When it comes to film festivals, everyone follows Cannes’ lead, which is why it’s curious that the influential French event, originally scheduled to unspool from May 12-23 this year, waited more than a full week after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic — and two weeks after the French government banned public gatherings through the end of May — to announce that it would not take place as originally planned.So what does that mean for Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch,” which looked like as good a bet as any to debut there after Searchlight Pictures dated the film for a July 24 release? Or such anticipated auteur works as Paul Verhoeven’s nun-cest saga “Benedetta,” Leos Carax’s song-and-dance statement “Annette” and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Tilda Swinton-starring “Memoria,” all of which had been expected to premiere on the Croisette? The pandemic struck at a momentous time for Cannes,
Read full article