The opening films across the three programmes at the 75th Cannes Film Festival speak of disparate destinies of contemporary cinema, from the poetic to the political and the pointless. Let's start with the latter.
Cannes' official opening film -- the one with all the red-carpet ballyhoo -- is Michael Hazanavicius' Coupez!. Hazanavicius is known to most filmgoers as the 2012 Oscar winner from the faux-silent film The Artist. His output since, however, hasn't generated much excitement among international critics, and now came this thing called Coupez! (or Final Cut), a French remake of the Japanese low-budget zombie comedy One Cut Of The Dead. The original film, a cult hit among fans, is a loose-limbed, unselfconscious wacky comedy about a film crew who face a zombie outbreak on set. Meanwhile this French reinterpretation is a self-conscious, high-concept film within a film. The original is crazy -- in a way Japanese craziness translates to something akin to national treasure -- while this remake tries so hard to be "crazy", and ends up being inane.
