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France hoping to break slump at home film festival France is enjoying a vintage year at the Cannes film festival, as three homegrown pictures in the competition raise hopes of ending the host country's long slump at cinema's premier showcase.
A French film has not picked up the festival's Palme d'Or since 1987 when Maurice Pialat's "Under Satan's Sun" scooped up the coveted top prize, but critics are saying this year's unusually strong crop could bring home the gold. Wednesday saw the premiere of "To Paint or Make Love" by the brothers Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu, the third and final French production in the competition. The film presents William and Madeleine, a couple whose daughter leaves home. As empty-nest syndrome sets in and William takes early retirement, the pair get restless. Madeleine pursues painting and in the process, stumbles upon a ramshackle country house and the charming blind mayor of the village, Adam. Adam and his wife Eva encourage the couple -- played by French superstar Daniel Auteuil and the gifted Sabine Azema -- to buy the house. They become fast friends and when Adam and Eva's own home burns down, they move in. As the alcohol flows, the swinging begins, testing but never shaking the foundations of their sturdy marriages. But more twists are to come. "These type of things don't just happen to extraordinary people -- extraordinary things can happen to very ordinary people," Jean-Marie Larrieu told reporters. "You just have to push people a little bit and extraordinary things will come out." The film received warm applause at a packed press screening with a few scattered boos. A number of critics remarked on the way out of the cinema that the feature was "very French" for its intense character studies and freewheeling sex. But "very French" has come to be high praise at this year's festival, where all three entries in the running for the Palme d'Or have held their own against competition from heavyweight directors including Gus van Sant, Atom Egoyan, Johnnie To, David Cronenberg and Lars von Trier. "Hidden", a French production about dark family secrets and Western indifference to Third World problems, has emerged as the front-runner, along with Cronenberg's "A History of Violence" starring Viggo Mortensen. The film, written and directed by Austria's Michael Haneke ("The Piano Teacher"), was the first of two triumphs at the festival for the 55-year-old Auteuil, who has been widely tipped for an acting prize when the awards are passed out Saturday. His appearance with Oscar winning French actress Juliette Binoche as his wife was hailed by critics as an unsettling drama that provoked important questions about immigration and the class divide in Europe. The French film that opened the festival, "Lemming", starring Charlotte Rampling and Charlotte Gainsbourg, also made a splash as a supernatural drama exposing the vulnerability of a pair of couples. Although it was not as well-received as "Hidden", entertainment trade bible Variety called "Lemming" a "spooky, intellectually titillating and darkly funny" picture that would "connect with filmgoers who don't find ambiguity off-putting". The British-born Rampling also won rave reviews for her terrifying performance of a woman scorned. Twenty-one films are vying for prizes at the 58th Cannes film festival, which
runs through May 22
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