The Cannes film festival opened 12 days ago with the crowd-pleasing Disney animation “Up”, but a string of critical duds towards the close means its ending has been decidedly downbeat. The 20 films in the main competition have been variously booed, cheered, jeered and shunned as Cannes' notoriously picky audiences failed to agree on one, or even a handful of entries, worthy of the coveted Palme d'Or. Some of the biggest critical duds of 2009 were by Asian directors, including Filipino Brillante Mendoza's grisly murder story “Kinatay” and China's Lou Ye, who made “Spring Fever” in defiance of a five-year official ban by state authorities. Two stories set in Tokyo - “Enter the Void” by Gaspar Noe and “Map of the Sounds of Tokyo” by Isabel Coixet - flopped, and Ang Lee's “Taking Woodstock” also scored poorly. Quentin Tarantino's eagerly anticipated World War Two caper “Inglourious Basterds” featuring Brad Pitt sharply divided audiences, although its ability to attract some of Hollywood's biggest stars to the red carpet was welcome news for the media. A-listers were conspicuous by their absence this year, both because of the films selected and studios spending less during the economic slowdown.
