But every April this sleepy, prosperous town, 75 miles north of Bordeaux, is the headquarters of screen murder, mayhem and suspense when it hosts the largest thriller film festival in the world. Last Sunday, Jacqueline Bisset, as president of the jury, awarded the grand prix of this unique event to Face, directed by Antonia Bird and starring Robert Carlyle. That's two British successes at Cognac in the last few years, as Petits Meurtres Entre Amis (better known as Shallow Grave) won in 1995. New films from Canada, the UK, the US, Norway and Hong Kong competed for the main prizes. But the high-street Pathe cinema was packed from morning to midnight with scores of other thrillers outside the competition.
There were policiers - or polars, as the French like to call them - from Australia, Japan and France, retrospectives on Hong Kong directors, European premieres of American independent thrillers, French TV thrillers and shorts.This festival could not be more different from the bedlam of Cannes that follows next month. There are no mountains, no beaches and no dramatic landscapes in the Cognac area. Instead you find thousands of neat vineyards, Romanesque churches and cobbled streets with signposts pointing to Hennessy, Martell and Camus. There are no stretch limos, backbiting or big business deals.
This is a celebratory festival for all those who love thrillers and suspense films.Mark Evans, the director of Resurrection Man, was surprised that his raw film was seen by the French selectors as a policier for this festival. "I take it as a compliment that the French think its production values fulfil the genre requirement The enthusiasm and knowledge of the locals here is amazing. By the crush barriers, outside the cinema, they greet an obscure Welsh director as if I was Catherine Deneuve."Resurrection Man was the most violent film screened. Each year there are louder mutterings from the Cognac barons, the festival's main sponsors, about the graphic violence of contemporary thrillers. When the festival began in 1982, Cognac expected to show films in the tradition of The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, Kiss Me Deadly and Rififi. The organisers were hoping to link the town and the drink with the film noir tradition where heroes in trench-coats walk down shadowy, rain-slicked streets to meet femmes fatales called Velma.
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