The Guardian (UK) - Are Cosmopolis and Robert Pattinson en route to Cannes?

The teaser trailer for Cosmopolis opens with a semi-naked Robert Pattinson lolling on a bed, hankering after fame and fire and instructing his lover to shoot him through the heart, just to "show him something he doesn't know". It ends with a date (23/05/12) flashed big on the screen. Students of the film calendar (whose jaded, listless palates put even Pattinson's to shame) may be forgiven for being more excited by the last image than the first.

Short of making an official announcement, the message could not be clearer. That 23 May release date tells us that, barring disaster, Cosmopolis is coming to Cannes. David Cronenberg's film will premiere (likely in competition) a few days ahead of being rolled out across France. Think of it as the first, deep-cover arrival in a festival lineup that has yet to be confirmed.

Cosmopolis is Cronenberg's adaptation of the Don DeLillo novel about a young billionaire's trip across New York. En route to get his hair cut, jaundiced, woozy Eric Packer (Pattinson) stares from the windows of his limo at a landscape in free-fall; a whirling diorama of threat and paranoia, threaded with images of presidents, assassins, ex-wives and rioters. Judging from the trailer, Cronenberg has cooked up a film that's worlds away from the heavy, cerebral back-and-forths of A Dangerous Methodand more akin to Gaspar Noe's Enter the Void – strobing titles, desperate antics and all. It looks good. If Pattinson is looking to put some clear blue water between himself and those Twilight pictures, he could hardly have opted for a better choice than this.

We're expecting more arcane Cannes runes to leak out over the coming weeks. Other possibles at this year's event include Michael Haneke's Love, Jacques Audiard's Rust and Bone and The Grandmasters, by Wong Kar-Wai. But for the time being I'm putting Cosmopolis down as a banker and wondering why on earth it shows a dinosaur heading crosstown against the traffic. At this stage of the Cannes film festivalrunup, even the clues come with added clues and riddles. So I look forward to clearing up the mystery of the dinosaur, probably inside the Palais du Cinema, sometime around the middle of May.

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