When your badge has currency, and time is your capital
By James Rocchi 4 hours ago
It is hard, in the sleepy seaside resort town of Cannes, to not accept that this is some fairly upscale turf. On my way from my rental flat to the festival’s headquarters, I pass a plucky farmer’s market and cute bakeries and butcher’s shops; a few blocks down from the Palais, though, it’s $1,000-a-night hotels and Yves St. Laurent boutiques. With the French playground of Monaco nearby – and enough casinos in Cannes itself that you could get into some serious trouble if you weren’t so busy and didn’t worry about the complexities of gambling in French. (In fact, there’s a Casino that’s part of the building that makes up the Palais; it’s as if the Bell Lightbox in Toronto had a OTB attached.)
So you could, theoretically, spend hundreds, if not thousands of Euros here daily – a decent upscale meal starts at 18 Euros, and the exchange rate is stiff. And some film companies do exactly that – I can’t conceive of the cash outlay it takes to get the cast of “Madagascar 3” here, never mind putting them up in movie-star style, and I’m sure the private beach clubs along the Croisette – like the Carlton Beach, where I talked to the cast of “Moonrise Kingdom” earlier today, also charge a hefty rental.
But as a member of the press, you try and conserve your cash – do you go with the only-in-certain-areas free wi-fi provided by Euro-telecom Orange, or do you shill out the equivalent of $140 for the works-anywhere pay version? How much free Nespresso can you drink in lieu of paying three times the everyday price for a regular cup of American joe? Just how many people can share a rental flat without going mad like some cruel sociological experiment?
Worse than the expenses though – and you can’t fault Cannes for making hay while the sun shines; a report last week noted that Sundance 2012 pumped $80 million into Park City’s coffers – is the cost of time. How early do you have to line up to get into a film you want to (or, if assigned to review, need to) see? Can you put 20 minutes between two films 200 feet apart, or will you be shut out? How can you combine trying to see 3, 4 films a day while not going mad and still having time to write something, anything. (I awoke this morning restless at 3:30 am to find one of my flatmates up polishing a review; after silently eating a bowl of French nerve-settling cereal, I went back to bed while they were still searching for le mot juste.) The press badges are prioritized by color – Orange, Yellow, Blue, Pink, Pink with a dot (“Rose et pastill") and White – and, trust me, this is the time you do want to be Mr. Pink, as they let in White badges first, then rose et Pastille etc., etc. But a better badge means less waiting, not no waiting – and sometimes, at sidebars like the Director’s Fortnight or the Critic’s Week, the colors are rendered irrelevant. And yet it’s still amazing to be here, and even getting shut out of a film at Cannes means, well, you’re in Cannes.
I’d share more, but first I have to get an interview data card form the firm that shot the interview earlier – they had a problem with the data – and do some writing before I rush over to see a 6:00 film and .. oh, you get the picture. Time, here, is a money of its own. But it’s time well spent.
Tomorrow: Paparazzi, Press and Public Peering
Cannes Diary, Day Two
Tonight, fireworks crackled and lit up over the Cannes shoreline. At first, from my flat up the hill, I thought it was just a noise nuisance. But as I walked across the room I caught a flicker of light and realized I could see them lighting up the sky and all I had to do was look. By the time I reached for my camera the show was over. The song of the day was Firework by Katy Perry, effectively featured in Rust and Bone, Cannes standout so far. In Contention’s Guy Lodge tweeted that the fireworks had to be in tribute.The irony in this is that many scenes in Rust and Bone were filmed in and around Cannes. Tonight’s brief spectacle might have been a scene from the film if Cotillard had showed up with prosthetic legs. Cannes isn’t used as a location in film as much as it should be. There never was a more cinematic town, with its mix of old and new — the muted colors, the sparkly lights lining the shore at night, and the sea dotted with yachts in the distance.
Rust and Bone was the first screening this year in the festival’s very best theater, the Grand Lumiere. Even still, the Cotillard film had brought the crowds in, and by 8 many of the good seats were already filled. This doesn’t happen often unless the film is a popular one. I managed to find a decent enough seat but it was way too high for my liking. I was surprised when I didn’t feel the need to nod off even once. Jacques Audiard has made a film that’s impossible not to watch. I always wonder, though, is it a sign of a great film if you don’t nod off, or is jet lag always a factor, no matter how good the film may be.
Hollywood-Elsewhere’s Jeff Wells always tries to prepare himself for the jet lag. He usually flies to New York first to shave off a few time zones. But this year, he’d flown as far as Berlin, and acclimated there. Cannes calibration is no big deal to him; he wouldn’t miss those first few days when you can’t see straight and can barely stay awake for the films. There is nothing quite like being freshly showered and dressed, coffeed-up at 8:30 a.m. to watch a film. It feels like being in college again. It feels like the day matters. But as the hours tick by and the darkness envelops you, that lull of sleep beckons and there is no stopping it. “Chew gum,” was William Goldman’s famous advice. And yet, Audiard’s film was a breeze to watch with rapt attention.
The response to any film happens in waves. When the credits roll, the crowd reacts. Will it be a long applause, stifled applause, polite applause — or boos? Rust and Bone got a long rolling one. But Paradies: Liebe, shown later in the day, did not. The crowd barely applauded, mostly because they had just been shaken to their core. Paradies is a hard film to watch. It’s funny how in its own way Cannes can be so punishing. I’d showed up an hour early to make sure I got a decent seat for Paradies. I stood in the hot sun as sweat poured down the back of my shirt, breathing in the cigarette smoke of every person standing nearby.
Once inside, two of us had to check our cameras. A Chinese writer and I arrived there at the same time and we both laughed because we were trying to hurry the bag check girl. But you learn quickly that you can’t hurry the French. You can’t boss them, demand anything from them, and you certainly can’t ask them to hurry for you. They don’t care about you, particularly, unless you are polite. We both laughed at our uncouth behavior and ran upstairs. We found two seats right in the center. But I had to use the restroom before the movie started so I asked the Chinese writer to save my seat. When I got back another woman was trying to take it. “No!” he said, harshly. After I sat down he told me he was all shaken up because another French journalist had tried to take the seat. “We got in an argument and I just need a minute to calm down,” he told me. Little did I realize the trouble I’d caused for the poor guy. I regretted putting him in that position, especially since the French journalist was seated just to my right — sometimes you just want to get all up in someone’s grill and get American on their ass. But I held my tongue.
So there we were, full of enthusiasm; and then there we sat, full of despair as the tragic Paradies played out. All of those naked old women, all of that desperation. He stayed in his seat as the rest of us made our way out, sad for the state of the things everywhere but especially in Kenya. And in a moment of crass whitey guild, I vowed to try to do something about that — yeah, like what, I muttered, and fumbled for my iPhone to tweet something foul about the film.
The movie dumped us out late as the crowds were collecting around the Grand Lumiere, where the cast of Rust and Bone were walking the red carpet. But my tolerance for the crowds that gather around the Croisette has worn thin these past three years. The film’s star, Marion Cotillard drew throngs of people Brad-and-Angie style, so much so that walking down the Croisette was nearly impossible. It was touch and go for a few moments, when the crowd pushed into itself and I wondered what might happen if people started getting crushed. All of those nobodies there to see a somebody, a beautiful, successful star shot out of the sky, out of France, to conquer the world. I don’t blame them, though, as they balance on fences and hold their spots hoping to get a glimpse of her. She is, after all, Marion Cotillard.
I finally pushed out past the people, past the men in their tuxedos and the women in impractical high heels, past the caterers spinning food trays on wheels, and past the security guards trying to keep things running smoothly, past the ugly and past the beautiful, and away from the heartbeat of this festival, and up towards the hill, where my flat waited for me.
It’s about a twenty minute walk up the hill and the only thing worth noting about it is that the same men hang around the same coffee bars all day long. They seem to be enthroned there, mob style, smoking, drinking coffee and watching people walk by. What are they doing there? Don’t they work? The underside, the backstreets of Cannes are shown truthfully in Rust and Bone but you have to start looking before you see.
As a food shopper here I’m reminded that the French don’t do all of their shopping in one place — they stop at the meat place, then the fruit place, then the bread place. Bread is a way of life here, like wine, like cigarettes, like sex and families. You buy a baguette and it will last you one day before it goes stale. Hard crust on the outside, papery thin on the inside, baguettes like these you can’t find anywhere but France.
I brought my bags of fruit and meat and bread back to my place. The next thing I remember is waking up hours later. What woke me, I don’t know. I was trying to hold the beauty of Rust and Bone in my head, and forget about the worst of it, the things that happen to women as they age inside and out, how society doesn’t have a place for them, how they wither on the vine.
Coming here, and remembering that there is still a whole troubled world out there, a world that could use help from people who can think of nothing they’d rather do than watch movies, while the world beyond the screen needs watching even more.
Tomorrow.
Jeff Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere videos:
