May 24, 2003	Saturday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 21,1424

CANNES: As the Cannes film festival gets set to hold its glamorous closing ceremony on Sunday, a handful of movies taking a sceptical view of the United States have emerged as front-runners for the prestigious Palme d’Or award.

“Dogville”, by Danish director Lars von Trier, “The Barbarian Invasions” by Canada’s Denys Arcand, and “Elephant” by US director Gas Van Sant have all risen to the top of the field of 20 vying for the prize.

But, while US media keen to emphasize the political rift between Paris and Washington over Iraq have been sensitive to anything that might betray an anti-US bias, the directors themselves have denied they were making a scapegoat out of America.

“I feel like an American actually: Ich bin ein American,” von Trier said after a screening of his film, a dark tale of human morality set in a small US town that has become the reviewers’ clear favourite.

The movie, starring Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman and portrayed as a stage play with almost no props or sets, tells the story of a woman running away from gangsters who is taken in by the residents of the town, only to become a prisoner of their increasingly depraved desires.

Von Trier, who has never been to the United States, said the tale was meant to be a universal one, but that he chose the setting “because I see a lot of shit in America from over here.”

Arcand, too, said America was a focus of his French-language film — but that the theme was fitting as it was a follow-on from his acclaimed “The Decline of the American Empire” 17 years ago.

“I am neither anti- nor pro-American,” he told a media conference.

“The United States dominates the world and we are all subjects of the empire whether we want to be or not. The Iraqis learnt something about that.”

Outside the competition, the land of the star spangled banner also caught the imagination of filmmakers.

In “Belleville Rendez-Vous”, an amusing feature-length cartoon by French director Sylvain Chomet, the main characters — themselves French caricatures — find themselves in a version of Manhattan populated with waddling, fat-bottomed, giant-toothed morons.

And in “The Fog of War”, US director Errol Morris raises questions about the flexing of US military power in the past and today with his documentary on Vietnam war-era US defence secretary Robert McNamara.

The criticism comes during a tough time for the US attendees at Cannes — economically speaking, that is.

The diving dollar and shrinking US economy have hit the Riviera party circuit hard, cutting the size and number of functions meant to promote individual films or studios. US attendance in the market section of Cannes, where film deals are made, is down seven per cent this year.

The Hollywood Reporter, a US film industry magazine, said it was likely that “Cannes 2003 will go down as a soft market for American dealmakers”.

But the United States has struck back in terms of productions being screened and with star power.—AFP