Five out of the 20 films in the main competition are French, and French directors are the toast of Cannes for a change.

The festival started off with a screening of "Fanfan la Tulipe" about a skirt-chasing soldier of fortune, played by Vincent Perez. Spanish star Penelope Cruz plays the gypsy-like palm-reader who wins his heart in the swashbuckler set in 18th century France.

The movie isn't competing for prizes. Still, it puts French cinema and France's beautiful countryside in the spotlight.

Locations included the Fontainebleau forest outside Paris and the gently rolling hills of the Aveyron in the southwest.

Cruz, the first big star to make an appearance in Cannes, had to learn her French lines phonetically.

"I hope this is the beginning of something for me here" in France, she told reporters. "I feel very comfortable working here."

The Cannes jury this year is headed by a French director Patrice Chereau, who made the costume drama "La Reine Margot." But that doesn't necessarily bode well for French films. In the past, juries headed by a Frenchmen gave fewer prizes to local films, Cannes president Gilles Jacob said.

"I think you can talk about a certain French elegance, because there's obviously no favoritism," Jacob told France's Premiere magazine.

The French movies in the main competition are a mix.

There's a film about a transsexual whose hormone treatments wear off; a tale of a French family fleeing the Germans during World War II; and a French-style take on two grumpy old men.

One of the annual guessing games at Cannes is trying to predict the jury's tastes. Members include actress Meg Ryan, Indian superstar Aishwarya Rai, a former Miss World and Steven Soderbergh, who at 26 became the youngest director ever to win the top Cannes prize, the Palme d'Or, for "Sex, Lies and Videotape" in 1989.

The last French film to win the top prize was Maurice Pialat's "Sous le soleil de Satan" (Under the Sun of Satan) in 1987. Before that was Claude Lelouch's classic "Un homme et une femme" (A Man and a Woman) in 1966.

Here is a list of the 20 films selected to compete for its prestigious Palme d'Or for Best Film, which will be announced at the close of the 12-day festival May 25.

The films are listed in order of appearance, with the first Palme competitor screened Thursday:

"Ce jour-la" (That Day) by Raoul Ruiz (Chile/France)

"Strayed" by Andre Techine (France)

"Panj E Asr" (At Five in the Afternoon) by Samira Makhmalbaf (Iran)

"Il Cuore Altrove" (The Heart is Elsewhere) by Pupi Avati (Italy)

"Uzak" by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey)

"Swimming Pool" by Fran\ois Ozon (France)

"Elephant" by Gus Van Sant (US)

"Dogville" by Lars von Trier (Denmark)

"Carandiru" by Hector Babenco (Brazil)

"Tiresia" by Bertrand Bonello (France)

"Bright Future" by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Japan)

"Les Invasions Barbares" (The Barbaric Invasions) by Denys Arcand (Canada)

"The Brown Bunny" by Vincent Gallo (US)

""La Petite Lili" (Little Lili) by Claude Miller (France)

"Purple Butterfly" by Lou Ye (China)

"Mystic River" by Clint Eastwood (US)

"Father and Son" by Alexander Sokurov (Russia)

"The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part I, The Moab Story" by Peter Greenaway

(Britain)

"Shara" by Naomi Kawase (Japan)

"Les Cotelettes" (The Cutlets) by Bertrand Blier (France)

(Xinhua News Agency May 15, 2003)