How can we explain to them, to these women in lamé dresses who parade endlessly on the Croisette, to these body-built stilt walkers who roll around with generous glances, that all this is just smoke and mirrors? And why do it? After all, isn’t the magic of Cannes also in this feeling of being able to spend a moment on the other side of the screen? On this acre of land, all of world cinema is there. Them too.
End of the day. Wind gusts. We settled, with Alain Guiraudie, on the edge of this long human river which wanders while dreaming. “ At the beginning, when I came to Cannes, I stayed there for a long time. I parked the car and entered the bubble without leaving ittells in his gravelly South-West peasant voice the director who presents his beautiful latest film, Mercyin the Cannes Première section. But I have never met sugardaddy, a producer who would have said to me: “Come on, I’m going to give you lots of money for your film.” I ended up at the Petit Majestic, a den at the corner of rue Victor-Cousin, the meeting place for those who don’t have an invitation to any party, the ball for the rejected, to drink on the sidewalk. »
Alain Guiraudie is one of those filmmakers who grew up with the Festival. Three times at the Filmmakers’ Fortnight (This old dream that moves in 2001, No rest for the wicked in 2003 and The King of Escape in 2009), once in the Un certain regard section (The unknown lakeprize for directing in 2013), in official competition (Stay vertical, 2016). Today, there is only time to get the job done (“ Finally, I made my little pilgrimage”): presentation to theater operators, climbing the stairs, interviews – business as usual.
Hypnotized crowd
It’s because there isn’t “one” Cannes Festival, but several, which intersect, intermingle, ignore each other or devour each other. Directors and actors in search of recognition, producers and distributors trying to shake the invisible hand of the market, journalists falling asleep from fatigue from incessant screenings. And this crowd forever hypnotized by the entry of the Méliès train into La Ciotat station.
All this makes Cannes – for a moment on the scale of eternity – the square of the global village: #metoo as the standard, Argentine filmmakers proclaiming against the murderous reforms of Javier Milei, Cate Blanchett climbing the steps with a dress in the colors of Palestine, Algeria taking out the card of 7e art on the Magnum beach… At the Petit Majestic, an angry intermittent from the “Under the Screens La Dèche” movement complains of not being visible enough. “It’s true that I don’t have the badge”, worries Alain Guiraudie, who has always been committed to the left. A troop of atomic princesses from the Nice suburbs pass by laughing. Tomorrow does not sing. But at night, yes.