[Islam-Online- Art & Entertainment]

With the lilac and mimosa burgeoning on the French Riviera, hoteliers in the Mediterranean resort of Cannes are preparing for the annual invasion of actors, directors, producers and assorted wannabes that heralds the start of the world's premiere film festival.

Beginning Wednesday, May 10, the Cannes festival organizers have set out a program in which old-style spectacle - action, suspense, costume drama, melodrama etc… takes precedence over traditional art house preoccupations.

Festival director Gilles Jacob has drawn up a menu that is likely to prove a lot easier on the eye, the ear and even the taste than last year's fare, when grueling estheticism and social realism were much in evidence. The culinary comparison is entirely in order for an Official Selection that kicks off with "Vatel", Roland Joffe's historical drama about the 17th-century French chef who became the first kitchen celebrity.

In the race for the prestigious Palme d'Or, East will take on West in a feast of drama featuring seven Asian movies and nine from Europe, with the United States providing four of the seven others in competition.

Hollywood as usual is staying away but has sent Brian De Palma's sci-fi comedy "Mission to Mars" to join a program of out-of-competition screenings that includes "Cecil B. Demented" by maverick filmmaker John Waters.

The competition line-up includes festival stalwarts such as Ken Loach, James Ivory and Lars Von Trier.

Britain's Loach, after recent excursions to Spain and Nicaragua, this time takes on an immigration theme set in Los Angeles, while the British-based American director James Ivory offers another glossy adaptation, this time from a Henry James novel, "The Golden Bowl".

A powerful Asian line-up is headed by Hong Kong's Wong Kar-Wai who was persuaded to enter his - when last heard-of - unfinished film still glorying in the title "Untitled", while Nagisa Oshima's "Taboo", starring Takeshi Kitano who was at Cannes last year as a director, is one of two Japanese films in competition.

Iran's Samira Makhmalbaf, aged 20, makes the record books as the festival's youngest ever director with "The Black Picture".

As always the parallel sections - Un Certain Regard, Directors Fortnight and Critics Week - hold out immense promise with a kaleidoscope of directors providing exotic offerings from around the world and a slate of first-timers, no doubt including some of tomorrow's big names, competing for the Golden Camera award.

The festival has already thrown up its first whiff of controversy with Jacob's designated successor (next year he takes over as festival president) being summarily sacked, or resigning; the circumstances remain unclear, just three weeks before the opening. Olivier Barrot, a journalist and producer, took to the columns of the daily Liberation to explain that he could no longer work with Jacob and that the system of selecting films needed an overhaul, with more Hollywood input, if the festival is to maintain its pre-eminence.