Cantona set to score at Cannes

Asian leaders are meeting in Bali for the Asian Development Bank's annual meeting. Photo / AP

The French chattering classes face a dilemma this month. Can one be a fan of both Ken and Eric?

French intellectuals have long made an honorary Parisian of the radical low-budget British film director Ken Loach. They have, for many years, mocked that honorary Mancunian, Eric Cantona, footballer turned artist and intellectual.

If you live in Paris, even if you are a self-proclaimed left-wing humanist, it is difficult to take someone seriously if they have a thick Marseilles accent and used to play professional football. Hence the dilemma of the Parisian chattering classes.

At the Cannes film festival this month, Loach's new film, Looking For Eric, will be in competition for the Palme d'Or. It stars Eric Cantona as Eric Cantona, working as guru and life coach to a floundering Mancunian postman, who is obsessed with the former Manchester United striker. The film is based on a story suggested to Loach by Cantona himself.

Can you approve of both Ken and Eric? The dilemma for Parisian film buffs is not as acute as it might have been a decade ago. Eric Daniel Pierre Cantona, semi-retired footballer, now actor, poet, painter, photographer and soon-to-be pop-song lyricist, has finally made the transition from Rambo to Rim-baud.

After a poor beginning in which he acted beside a monkey, Cantona, 43 this month, is being taken seriously as an actor at last. His photographs of bullfights are attracting critical acclaim. He has written the lyrics for an album recorded by his second wife, the actress Rachida Brakni. He still manages, and plays for, the French beach football team and talks occasionally - seriously, it appears - of his ambition to return to Man United one day, as manager.

Twelve years after he retired from football, has Cantona become the new Renaissance Man?

Disturbingly for lovers of the old Cantona, the philosopher and rebel, there are signs that he is not only succeeding but mellowing. He is making a smooth transition to something that he previously exploited but resisted: stardom.

When Cantona and Brakni posed for the front page of Paris Match recently, there was something odd about the picture of him on the cover. He was smiling. The interview was full of gushing Paris Match emotion. Eric and Rachida told how they had fallen in love at first sight on the set of the film L'Outremangeur in 2002, even though, at the time, Cantona was dressed in a body suit that made him look like he weighed 160kg. There was no mention of Cantona's first wife, Isabelle Ferrer, a teacher, nor of his two children. The divorce is reported to have been relatively amicable.

Cantona used to be utterly unwilling to talk to the press. Journalists were the target of his most famous saying at a press conference in 1995: "When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea." You need me; I don't need you.

His tone in the Paris Match interview was quite different: co-operative, even tame. Cantona seemed to want to apologise. "I am still too wrapped up in myself. There are meals where I don't say a word and can't force myself to talk. Only through art can I express myself. Don't write that down please; it sounds pretentious."

Is this the Cantona who ran to the crowd and drop-kicked a Crystal Palace fan who had called him a "French bastard" in 1995? Is this the Cantona who walked up to every member of a French football disciplinary panel and called him an "idiot" in 1991?

Cantona's film appearances got mocking or polite reviews until last year's starring role in a television thriller, Papillon Noir. He played a brooding, bearded drifter who takes an alcoholic writer hostage in an isolated house. Le Monde said Cantona was "hard and disturbing and impeccable from beginning to end".

The buzz on Looking For Eric in France is positive. Could he become the first footballer to win the FA Cup (twice), the English championship (five times) and the Cannes Palme d'Or?Independent