It’s been a funny old lead-up to the last Festival International du Film of the century, what with each of the three people primarily responsible for the three main selections - Gilles Jacob, who chooses the Official line-up; Marie-Pierre Macia, making her debut at the Quinzaine; and Jean Roy, veteran of the Critic’s Week - going on very public record to lament the quality of the films available to them this spring. Indeed, Macia went so far as to say that, with only about a month to go, she was less than half-way to a full line-up.

Of course, there is an element of gamesmanship in all this: very few festival heads will claim to have a terrific line-up, in case the said line-up ends up looking less terrific when exposed to the cruel light of day - or at any rate, to the international critical fraternity, which likes nothing better than to find fault with festival fare, particularly at Cannes.

Whether the reverse will turn out to be the case - if everyone tells the critics it was hard to find decent films, they may choose to adore everything they see - is hard to say. But with a competition line-up that includes films by David Lynch, Chen Kaige, Takeshi Kitano, Jim Jarmusch, Arturo Ripstein, Nikita Mikhalkov, Peter Greenaway, John Sayles and Léos Carax, it would be a foolish festivalier who didn’t expect at least a few moments of magic.

But enough of that: judging a line-up in print two weeks before a festival when what you write is probably going to be read mid-way through the event itself is the surest way of ending up with egg on your face.

The only thing I will say is that 1999 - which has no special anniversary to make it memorable - boasts the best three posters that Cannes has come up with in years. There is a playful quality to the designs for both the Competition and the Directors Fortnight which bodes unexpectedly well. And the Critic’s Week artwork is wickedly - and unexpectedly - funny, hinting at a level of self-mockery that one would not have expected from so august an organization.

All of which by way of saying: Have fun. Even if ‘fun’ is the Anglo-Saxon word most notoriously difficult to translate into French.