Belated and Deflated: Cannes confirms Opener and Closer

Perhaps they were waiting for the head of the jury to patch things up with his wife, other than that, I’ve got zero clues as to the reasoning behind keeping this piece of news from going public at last Wednesday’s announcement. Today, Cannes confirms the opener and closer of the main comp, the opener for the Un Certain regard category and a pair of other films that were shoe-in selections for the festival. Also announced are a pair of jury members (French actress Jeanne Balibar and last year’s enfant cheri Marjane Satrapi) to make up the final tally of the usual nine.

After the week-long fuss over the inadmission of Fernando Meirelles’s latest, we find out that Blindness is indeed coming to Cannes and will opn the fest, while the two-week old report that What Just
Happened? was going to close the fest proves to be…well..true.

In the main comp, two more films have been added to the previous 19 – Laurent Cantet arrives with Entre les murs and James Gray comes with the conflict of interest picture featuring robin Wright Penn. “Two Lovers – this sees a Brooklyn man is torn between a family friend his parents wish he would marry and the beautiful but volatile new neighbor with whom he falls passionately in love. 

Finally, Steve McQueen’s Hunger will open the Un Certain Regard section. The Brit film written by Enda Walsh, this is an impressionistic interpretation of the last six weeks in the life of Bobby Sands, the IRA hunger striker who died in the Maze prison in 1981.