We'll be covering the festival live from Cannes starting May 12, 2010.

The last time I was at the Cannes Film Festival (okay, it’s pretty great to be able to start a post that way) was 2003. Though anti-American sentiment was high and the invasion of Iraq was recent, the French were welcoming, gracious and kind. The festival, however, was a bit back on its heels.

Attendance appeared to be down as the world was still getting its breath back from the events of the last 18 months. The then co-chairman of Miramax films, Harvey Weinstein, in an article in the ultra swanky, now-defunct Variety VLife magazine, questioned the viability of the festival.  Sour journalists, and critics from print media picked up the comment and echoed the sentiment, neither Weinstein nor the pundits apparently realizing that the mortality that they needed to worry about was their own.

The big controversy that year was over Vincent Gallo’s The Brown Bunny, a soporific, self-indulgent film that infamously featured Chloe Sevigny fellating Gallo. The film was so boring, and so bad that Roger Ebert, who had walked out of the screening, hyperbolically proclaimed it “the worst film ever shown in the history of Cannes” to a camera crew that had pounced on him. In response Gallo called Ebert “a fat pig” and flippantly wished cancer upon the critic. Mr. Ebert, borrowing from Churchill, replied: “One day I will be thin; Mr Gallo will still be the director of The Brown Bunny.” Ironically, tragically, Ebert was diagnosed with thyroid cancer two years later.  By that time Gallo had also cut 26 minutes from Bunny and Mr. Ebert had revisited it, giving the film a much warmer reception for its director’s efforts. Recently Ebert, after considerable trials, regained his voice with prolific posts while Gallo appeared in Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro. Though the film was a 71-year-old’s version of experimental Gallo showed he still had the acting chops that intrigued everyone years before.

The hottest ticket in Cannes in 2003 was the premiere of The Matrix Reloaded which debuted on May 15th, prompting Keanu Reeves and cast to hit the Croissette and red carpet to the Palais de Festival.

In another irony, Reloaded’s debut was the same day as “European Day” at Cannes where the cultural ministers from the European Union (EU) announced that the EU intended to invest upwards of $400 million in films made by filmmakers principally from the EU. The goal? To “preserve our culture,” said an informed source, “from the strong influx of American product.”

That strong influx has not ebbed a bit. Universal and Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood kick off Cannes this year while Tim Adler, in Deadline Hollywood Daily’s recent article revealed that 67% of all European ticket sales went to American studio product in 2009.  It makes one wonder: wither the $400 mil?

The film’s fighting it out In Competition in 2003 included Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River, Denys Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions, Lars von Trier’s Dogville, and Elephant which Gus Van Sant directed to the Palme d’Or.

This year, it’s the return of favorites such as Abbas Kiarostami (Copie Conforme), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Biutiful), Mike Leigh (Another Year), Doug Liman (Fair Game) and Bertrand Tavernier (La Princesse de Montpensier).    But most of these films, besides their name directors and their anointing by Cannes, are mysteries and we’ll have to wait to see what the next week brings to see which be written about in blogs seven years from now, reflecting on 2010.