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Could it be precisely that fear of partiality that has led to France itself doing so poorly in the history of Palme d’Or winners? When The Class scooped the prize last year, it was the first home-grown picture to win in 21 years. (The previous winner was Maurice Pialat’s Under Satan’s Sun.) In the festival’s 62-year history, the prize has gone to a French director only nine times, compared with 18 wins for America, 12 for Italy and eight for the UK. But Visages could get a sentimental vote. The cast features some great French names: Mathieu Amalric, Jeanne Moreau, Fanny Ardant, Jean-Pierre Léaud and Nathalie Baye. If the jurors don’t go for that, there’s always the return of the excellent Jacques Audiard, dir­ector of The Beat That My Heart Skipped, with A Prophet.

Never Been Kissed

Ang Lee is hardly new to this festival lark. The Oscar-winning film-maker has two top prizes apiece from Berlin (The Wedding Banquet, Sense and Sensibility) and Venice (Brokeback Mountain and Lust, Caution). But he has never been kissed at Cannes and has competed only once before (with The Ice Storm). Now he’s back with Taking Woodstock, which traces preparations for the era-defining music festival. As a lauded veteran, he’s in good company: other dir­ectors to enjoy a late-career victory include Andrzej Wajda (who won with Man of Iron in 1981, three decades after his debut) and Theo Angelopoulos (whose Eternity and a Day won in 1998; three years earlier, he walked off stage when presented with the grand jury prize for Ulysses’ Gaze, snorting: “If this is what you have to give me, I have nothing to say”).

Hollywood Heavyweights

While Taking Woodstock and Inglourious Basterds have Hollywood money behind them, they are the sole US entries in the official competition. (Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which features the last footage of Heath Ledger — whose role was completed in a kind of A-list I’m Not There-style relay race by Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell — is showing out of competition.) America has not previously had trouble getting selected, with the Palme going to a US film a staggering six times in the past 20 years. One such occasion, when 1991’s Barton Fink also took awards for best director and best actor, led to official guidelines all but outlawing another such clean sweep.

The Outsider

Red Road, the abrasive but poetic debut from the British director Andrea Arnold, made such an impression at Cannes in 2006, it was virtually guaranteed that her follow-up would be welcomed by the festival. Fish Tank draws inspiration from Arnold’s Oscar-winning short, Wasp. Talk is already rife that this could be her year to take the big one; if so, she would be only the second female director, after Campion, to win the Palme d’Or. Previous second features to win include Lindsay Anderson’s if... (1969), Alan Bridges’s The Hireling (1973), Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994) and Cristian Mingiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007). They certainly have a better chance than debuts. No first-time director has won since Steven Soderbergh, who took the Palme for 1989’s sex, lies and video­tape, and memorably announced: “It’s all downhill from here.”

The Jury’s Out

Recent years have seen little in the way of jury-related controversy, but the history of Cannes is filled with so many suspect or weighted decisions that its spectre is always there, ready to tip the balance. There was the case of Apocalypse Now, screened at Cannes in 1979 in an unfinished version; it emerged that the jury was pressured by festival organisers into splitting the Palme between Coppola’s Vietnam epic and the jurors’ preferred choice, The Tin Drum. In 1996, some jurors threatened to walk out if Cronenberg’s Crash was awarded the top prize; it eventually went to Secrets and Lies. Most recently, commentators cried foul when Tarantino’s 2004 jury anointed Fahrenheit 9/11 the winner over arguably more deser­ving candidates. Was this political point- scoring against American neocons, as has been claimed? No comment.

Boo Who?

One thing of which you can be sure at any Cannes film festival is that the booing and jeering will be loud and enthusiastic. Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, the prize-winning L’Humanité and Vincent Gallo’s unfairly maligned The Brown Bunny are among recent competition entries that have been subjected to a sound Cannes-ing. The most notorious example remains Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1960 film L’Avventura, which is now regarded as a masterpiece, but was greeted with a chorus of catcalls on the Croisette. The director reportedly believed his career was over, until a band of critics and film-makers, including Roberto Rossellini, released a statement unequivocally supporting the film. It went on to win the jury prize.

The 2009 Cannes film festival opens on Wednesday

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