Xtreme Vogue London Desk: Sarah Marshal
Indiana Jones is not the only octogenarian swinging triumphantly back to Cannes this year – though thanks to de-ageing technology, he may be the most fresh-faced.
Harrison Ford’s archeologist takes the coveted “blockbuster spot” in the 2023 edition of the festival, which begins on Tuesday. Last year that honour went to another returning hero: Tom Cruise, with Top Gun: Maverick, which went on to dominate the box office and score multiple Oscar nominations.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a fifth and final outing for the character, who comes out of retirement to help goddaughter Phoebe Waller-Bridge track down an ancient treasure that could otherwise be used by nefarious Nazis to reset the outcome of the second world war.
The trailer shows Ford, now 80, outpacing a subway train on a horse, driving a tuk-tuk off a cliff, leaping from planes and hanging off cliffs – sometimes with wrinkles digitally smoothed to restore him to his 30-year-old self.
The competition lineup is dominated by a similar demographic – though they tend to be behind the camera. The most eagerly anticipated premiere is Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese’s true crime drama starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Lily Gladstone, about a series of murders of Native Americans in the 1920s.
Scorsese, 80, will face off against Ken Loach, 86, whose latest film, The Old Oak, unfolds in a former mining town in north-east England, where the landlord of the last remaining pub strikes up a friendship with some of the Syrian refugees recently homed in the area.
Other contenders for the Palme d’Or this year include Croisette favourites Wim Wenders, 77, Nanni Moretti, 69, Aki Kaurismäki, 66, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 64, and Hirokazu Kore-eda, 60.
Todd Haynes, 62, whose Carol wowed audiences in 2015, presents May December, in which Natalie Portman quizzes Julianne Moore about her marriage to a much younger man, while Jonathan Glazer, 58, is back with his first feature since 2013’s Under the Skin: an adaptation of Martin Amis’s The Zone of Interest, about an affair between a Nazi officer and the wife of the commandant of Auschwitz.
Following criticism over poor representation for female directors, this year Cannes debuts an unprecedented number of films in competition directed by women. One of the six is Jeanne du Barry, the opening night film, directed by and starring Maïwenn as the maîtresse-en-titre executed in 1793 during the French Revolution, and co-starring Johnny Depp as Louis XV.
Such a prominent platform for the film raised eyebrows because of Depp’s recent court cases – and because a complaint of assault was recently brought against Maïwenn by Edwy Plenel, the editor of a French investigative magazine, who alleged she attacked him in a Paris restaurant.
Both issues were dismissed by Cannes general delegate Thierry Frémaux, who said Jeanne du Barry was not “a controversial choice” as their opener, adding: “If Johnny Depp had been banned from working it would have been different but that’s not the case. We only know one thing, it’s the justice system and I think he won the legal case.”
Depp emerged largely victorious from a trial between himself and his former wife Amber Heard, in which both made allegations of defamation against the other. At the conclusion of the trial, Depp was successful on three counts and awarded more than $10m in damages, while Heard was successful on one, and awarded $2m.
In 2020, Depp lost a case he brought against News Group Newspapers Ltd, which he sued for suggesting that he assaulted Heard. Earlier this week, Depp’s reputation appeared further rehabilitated after it was announced Al Pacino had signed on to star in a biopic of the artist Modigliani, which Depp is directing.
The 76th Cannes film festival runs between 16 and 27 May.
Three women to watch at Cannes
The Old Oak calls time on one career and toasts the start of another. Veteran director Ken Loach claims it’s the last film that he’ll make, whereas for 25-year-old Ebla Mari – a theatre teacher from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights – it’s a glorious springboard or a bizarre adventure. Either would be fine. “I don’t see my career as a straight line,” she says. “Making the film has been the most amazing thing. But now I’m back to being a theatre teacher and I love it. So I’m OK with whatever happens next in my life.”
