looks at the former US government’s bid to smear CIA agent Valerie Plame.
Cannes 2010 will also see premieres of films by Mexico’s Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Japan’s Takeshi Kitano. US film-maker Woody Allen, 74, and New Wave icon Jean-Luc Godard, 79, add to the largely veteran line-up.
In the race for the Palme award on May 23, Asia has a strong showing, with two entries from South Korea — “Poetry” by Lee Chang-dong and Im Sang-soo’s “The Housemaid”. China and Thailand are also represented.
“I always wanted to be Robin Hood rather than Maid Marion,” joked Blanchett.
“She was exactly the same on this movie,” Crowe added. “‘Give us your leather trousers, Russell,’ she’d say.”
Crowe joked that an action by an obscure Frenchmen depicted in the movie likely got “Robin Hood” the prestigious slot at Cannes.
“To have so much French language in this movie and so many diverse French characters, and also to tell the one simple truth that Richard Coeur de Lion did not make it home to England,” Crowe said, noting that past “Robin Hood” movies tend to show Richard making a heroic homecoming. “To tell the simple truth, that this grand English hero, he was snuffed out by a crossbow bolt shot by a French cook. I think that is an important piece of history, and I think that’s probably why we’re opening the Cannes Film Festival.”
Change
The 12-day festival opened amid a change of leadership in Britain as the Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats formed the first coalition government since World War II.
The change prompted the “Robin Hood” cast to reflect on similarities between today and the era in the movie, which depicts a new monarchy, heavy taxation and England’s bankrupt coffers from Richard’s foreign wars.
“It’s an irony that this is all going on when the film’s being released today,” Blanchett said. “It’s a testament to Ridley’s talent as a director that all of those things are there for the taking, but it’s also a wild ride. And of course, the thing that I’m interested in, a love story, also plays. So he’s able to tonally weave all those different elements into the film.”
“There’s no sort of cynicism with this, we don’t have two other scripts under Ridley’s hospital bed,” Crowe told reporters after a press screening and ahead of the red carpet gala that officially kicks off the 12-day festival in Cannes.
“Obviously there’s a figure in the studio heads’ mind, if we pass a certain figure then they’ll give us a call and say, ‘well, tell the second part of the story’, but there’s no grand plan in that regard.
“It’s theatre on a grand scale and it’s an experience second to none, and if I had the opportunity to address what happens next with Ridley and Cate, then great, let’s do it.”
Scott was unable to be in France due to a knee operation. Asked why he had taken on an iconic role previously played by Errol Flynn, Douglas Fairbanks and Kevin Costner, Crowe replied:
“Do I really believe in the motivations or the back story of any of the other Robin Hoods that have been done?
“When I started thinking about it from that perspective my answer was no. I wanted to find out what the essential motivations were for this man’s altruism.”
Blanchett, who plays a feisty, independent version of Marion, also said she was not inspired by earlier incarnations like Audrey Hepburn’s or Olivia de Havilland’s.
Robin Hood is one of few U.S. titles at this year’s Cannes festival, an expensive if high-profile platform for movies, reflecting concerns over the broader economy and making the 2010 event relatively low-key in terms of star power.
“Maybe the main reason is the (financial) crisis, because cinema is an industry ... which needs a lot of money,” festival director Thierry Fremaux told Reuters.