Meryl Streep was guest of honour at the opening of the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday, unfolding this year against the background of a director's daring escape from Iran and mounting #MeToo pressure on the French industry.
Streep is among a host of Hollywood A-listers flocking to the Cote d'Azur for the festival that runs to 25 May, including legendary directors George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola.
"I'm just so grateful that you haven't gotten sick of my face," Streep, 74, joked to the audience as she received her honorary Palme d'Or from French actor Juliette Binoche.
Coppola's decades-in-the-making epic Megalopolis, an Ancient Rome-inspired saga set in a corrupt modern-day city, is the most anticipated of 22 entries for the top prize Palme d'Or, facing a jury led by Barbie director Greta Gerwig.
"This is holy to me. Films are sacred and I cannot believe that I'm getting the opportunity to spend the next 10 days in this house of worship," an emotional Gerwig told the audience.
Richard Gere will star in Paul Schrader's Oh Canada, recent Oscar winner Emma Stone reunites with Yorgos Lanthimos in Kinds of Kindness - produced by the Dublin-based Element Pictures and one of a number of films of Irish interest - and Demi Moore tries her hand at horror in The Substance.
Outside the race for the Palme d'Or, George Miller's latest Mad Max instalment, Furiosa, will get its world premiere on Wednesday while Kevin Costner returns to the Western genre with Horizon: An American Saga.
Binoche presented the award to Streep with a tearful speech, telling her she had "changed the way we look at women".
Streep has only been to Cannes once before in 1989, when she won best actress for A Cry in the Dark.
"Thirty-five years ago when I was here last time, I was already a mother of three, I was about to turn 40 and I thought that my career was over. And that was not an unrealistic expectation for actresses at that time," she said.
With France's film industry in the midst of a renewed #MeToo reckoning, Binoche was among 100 stars calling for a comprehensive new law to crack down on "systemic" sexism and gender-based violence in an open letter published earlier Tuesday.
The host of the opening ceremony, Camille Cottin, star of hit series Call My Agent! and an outspoken feminist, also took some digs at the "biggest bad guy of all time: the patriarchy".
"The late-night work meetings in hotel rooms of all-powerful gentlemen are no longer part of the Cannes vortex," she said.
Gerwig earlier told reporters she was optimistic about the progress made by women in cinema.
"It's not a destination we all reach together, it's something we will keep discussing and figuring out how we want our industry and cinema to be," she said.
As the festival opened, Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof announced he had escaped in secret from his country, just days after being sentenced to eight years in prison on security offences.
Rasoulof had been under pressure from Iranian authorities to withdraw his film, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, from the Cannes competition.
He urged the world film community to support his colleagues back home.
"My thoughts go to every single one of them and I fear for their safety and well-being," Rasoulof said in a statement to AFP.
Cannes director Thierry Fremaux said the festival was working with the French foreign ministry in the hope that Rasoulof can attend his premiere next week.
Among the other entries for the Palme d'Or is the Irish-produced The Apprentice - a biopic of Donald Trump's formative years from Iranian-born director Ali Abbasi. It stars Sebastian Stan, known for playing the Winter Soldier in Marvel films.
Emilia Perez has quite the synopsis: a musical about a Mexican cartel boss undergoing a sex change to escape the authorities, directed by France's own Palme d'Or winner Jacques Audiard. Pop superstar Selena Gomez appears in a supporting role.
But the hot ticket is undoubtedly Coppola's Megalopolis, starring Adam Driver, on Thursday.
There is growing anticipation over whether the veteran director - who self-funded the lavish epic - can match his masterpieces of the 1970s, when he twice won the Palme d'Or for Apocalypse Now and The Conversation.
Film fans are also excited for new works from body-horror maestro David Cronenberg (The Shrouds), Italy's Paolo Sorrentino (Parthenope), and Oliver Stone (Lula, a documentary about Brazil's president).
Playing out of competition is She's Got No Name, one of China's biggest-ever productions, which features megastar Ziyi Zhang tackling the highly sensitive topic of women's rights.
Legendary Japanese animators Studio Ghibli - the makers of Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro, and Howl's Moving Castle - will receive an honorary Palme d'Or, the first offered to a group.
The festival will round off on 25 May with a final honorary award for Star Wars creator George Lucas.
Source: AFP
