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Cannes '96: This time, with feeling

May 10, 1996
Web posted at: 7:15 a.m. EDT

CANNES, France (CNN) -- Rain greeted the cream of the world's film industry as they flocked to the French Riviera for the 49th Cannes Film Festival, opening Thursday.

Cinema stars and professionals will spend 12 days eating, networking, posing for the cameras, and, of course, watching movies. The media orgy will come to a climax when this year's winner of the Golden Palm is announced on May 20.

Organizers hope the jury, headed by two-time Cannes winner Francis Ford Coppola, will choose a film with real emotion. Accusations have been made that recent editions of the festival were too cerebral, too intellectual. To that end, the 22 films up for the top award have been chosen primarily for their energy and emotion.

Notable amongst this year's hopefuls is the large contingent of French films. The nation that hosts the festival has been poorly represented in past competitions. This year no fewer than five French films will make appearances at Cannes, with the comedy "Ridicule" leading the way. Patrice Leconte's savage satire of Louis XVI's Versailles court opens the festival with its showing in the bunker-like Palais des Festivals.

Other highlights of the festival are Andre Techine's "Les Voleurs," with Daniel Auteuil and Catherine Deneuve; Robert Altman's gangster film "Kansas City;" and Bernardo Bertolucci's "Stolen Beauty," with 19-year-old sensation Liv Tyler.

Stars and their accompanying entourages will once again be the big attraction at Cannes. But festival impresario Gilles Jacob, who screened 370 films for the 22 competition slots, hopes that the movies will display enough emotion and grit to shine through the glare of the paparazzi's camera lights and the gloom of the Riviera's murky weather.


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