PART 1 – Getting Into Cannes

The thing that I would hope will end up being the most remembered part of this year’s Cannes Film Festival is the issue of women and sex. As it is right now, there is a lot of minor hysteria. But there are some very serious and worthy conversations to be mined out of the festival.

The thing I am most frustrated with when the anger bubbles on this issue is that everything gets lumped in together. And it is every bit as unfair and thoughtless as serious sexism. Yes, I have the advantage on this planet of being male and pretty much white (I’m Jewish, so in some quarters, my status as “white” would be questioned). But the idea that a white male is not to be taken seriously about issues of bias against women or people of color or whatever does not define the individual expressing a thought, is profoundly offensive and more significantly, self-defeating. People who aspire to balance in society cannot just discount anyone who is advantaged in the society. Assimilation and the potential loss of identity in the process of it is a serious issue. But in the end, “separate but equal” was found unacceptable in this country many years ago.

You need to break down and discuss each element of the broad issue (no pun intended) on its own merits. One reason that I believe that this conversation never sticks is that it overreaches. When every argument has a response that works against sharing ideas. When some claim that all/most men choose happily to or are even sexually aroused by the oppression of women, the conversation tends to end before it really begins. But this is posturing, not an invitation to a real conversation.

In terms of Cannes specifically, I want to break this down into five areas of conversation. The first is “Getting Into Cannes,” to be followed by “Prostitutes,” “Adulterers,” “Films Centrally About Women,” and “Is There A Movie Without Objectification?”

So starting with getting into Cannes, the issue of sexual imbalance starts before the festival begins. This year, only one film of the 20 in the main competition was directed by a woman. In Un Certain Regard—considered by many to be the second-tier competition—seven of 18 films were directed by women.

But wait! Thirty-nine percent women directors in Un Certain Regard isn’t enough for the oppressionistas. For them, UCR isn’t the biggest award, so it’s not prestigious. At least not in the context of this argument. (For the record, indieWire’s Women & Hollywood coverage didn’t bother to mention that UCR had 39% female directors, mentioning only Sofia Coppola as an example.)

Even more significant than twisting stats for convenience is the issue other than “Cannes hates women,” which is, “If there should be more films directed by women in the main competition (and/or Un Certain Regard), what should they be?”

This is a complicated question for many reasons. First, we don’t know how many films by women were under consideration by Cannes to start. Was a higher percentage of films directed by women rejected from main competition than those directed by males? Were there four or five films that were legitimately considered and didn’t make it? Hundreds? Dozens? You can’t program what doesn’t exist. And I assume that no one is suggesting a quota system, regardless of normal standards for quality.

Sundance had an unusually large number of films by female directors this year. But is the focus of Cannes being serviced by female directors as widely as the focus of Sundance?

Look at the main competition at Cannes. Did you see a single film from an up-‘n’-coming American director of either sex? No. Not one. So don’t get fooled into thinking that some film by a director out of Sundance or SXSW could just as well have ended up in the main competition at Cannes.

In Un Certain Regard, which focuses more on rising directors, there is one American whose film launched in a US festival, Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station. Last year, it was Beasts of the Southern Wild. And if the hottest movie out of Sundance next year is by a woman, I would assume that it, too, would make that leap. If not, then start complaining. (And yes, in 2009, Lynn Shelton was “relegated” to Director’s Fortnight with Humpday. Boo hoo.)

It is not “covering” for Cannes or any other festival to note that the relatively small percentage of arthouse-type films being directed by women must be taken into account. It is fine to argue the many reasons why there are so few female directors working. But it’s wildly unfair to put all the weight on the festival distribution apparatus, as though they were empowered to make films happen. In fact, Sundance is more involved with supporting and building the career of new directors, male and female, and it shows in the films at the festival. And that is great. But that’s not Cannes.

Next, we have to start dealing with taste. There is a lot of chatter during Cannes about which films should not have been in competition or which ones that were not should have been. You hear a lot of, “What was THAT doing in competition?” The problem is, you hear it about a lot of different films. The discussion pretty much comes down to what the person you are talking to liked a lot or disliked a lot.

Did more genre-y films like Only God Forgives and Only Lovers Left Alive, Shield of Straw and and Borgman belong in Un Certain Regard in stead of the main competition? Did Omar belong in the main competition instead of UCG? How about Claire Denis? Do you think that the Robert Redford/JC Chandor movie, All Is Lost, deserve to be in competition?

I don’t get to be part of that decision-making. There are people who have been at Cannes a lot longer than I who feel they have a sense of how things get placed. But I have never heard one suggest that gender played a role. The Old’s Boy’s Club does, but that benefits the women who have been piped onboard over the years as well. (Sundance has a club atmosphere as well, in spite of endless denial about it… it’s just a different club.)

Also on the taste issue… 5 UCR awards… none for any of the female directors or films by female directors. Sexism or just the way it went? The jury was comprised of 3 women and 2 men. Is Agnès Varda now to be written off as anti-woman?

Personally, I think the issue of what plays at Cannes has a lot more to do with what is out there to be programmed than about sexism. This may be a change. I am completely open to the notion that there was a sexist attitude amongst the leaders of the festival (Frenchmen being sexist?!?! Mon dieu!) for decades. I can’t directly claim there was because I was not there, but seems reasonable as a likely reality. I think the warm embrace of Roman Polanski and Jerry Lewis this year reminds us of how old the old boy’s club is. (I won’t get into the many women who support Roman Polanski in spite of his unapologetic attitude about his choice to anally rape a 14-year-old girl after giving her a half-Quaalude and champagne.)

But are there women directors not making the cut at Cannes in this last few years who were obvious choices? Does anyone really think a film that happens to be by a female director is held to a higher bar of entry at Cannes? Would Life of Adèle been left out or put in UCG or fallen to Critics Week or Director’s Fortnight if it happened to be directed by a woman?

Also worth noting… a lot of the new group of female directors in the US are directing docs, a point of entry to non-doc features for both men and women. Cannes is not a documentary festival. Every year there seem to be a few docs that get in, but they are rare. This year, there was only one doc, and it was out of competition, even though it was directed by the famed Claude Lanzmann, who is infamously very much a member of the Boy’s Club.

Not only does this keep Cannes from having more female directors in the line-up, but it also embeds many of the new female directors with other festival families and their traditions. Remember, a big part of going to Cannes is trying to go to Cannes. How many doc filmmakers just shrug off the notion and target Sundance, SXSW, Hot Docs, Toronto, and other festivals that more heartily embrace docs? And if you have a great premiere at Sundance, where are you going to want to premiere your next film?

And then there is timing. For filmmakers looking for an American berth, Sundance starts the year and Toronto kicks off the fall. To be in play for Cannes, you pretty much have to skip Sundance (and Berlin), hoping to land in Cannes. If you don’t, you’re tarnished. You may get Toronto, but you are less likely to get a strong spot there. Cannes has the fewest films of the US market outside of the under-$5m gross group. Every filmmaker, no doubt, dreams of going up that red carpet to the Palais. But not every filmmaker chooses to chase that dream.

Is this piece a big excuse for Cannes not having more female filmmakers in main competition? No. At least not in my eyes. It is a rational analysis of the fact that being one of those 20 or so films in the main competition in Cannes is already threading a needle with a very small eye and that being part of a group—female directors—who are a severe minority in the industry, makes that eye nearly impossible to thread, just on the basis of math.

For me, this part of the argument about anti-female sexism at Cannes is pretty weak. It’s reverse engineering to make a legitimate political belief an attack on a power that is not quite as singularly powerful in this regard as it is made out to be. This is the least arguable, least interesting discussion about sexism and Cannes, as I see it.

More to come…

Part 1 – Getting Into Cannes
Part 2 – Prostitutes
Part 3 – Adulterers
Part 4 – Films Centrally About Women
Part 5 – Is There A Movie Without Objectification?

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