Cannes fest turns to crowd-pleasers

CANNES, France — It wasn't just that an American documentary film walked away with the grand prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Nor was it just that Michael Moore's documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" is unabashedly anti-Bush in every way. But this year's Cannes Film Festival was somehow different.

All twelve days of the world's largest and most prestigious film festival had the 100,000 attendees on the French Riviera buzzing about a new and unmistakably "different feel."

Even under the former festival director, Gilles Jacob, Cannes had begun to take on a more and more populist and commercial tone over the years. But with a new director in 2004, Cannes has now openly attempted to shed its previous "art-house" auteur-film atmosphere in favor of a flashier, more market-oriented feel.

A panel, near the festival's end, even debated whether the change was good, with many of the panelists clearly disturbed that the "art film" (which for years had seemed synonymous with the term "festival film") was more and more being replaced by a crowd-pleasing, yet more commercial product. The festival's focus, they felt, would no longer be great serious films by the world's greatest directors. Instead, Cannes was settling for being the foremost spot for the premiering — as well as the worldwide buying and selling — of the globe's latest potential blockbusters.

Some of the films in this year's competition seemed to attest to that, such as the computer-animated U.S.

sequel "Shrek 2," as well as the Japanese-animated sequel "Imagination." In addition, among the films chosen for the major out-of-competition screenings (also held in one of the festival's two main palatial theaters) were odd choices, such as "Troy" and "Kill Bill 2," "Dawn of the Dead" and "Bad Santa."

If none of the films this year could be justly called a masterpiece or an instant classic, there were nevertheless a handful — some major productions and some "little films" — certainly worth noting.

• A standout would have to be the new film by Zhang Yimou, the title of which — "House of Flying Daggers" — warns that this is not going to be on the level of such great Zhang films as "Raise the Red Lantern," "Ju Dou," "To Live," or even "Not One Less," but that it is more in line with Ang Lee's extremely popular "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."