Has the Cannes Film Festival developed an unexpected taste for human flesh?
There were no flesh-eating ghouls wandering the Croisette as this year’s festival kicked off on Tuesday, of course, unless you’re speaking metaphorically. But for the second time in three festivals, Cannes’ opening-night attraction was a zombie comedy, bringing lots of blood and a few severed heads to a seriously classy cinema house, the Grand Theatre Lumiere, that is more accustomed to tonier fare.
Michel Hazanavicius’ “Final Cut” kicked off this year’s festival, just as Jim Jarmusch’s “The Dead Don’t Die” did in 2019. In between those two zombie flicks, Cannes canceled the 2020 festival because of COVID and then came back from the dead in 2021 with Leos Carax’s “Annette,” which didn’t have zombies but was pretty kinky and creepy on its own.