Why the British have failed at Cannes

This time last year, Britons were crowing about the state of their film industry. Ken Loach's The Wind that Shakes the Barley had won the Palme d'Or, while Andrea Arnold's debut feature Red Road had picked up the Prix du Jury. These successes followed on from Michael Winterbottom's Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival for The Road To Guantanamo and Mike Leigh's Golden Lion success in Venice with Vera Drake. British films, it appeared, were being fêted as never before.

When the 2007 Cannes competition was announced last week, it therefore came as an unpleasant surprise to the UK industry to find nothing at all from Blighty in the line-up. In fact, the only British director in official selection is Winterbottom, but his film A Mighty Heart is screening out of competition.

One or two British films are expected to be chosen for Cannes' sister event, the Director's Fortnight, among them Anton Corbijn's Control (about Joy Division singer Ian Curtis). And British actors remain well enough represented. For instance, Rachel Weisz appears alongside the singer Norah Jones in Cannes' opening film, My Blueberry Nights (Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai's first stab at English-language film-making). Meanwhile, Tilda Swinton plays the lead in The Man From London, a Georges Simenon adaptation from the Hungarian director Bela Tarr. Nonetheless, it is clear that the festival is going to be a largely British-free zone.

Predictably, this has prompted urgent calls for a diagnosis ofthe health of British cinema. "This year, British talent has a starring role in deciding the winners," a spokesperson from the UK Film Council commented, noting that Stephen Frears is president of the Cannes jury. The remark was presumably intended to emphasise that the British retain their influence behind the scenes - even if their work won't be seen on screen - but it couldn't help but highlight that they have been left on the sidelines.

Perhaps we should not be surprised. It is not the first time that Cannes has ignored UK cinema. In 2001, for example, there were no British titles at all - anywhere - in official selection. Nor are the British alone in being snubbed: this year, there are no Italian films in competition either - and it has been several decades since the Dutch were represented. "Maybe they don't like our drugs policy," one Dutch industry source joked when noting that, yet again, no films were selected from the lowlands. In the past, the Germans have also complained bitterly about how hard it is to get their movies into Cannes.

Second-guessing the whims of the Cannes programmers remains well-nigh impossible. The selectors tend to be loyal to auteurs whose work they have screened before. (This year, for what seems like the umpteenth time, Emir Kusturica is in competition. Other familiar faces returning in official selection include the Coen brothers, Alexander Sokurov and Gus Van Sant.)

Upbeat romantic comedies rarely feature. Films about terminal illness (Breaking the Waves), warped sex (for instance, David Cronenberg's Crash) and unemployment (the Dardenne brothers' Rosetta) will generally be welcomed warmly.

"They [Cannes selectors] have a very specific taste. Something like Breaking the Waves is the typical Cannes movie but, at the same time, Amélie is not. Something that is joyous and full of life and is life-embracing they are not interested in," notes Alexandra Rossi of New Line.

Nor is a berth in the Cannes competition any guarantee of commercial success. Last year, the French selectors snubbed The Lives of Others but that didn't stop Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck's Stasi thriller from screening to great acclaim in the Cannes market - or from going on to win an Oscar. There should therefore be hope for the British movies that were overlooked. These are believed to have included such titles as Peter Greenaway's Nightwatching, Sarah Gavron's Brick Lane and the BBC's spectacular natural history epic, Earth.

"I think it's a combination of many things," Agnes Poirier, a critic who advises Cannes on British films, comments of the lack of British titles in selection. "You can't get the Palme d'Or every day. It's like with wine. There are good years and less good years - and this is a less good year. The films that I saw were not up to scratch - that's for sure."

She notes the undue number of lacklustre British romantic comedies dealing with failed relationships - just the kind of movies that Cannes invariably turns down. Certain films, she adds, simply were not ready. Loach's These Times, for example, is likely to premiere in Venice in the autumn instead.

Poirier repeats some familiar observations about British cinema, namely that it is producer-led rather than director-led and that we fail to encourage the auteurs who make the kind of films that festivals lap up. Other countries are prepared to invest heavily in arthouse features, even when their commercial prospects seem dim. Festival selectors are always likely to be partial to daring, personal and provocative movies - films such as Arnold's Red Road, for example.

The problem is that the British have largely stopped supporting such work. It is worth noting that even Red Road (although it was British-backed) was a project initiated in Denmark by Lars Von Trier's Zentropa production company. "There are new voices and a lot of talented British directors but they are not always given the means to flourish," says Poirier.

There is a certain irony in the fact that Terence Davies was this week awarded a British Film Institute fellowship - the highest honour the BFI can bestow - at a time when no one in the UK seems prepared to back his movies. Davies' 1988 feature Distant Voices, Still Lives has just been re-released to huge critical acclaim, but it is now more than seven years since his last film, House of Mirth (2000). Davies has spent several years trying - and failing - to finance an adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Sunset Song. Belying his reputation as a purveyor of dark, angst-ridden films, he is also planning a romantic comedy.

"He [Davies] is the one of the best British film-makers alive. How come we haven't seen his latest film this year? He has two beautiful scripts," says Poirier. She insists that if Davies lived and worked in France, he would be allowed to direct a new film every year. "His films are not very expensive to make. It is not as if he is looking for hundreds of millions," she says.

At least - even if there were no Davies movies among them - there were plenty of British films for the Cannes selectors to pore over. By the time of next year's festival, British features may be in shorter supply. The UK film industry is notoriously cyclical, with booms following busts in rapid succession. Some industry observers believe that we may again be on the verge of a downturn. Film and television union Bectu's assistant general secretary, Martin Spence, recently warned that 2007 is "turning out to be a sad year for UK production, much worse than we hoped or anticipated."

In 2006, British studios were full to bursting with big-budget, Hollywood-backed movies such as Matthew Vaughn's Stardust, Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd and the Philip Pullman adaptation The Golden Compass. Now, thanks to the strong pound and continued uncertainty surrounding the tax incentives available to British and international film-makers after Gordon Brown controversially closed a tax loophole in 2005, there are signs of a slow-down.

Not so long ago, the UK was also the co-production partner of choice for European film-makers looking to access finance and talent for their movies, but its allure seems quickly to be fading. "Our record of being a pretty secure production environment is pretty good, but there is that element of uncertainty there," says Spence.

But, while things look bleak (and likely to look even bleaker next year), it is fitting that Cannes is paying tribute to at least one British film-maker famous for his fiery views about the shortcomings of the UK film industry. The festival will be screening Never Apologize, a new documentary about Lindsay Anderson, one of the most waspish figures in British film history.

It can be safely predicted that, if Anderson (whose best-known film If... was a Cannes prize-winner) was still around today, he'd be urging British cinema to show more of the gumption needed to impress the Cannes selectors.

FIVE WORTH WATCHING IN CANNES

CATHERINE BREILLAT

Une Vieille Maîtresse

Breillat is famous for frank, uncompromising films such as Romance and Anatomy of Hell that deal in graphic fashion with misogyny, sex and desire. Now, she has turned her hand to costume drama with an adaptation of Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly's 1851 novel An Elderly Mistress, about a penniless rake tormented by his old lover. "This book takes place before the rise of this horrible bourgeoisie that suppressed the sumptuous décolletage that women would wear, forced them to wear collars up to the neck and extinguished the period of enlightenment when writers were able to discuss desire and knowledge," the director states.

JOEL & ETHAN COEN

No Country For Old Men

The Coens return with an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel about a drug deal going sour somewhere near the Rio Grande. This sounds like the brothers back in Blood Simple form. Javier Bardem and Scotland's own Kelly Macdonald co-star alongside Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin and Woody Harrelson.

MARJANE SATRAPI AND VINCENT PARONNAUD

Persepolis

It's not often you find a black-and-white animated film in competition in Cannes, but expectations are high for this adaptation of Satrapi's humorous, wonderfully well observed comic-book memoir about growing up in post-revolutionary Iran.

QUENTIN TARANTINO

Death Proof

Double-bill exploitation pic Grindhouse has been given a rough ride in the US but Tarantino's contribution is being seen on its own, in an extended version, in Cannes (Robert Rodriguez directed the other segment, Planet Terror). The French critics are likely to love it.

GUS VAN SANT

Paranoid Park

Van Sant's Columbine-inspired Elephant won the Palme d'Or in 2003 despite the grumblings of certain US critics who called it anti-American. His new film, adapted from Blake Nelson's Portland-set novel, is about a teenage skater dude hiding a guilty secret.