Cannes: long live the music! From Annette to the Velvet

Never like this year at the Cannes Film Festival we start in music with ANNETTE by Leos Carax, a glam-rock musical that promises to be full of feelings as well as irreverent and with the Sparks authors of the soundtrack.

Leos Carax, famous for his 'extreme' films (Blood Red, Pont-Neuf Lovers, Holy Motors), returns to direct a film, but for the first time in English, and does so with a mega cast.

Distributed in Italy by I Wonder Pictures, we find in ANNETTE Adam Driver, who plays Henry, while Marion Cotillard is Ann, an internationally renowned singer.

The two live in Los Angeles and are a perfect couple, but with the birth of their daughter Annette, a child with a unique and exceptional gift, their life changes.

Also in competition at Cannes we also find CASABLANCA BEATS by Nabil Ayouch and, out of competition, two works: ALINE, THE VOICE OF LOVE by Valerie Lemercier and THE VELVET UNDERGROUND by Todd Haynes.

CASABLANCA BEATS by Nabil Ayouch is meanwhile an event for Moroccan cinema that has not been in competition since 1962 with Abdelaziz Ramdani's ÂMES ET RYTHMES. The film takes place in a cultural center on the outskirts of Casablanca and gives a voice to those kids of the neighborhood who find an escape from reality by competing with hip hop.

ALINE, THE VOICE OF LOVE, by and with Valerie Lemercier, tells the career of one of the most famous singers of all time: Céline Dion. To interpret the Canadian artist Lemercier herself, also a singer as well as director and actress. And this perhaps not by chance, because some traits of her life seem to mirror that of Dion and her late husband René Angélil.

Some have noticed that the trailer does feature Dion's songs and details about his life, such as his storybook that goes back to his humble roots in Quebec, but not his name. The main character is called Aline Dieu and her manager turned husband is called Guy-Claude.

The American director, screenwriter and film producer Todd Haynes is not new to musical films, just think of VELVET GOLDMINE which landed in Cannes in 1998, is instead measured against a rock legend like THE VELVET UNDERGROUND, an American group formed in 1964 and active until 1973.

One of the most innovative and influential rock bands in the entire history of rock, a true dark side of American 'alternative' culture that anticipated punk and new wave, so extreme in Sixties New York that it rightfully blended with avant-garde and underground circles.

Thus we find Lou Reed and another 'cursed genius', such as John Cale, a composition student who moved to the States to work with Leonard Bernstein, giving life to the band that was called Primitives, then Warlocks, then The Velvet Underground (named after a pornographic).

In 1993 they reunited again for a world tour, only to finally dissolve due to internal disagreements and the death of guitarist Sterling Morrison. In Haynes's film, unpublished performances and recordings, Warhol's interventions and other experimental works of art.