Cannes 2007 (Day One)

Hey there. Promised I'd write. :)

It's the last day of the Cannes Film Festival 2007, and Maz and I have been here since Wednesday morning, enjoying our first experience of the fest, and God...has it been something.

A little bit of background to explain how we ended up here in the first place: we've been going around festivals for a year now, since we graduated film school, basically attending whenever we could and were available in-between working jobs, trying to meet people and make contacts and just get the whole vibe of the different festivals (easier to do if you don't have the pressure of a film to screen and sell on the first time -- you're free to just make your way around and see what's up). So up until we now we had been to the Edinburgh Film Festival, the London Film Festival, Sundance, the Berlinale, and Tribeca. Knowing we'd be in Europe during Cannes anyway (as we had to come back for visa reasons), when it was announced that Martin Scorsese would be giving the Masterclass at this year's festival, I emailed my dad and asked if he knew where that might be taking place and how to get entry. I didn't have very high hopes -- Cannes is the most notoriously difficult festival to get into, as absolutely everything requires an official pass for entry -- but I thought I'd ask, in any case to maybe have the information for the following year.

What followed was typical of my dad -- within a couple of weeks of sending that first email, we had invitations to the Masterclass, full accreditation to all the events of the Festival, and tickets to 2 evening premieres (the ones where you have to show up in a tux or evening dress and walk up the red carpet and steps of the Palais du Festival). Let's just say people who run hotels have more influence than you think. :)

So, thanks to this amazing show of support from the parents (it's an investment, you could say), Mary and I landed in Nice on a BA flight Wednesday morning at 9.30, to spend about three days here. From Nice, you drive about 30 minutes to Cannes, where all of the action takes place. We got lucky to get here in definitely Riviera-esque weather (some years, clouds and drizzle overtake the festival), and it's been hot and sunny beach weather all the way. For those of you who don't know this part of the Riviera, it pretty much looks and feels like California -- only quieter, more quaint, and full of French people. The whole Cannes - Antibes - St. Tropez area is very much a bunch of holiday resorts, ranging from the luxury (most parts of Cannes) to the hip and trendy (St. Tropez, famous since Brigitte Bardot spent her summers doing the twist on its beaches in the 60s).

Mary and I set ourselves at the Amarante Hotel -- a really great little hotel, with swimming pool, and the most grumpy, hostile and unprofessional staff you could ever conceive (it's so nice being back in France...) -- and walked down the 10mn walk to the Hilton on the Croisette, where we were to meet the man who helped make it all possible, Richard Duvauchelle, who is a friend of my dad's and general manager of the Cannes Hilton.

What follows is our trip.

Wednesday

Morning -- We meet Richard outside the Hilton, since we're not allowed in yet -- as the Hilton is one of the festival hubs, and houses screenings and events for the Directors' Fortnight, you need either a festival pass or a room key to get in. Richard meets us and escorts us to his office, where he has all our stuff -- and it turns out all of it is even better than we expected. The Masterclass tickets are VIP tickets -- which means we get to enter the room before everyone else, and are guaranteed good seats. He has two tickets to each of that evening's premieres for us (more on that later). He has our passes to the Film Market and daytime screenings. And, completely unexpectedly, he also has two invitations for a party that evening, at the Hotel du Cap in Cap d'Antibes (THE most exclusive hotel you could think of -- for instance, this year, Sharon Stone, George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, amongst others, are staying there; and as we would learn later, rooms cost over a $1,000 a night, and much more for suites, people book months in advance, and management accepts nothing but cash), a party hosted in honor of Sharon Stone's AIDS fundraising efforts. (In the end, Sharon Stone never showed, and no kids with AIDS were invited -- but I'm sure they appreciated. *clears throat*)

We have lunch with Richard, and during lunch bump into Hubert Watrinet, one of the managing directors of the Directors' Fortnight, who gives us invitations to come anytime and have drinks in the Directors' Fortnight lounge, and also entry to whichever films of their selection they we'd like to see. For free.

And speaking of free, the Hilton is definitely a place we'll be coming back to every day -- they have all the daily trades (from the Hollywood Reporter to Variety to The Business) free for the taking in the middle of the lobby. And you can imagine how we are with free film stuff...

Afternoon -- Leaving the Hilton with several hours until our 7pm premiere (at which we only need to get to by 6 or 6.15), Maz and I decide to take a walk down the Croisette and into the Film Market. The Croisette is the long avenue going down Cannes right by the seaside, and during the Festival, it's covered in film posters and billboards, either advertising films soon to be released (as this the case, this year, for Evan Almighty, Bee Movie, or 88 Minutes), or advertising films looking for distribution (from Japanese films in the festival to Ealing Studios' upcoming crapfest St. Trinians), or even films on which not a single minute of pre-production has yet been spent and still looking for financing (most notably Roman Polanski's Pompeii, rumored to be budgeted at $130 million and to star Orlando Bloom and Scarlett Johansson -- probably because their acting is so bad they're the perfect choice to play people who will be molded still in dry lava; or Righteous Kill, the first film to star DeNiro and Pacino together since Heat, from a script by the guy who wrote Inside Man, and which was just announced last week -- and for which they already have a poster, a tagline, and investment contact info). There's also some really weird stuff advertised here and there -- most especially this thing called Illegal Aliens, which apparently stars the late Anna Nicole Smith, and described by the IMDB as "Charlie's Angels goes sci-fi, as 3 aliens morph into super-hot babes and arrive to protect the Earth from the intergalactic forces of evil" (good stuff).

So you walk down this strip of road, right by the beach, and there's all these billboards on your right (on the city side). The beach side is a succession of private clubs and party areas set up under big white tents (most of them hosted by cosmetics companies), followed by what is known in Cannes as "the Village". Now the Village (full name being the International Village) is quite a cool thing -- it's a succession of little white booths of sorts, where every country in the world with a film industry (or at least every single one I could think of) has a booth, and where they all promote their films, their filmmakers, and their country as a location and clever-investment haven. Unsure of how much time we have, Mary and I just pop into a few -- namely the Irish Film Council one, which Mary really digs because of the slate of very cool-looking films they're promoting; and the UK Film Council one, where we get to pack up on free short film DVDs -- but I want to spend some time later going into some of the ones I know very little about, African countries and Asian countries, and learn more about their incentives and their film industries and what's going on with them, just to get an idea of how international film is at this point. We also try getting into the American booth -- which is the only one that's the size of four booths, as indicated by its name, the American Pavilion, and by the fact that the flag dangling outside it is 4 times the size of any other flag on the strip -- but get turned down after the entrance area, as the American Pavilion is, also, the one and only Village booth to have security procedures and allow entrance only to authorized members. I see a pattern here...

From there on we move to the Film Market itself, which is housed under the main screening room at the Palais des Festivals, and is the biggest, most impressive film market you could think of -- it covers something like three full floors, and EVERYONE you could think of as a booth, of varying sizes, from big US houses like Lionsgate to little Indian production companies whose sole distribution prospect is a straight-to-video shop in Slough. It's fun walking around -- people mistakes us for buyers and try and invite us to buyer screenings of their Jesse Metcalfe-starring jungle epics -- but it serves mostly as a reminder of how many really, REALLY crappy films actually get made out there (this festival as a whole will keep reminding us of that).

After an hour or so of wandering, we head back to the hotel for a bit of rest and regrouping before our premieres. I take a quick look at the schedules, and am a bit disappointed -- most of the films we were itching to see here, such as The Diving Bell & The Butterfly, Sicko, No Country For Old Men or My Blueberry Nights, are long gone and have stopped screening, so we won't be able to see them. But then again, this is a film festival, so the idea is to see things we wouldn't see otherwise -- maybe this is a blessing in disguise...

Evening -- Maz and I fall asleep -- we just got back from New York 36hrs before flying to Nice, and jet lag is still munching away at us. Luckily, we wake up in time to make our premiere, and with plenty of time to get changed and ready, too. Maz looks really really good in her evening dress (hubba hubba), and I get to pop on my brand new tux -- and even though I forgot cufflinks, and don't know how to tie my bow tie, even I have to admit it doesn't look half bad. So far so good.

Part of the fun of a Cannes premiere is apparently to walk down a bit of the Croisette beforehand, to experience not only all the hubbub, but to have a souvenir picture taken -- even before you reach the red carpet, dozens of photographers jump at you, asking you to pose (and you should've seen Mary's face when one of them asked her to "turn around and give her a little Edie look over her shoulder"), and then handing you a receipt for you to come see the pictures the next day and decide if you want to buy one. Since our hotel is on the wrong side of the Festival, we take the hotel shuttle to the Hilton and walk from there. The shuttle ride is quite fun -- our driver, who was also our bellboy the previous day, for some reason snarls at us every time he says us (and then asks for a tip!), and drives like an utter madman; and Mary spends the whole of the trip helping me improvise a decent-looking bow tie knot for me. It works out well -- it ends up looking like a proper bow tie -- and we get to the Hilton with time to spare.

Then starts the walk. As promised, it's a bit crazy. Photographers literally throw themselves at you, yell at you, taunt you, maybe even insult you a bit if you won't stop for them -- and them being French, the fact that you're trying to make a screening time makes no difference -- stopping for them, in their eyes, should be your absolute priority, and you're a dastardly turd if you don't (despite the fact that, as Maz and I learned the next day, 19 out of 20 of their pictures were absolutely horrible). The other thing that's quite fun is the people hustling for tickets -- like in any other festival -- only here, because of the dress code, people have to be in tuxedos and evening dresses when they do it. Which means that, all the way down to the steps, you keep having 20- to 30-year olds in rented tuxes and night-of-my-life prom dresses pop up at you, asking if you've got an extra ticket, begging you to. It's an odd thing.

Anyway, the walk itself takes about 10 minutes, and then you're at the red carpet. You go through security (cops, barriers, ushers), and then you slide onto the red carpet, feet away of someone famous (if you're lucky -- in our case the most famous person on the carpet was French actress Helene de Fougerolles), and then take that 5 minute stroll down the carpet and up the steps. It's a bit of a kick, but it's not as mind-bending as many people say -- the photographers (also all in tuxedos and formal wear, which is awesome) don't care much about you, it's a quicker walk than people say, and as soon as you reach the steps you're just hurried up by a bunch of rude ushers and policemen (ah, French people...), so you can get in and stop clogging traffic (even if there's no traffic to speak of). The Palais des Festivals itself is a lovely building, all marble and glass and escalators, and once you reach the inside of the screening room, you're just shown to your cushy little red seat and you can wait for the movie by watching everyone walk in on the red carpet on the big screen. The last people to walk in on the red carpet are the director and cast of the night's film, who are then introduced to the audience, get a courtesy standing ovation even if though they haven't done anything worth applauding yet (and the Festival forces you to give a "standing" ovation -- the filmmaker and cast enter from the middle of the room, below the balconies, so that, wherever you're seated in the theater, you have to stand to see where they walk in from). And then the film begins...

"The Edge Of Heaven", dir. Fatih Akin -- Our first film was the world premiere of German-Turkish director Fatih Akin, whom I had never heard of before that day, but is apparently famous as one of Europe's most exciting young filmmakers. The film, divided in three segments ("Yeter's Death", "Lotte's Death", and "The Other Side"), tells the story of three families, one of them German, one of them Turkish, and one of them German-Turkish, and how their lives intersect when tragedy strikes each of them. The film takes place between Germany and Istanbul, and was apparently intended as a piece on East-West tensions, and on life, death, and forgiveness. It got solid and up reviews the next morning in the trades, and is supposed to be one of the 5 or 6 best films in the Official Competition this year...
...and we hated it. It's slow, it's dull, it's completely devoid of any human emotion other than stilted, cliched ones. The acting is absolutely dreadful across the board (exception made for Patricia Ziolkowska, who's actually quite good), and every single plot development can be predicted five minutes before it happens (doesn't help that the titles of each of the segments give away their endings, either). It's shot like an average student film -- terribly lit, to the point that some of it looks like DV rather than film. It's self-indulgent -- every single shot lasts 5 seconds too long, and you could cut a solid 45 minutes out of the film and not lose anything (on the contrary, it'd gain strength in the bargain). It's not a clever take on cultural clashes, or forgiveness, either -- you could call it intellectual, but not intelligent. In the end, all it comes up with is "it takes the loss of someone or something for us to realize that we need to get past our differences and just love each other". No fucking shit, dude. I'm glad you made a 120-minute snorefest to let us all know. All in all -- not a terrible film, but one heck of a massive disappointment.

"Intermission" -- between the end of the first film and the beginning of the second, at 10pm, you get about a half-hour for dinner and a bit of a rest, so what Maz and I did was find the first little beach vendor shack and buy a couple of sandwiches and Cokes, and we had a seat on one of the benches right by the beach and talked about how crap the film was (ah, good times...). On the way out, a couple of photographers still walk up to you and try and get you to pose for a couple pictures, but by this time in the evening it's easier to get them to leave you alone, as by now they seem pretty much bored with themselves too. Then it's 9.30, and it's time to go back in and enjoy a second film, in our case...

"The Man From London", dir. Bela Tarr -- The new film of Hungarian director Bela Tarr, The Man From London is apparently an adaptation from a George Simenon novella. I say "apparently", because of the 30mn of the film that we saw, nothing -- and I mean NOTHING -- happens.
The bad signs started when Bela Tarr (looking every inch the sleazy, self-involved European "artist") walked in to his ovation, and made a nice show of standing in front of his seat and going through an obviously prepared routine of a) looking surprised, b) looking ashamed, yet as if this is something that happens to him every time he walks into a cinema, a restaurant, or even his own bathroom, c) "begging" the audience to sit down. All of which while standing up and grinning like a Fat Cat. (Short aside -- am I the only one to hate the whole "begging people to sit down" thing? C'mon. If you really wanted them to sit down, give them a nod, a thank you gesture, another nod or salute-type thing, put your hand on your heart to show you're touched or something, and then just fucking sit down. )
The film itself is shot in gorgeous black-and-white. That's the one good thing you can say about it: The film itself is shot in gorgeous black-and-white. The first shot is nearly 15 minutes long. Why? No reason -- it's just a static camera that pans left and right to cover the "action". Only there's no action to speak of. The second shot lasts an extra 7 minutes. All in all, that's nearly 25 minutes of film gone by, and this is the action that happens in those 25 minutes: a man on a boat is given a briefcase and leaves the boat. The man who gave him the briefcase also leaves the boat. Two men fight on the docks and one of them is pushed into the water, never to resurface. The other man walks into a hotel. That's it. 25 minutes, two shots, and that's ALL that happens (never mind the fact that the shots seem like two long shots, but pan over black every few seconds, so they could've been just intercut takes, completely negating any technical mastery you could try and see in them).
Halfway through all of this, people in the audience started uncomfortably laughing. So little was happening on screen that the balcony started erupting with applause every time something (a guy opening a door, for instance -- literally) did happen. And then people slowly started walking out. One by one, then two by two, then dozen by dozen. We found ourselves in the middle of three near-empty rows, Mary having fallen asleep (for ten minutes -- and when she woke up she had missed, oh, well, nothing), and eventually walked out too. We met dozens of people in the lobby, plenty of them shaking their heads, some of them almost ashamed by the damn thing. We overheard people saying things such as "I don't know -- some people might like it, but if you ask me, it's a piece of shit", and if anyone overheard us, they would've heard something along the same lines, only even more flowery.
Turns out we weren't the only ones. Half the audience walked out, and the next morning reviews were glowing -- the Hollywood Reporter called the film "unwatchable", saying that any of his merits lived "only in the director's mind". Metro's review was replaced by an apology by the reviewer, explaining that he fell asleep in the middle of the first shot. Bloomberg.com says the film feels like "a self-parody", called it "less than convincing" and "laborious". The best review came from Time Out -- who managed to find the film a positive experience thanks to its "sound design" and "metaphysical poetry". *insert snoring sounds here*

After walking out, Maz and I spent twenty minutes or so by the Cinema de la Plage, the big screen on the beach showing free movies every evening, and watched the end of "All That Jazz". We then called Richard, who was supposed to pick us up in his car to drive us to Cap d'Antibes for the night's party, and let him know that we were out early, so that he wouldn't have to wait until 1 in the morning to pick us up. We met him in the Hilton, got in the car, and headed to the last part of our first evening in Cannes...

The Quintessentially Party at the Eden Roc -- The Eden Roc Hotel du Cap, in Cap d'Antibes, is -- to put it simply -- the most exclusive hotel in France. It looks like a great big Riviera mansion, overlooking the Mediterranean, and you get to it by driving through the town of Cap d'Antibes, through big iron gates, and up a winding drive through beautifully lit pine trees. The hotel has an outdoor pool right looking right over the ocean, a private beach, a private jetty, private everythings.

When we got there, it was about 12.30 in the morning, and the place was locked down with bouncers and security -- people checking invitations, keeping non-invited people out, the whole nine yards. You drive up to the hotel entrance, and your car is taken away from you by one of a half-dozen valets in white jackets. Another blonde in her 20s hectically checks your name off on the list -- my first time having my name on a list! -- and shows you downstairs to where the party is taking place, on this half-indoor half-outdoor terrace overlooking the pool and the sea, lit with discreet little spotlights and the occasional flaming torch (a couple of which I almost tripped while wandering around).

Now as I might've mentioned, the main purpose of the party was to serve as an after-party to the amFar AIDS fundraising dinner at the Moulin des Mougins restaurant earlier that evening, where rich people paid $1,000 a head to have dinner with Sharon Stone and other famous buddies, and also participated in an auction. So, for instance, people paid up about $200,000 for Kylie Minogue to perform two songs for them; a woman paid $350,000 for a kiss with George Clooney; and people in general paid to watch Dita Von Teese strip on a giant stick of lipstick (true, and oh so Freudian, story). After the event (which raised nearly $7 million total, so well done everyone involved), people were invited to come to the Eden Roc, where Quintessentially (a "lifestyle assistance" company -- ie, a club you pay to be a member of, and who sponsors parties, opera shows, luxury travel, and other luxury things you can exclusively take part in) and a cosmetics company hosted an open bar party for people to unwind at.

It was a fun Hollywood crowd -- in the sense that 9 out of 10 people there had no talent, but plenty of money -- and most of our evening was spent by the bar, having a few drinks, and people-watching. People-watching that involved both watching the "regular" people, studying their behavior, their dress, the facades they put up to prove that they belong -- but mostly involved watching the famous people who walked in just inches away from us, and judgmentally decide how good (or bad), and nice (or grumpy) we thought they looked.

The first one to walk in, at about 1 in the morning, was Victoria Silvstedt. Now, for those of you who don't know her, Victoria Silvstedt used to compete as an Olympic skier for the Swedish ski team, won Miss Sweden, became a model for Chanel, Christian Dior and Armani, and reached worldwide fame by appearing nude in Playboy, becoming a Playmate Of The Year, making softcore Playboy movies, and so on so forth. Since then he's done the usual Swedish-fantasy-girl post-Playboy stuff (hosting Eurotrash in the UK, posing for FHM, being a spokesperson for Guess jeans), but every guy in the world between 15 and 35 will know her as a Playmate. (Proof: All the information in this paragraph I stole from her Wikipedia page. Except the Playboy stuff, which I already knew. *clears throat*).

So she's the first to walk in. Following her, in little 10 to 15 minute intervals, were:

-- Harvey Weinstein and girlfriend Georgina Chapman. As expected, Harvey looks like a big, slow ape (hint: if they ever make another live action Tarzan, Harvey should play the grumpy ape who adopts little Tarzan), and you can tell from the first time you lay eyes on him that he's not a nice dude. He spent most of the party walking around, schmoozing and chatting, mostly with people who came to him (a sign of power, I guess), making sure trophy girlfriend Georgina Chapman stayed right by him all the way.
-- Brett Ratner and his date, Random Airhead Model #7. Ratner's famous for one-night-standing with anything he lays eyes on that has boobies (good thing he kept clear from Harvey Weinstein, then), and he walked in acting like a smug, arrogant, spoilt brat (behavior he'd have every other time we saw him round Cannes, too). Ratner (who directed the Rush Hour films, the dreadful Red Dragon, and X-Men 3, also known as the worst super-hero film Joel Schumacher had nothing to do with) essentially acted like he should be Weinstein's offspring -- moves like an ape, with no subtlety or grace whatsoever, and acts with such arrogance, such I-own-you-all-ness, that you just can NOT help being put-off by him. But it's also tainted with such obvious insecurity -- like a middle-class suburban kid who's not only used to getting everything he wants, but knows he should bully people into giving it to him, because if he waits for them to give it to him based on his merits alone, he probably ain't gonna get it. But anyway -- he walked in, wandered around for 25-30 minutes, and then walked out with his blonde.
-- Then came Rosario Dawson, Zoe Bell and Tracie Thoms (also known as the girls from QT's Death Proof), who seemed quite sweet, and basically just stuck together by the bar, had a drink or two, and chatted like good mates before disappearing. Rosario Dawson also happens to look absolutely gorgeous -- for anyone who never happened to notice it on screen, trust me, it's there.
-- After them came Scott Caan, Jimmy's kid, of Ocean's Eleven/Twelve/Thirteen fame. Amazingly short, and dressed and moussed up like an extra in Saturday Night Fever, he did actually seem like a fun guy -- but only stayed a few minutes.
-- Then came burlesque queen Dita Von Teese. I only caught a couple of glimpses of her, but she looks as white as you'd imagine -- like a little porcelain statue. I don't know if she's deliberately aware of what it means, but I think it's (other than the fact that she's beautiful and, probably, a great show woman) one of the reasons she's as famous as she is. She looks utterly unique, and beyond that, it's a look that has none of the vulgarity, of the commonness, of your average burlesque stripper, all blonde locks and big tits and glittery thongs. She looks...well...period. I think that that, the name (Dita Von Teese -- bloddy genius)...the woman's got a great sense of what sells. And it's interesting because, is that a good thing? If she's got such intelligence, such a sense of showmanship and salesmanship, could it be put to better uses than burlesque? But what better use is there than burlesque (he he)? And how come all the women who seem to be really intelligent, really cunning, not only happen to be stunning, but know that that's their number one currency, and they manage to see it as such, while still putting what seems like healthy boundaries on it being seen as the only thing they have? Obviously, that means that our society is a society where men are only comfortable with strong women whose currency is their sexuality (it allows us to believe that they don't have any other assets), or who, like those boardroom women in suits and short hair, are so devoid of sexuality that we can feel comfortable with the idea that they have no sexuality to use against us. But then is it a good thing for women to play along with that? Part of me feels it's the best thing -- sexuality is like anything else, intelligence, charisma, beauty...no one's asking you to sleep with people, but if you can use it as an asset, then you should, and maybe people will only be comfortable with it when people do. Or maybe not, maybe it debases something. Does that make any sense? Probably not. Just rambling. Bottom line is: she seems like a damn clever woman, and I'd love to sit at a dinner or a table or something where she would speak, and discuss, and where a conversation could be had, get into that head, see if she's got an awareness of all these things.
-- Then came Claudia Schiffer. Looked gorgeous, even though she definitely is starting to look her age (37). Actually she looks a little older than her age, because of all the effort she seems to be putting into looking younger. But she was smiling, and graceful, and even though she didn't stay long, she got her pictures taken by the press right in front of us, giving Maz and I a fun little couple of minutes discussing how fun it'd be to unzip her dress and pull it down right there and then. As you obviously did not hear in the news, we decided against it.
-- Last came Kerry Washington (of Ray and The Last King Of Scotland fame), who seemed lovely, but barely had she walked in that she stepped on her dress and tripped right over one of the picture lights and tumbled right...onto...Mary. No one got hurt, but it got Maz feeling worried that people thought for some reason she might've engineered it. He he.

And that was all our famous people. Sharon Stone never really showed -- despite Richard desperately getting ETAs for her arrival every five minutes, checking in with photographers, asking the hosts -- and neither did Woody Allen, who had apparently been invited, and whom I would've loved to have seen. In any case, it was a really fun night -- famous people, lots of people-watching, a good bar...

And that was the end of the night. We popped home, collapsed to sleep, and looked forward to the next day...