DAY 7
Crimes of the future was a real pain in the ass. The trailer was intense, the movie was everything but that. A long, boring Prada-looking ad from the 2000s starring Kristen Steward trying herself at method acting. Her voice was new, and her delivery and posture were new but everything else wasn’t. In a movie that should have been 3 hours long -even tho I would’ve slept- we learned nothing and had time to feel nothing. Even the shock value of the movie, when the CGI doesn’t look like the bathroom troll from Harry Potter, falls flat. This transhumance story is a must not see.
Joyland made the whole screening room on a Monday morning weep. The first Pakistani movie to ever premiere at Cannes depicts a story about trans-identity, manhood, womanhood, marriage and family values in a traditional Pakistani family. It even won the Queer Palm later during the week. When walking home drunk at 1 am I walked past Alina Khan in the street and congratulated her for her magnificent performance in Joyland. Her eyes were still wet from the 10min standing ovation that the movie received. I hope this movie gets the platform it deserves.
DAY 8
It took more than 45minutes for more than 100 cinema legends to walk the instantly iconic red carpet for Cannes 75th anniversary. When inside, Guillermo del toro, Isabel Hupert, Jake Gyllenhal, Jean Dujardin, Melanie Laurent, Diane Kruger, Mathieu Kassovitz, Paolo Sorrentino and MANY more gathered to celebrate cinema and to watch L’innocent by Louis Garrel. Never in my life have I seen a movie theatre and an audience delivering that type of energy. People were cheering, screaming, clapping and laughing during the 2 hours of the movie. It was the best thing any cinephile could experience. Louis Garrel, I salute you. At night, PRADA held the first of its 2-night special events in Cannes with, ladies and gentlemen, Carl Cox mixing for very intoxicated invites. The -very- small venue felt odd coming from Prada but it all got better when waiters refilled champagne holding your glass with their teeth.
DAY 9
Bilal Hassani stopped the red carpet as he stepped in 1997 iconic Margiela vest styled by Nikita Vlassenko. It marked the start of an era. The beginning of a new Bilal. The Elvis premiere was stocked with stars. Even Dicaprio (yes the Don’t Look Up star who hosts parties on his yacht that you won’t be able to attend unless you’re a 20-year-old east European model) sneaked in the premiere to watch the highly anticipated movie. Following the premiere, Campari beach hold the after party in which Maneskin among others performed a concert transmitted live on the croisette for all the festival goers who weren’t invited in. A drone show saw Elvis‘s iconic figure being honored in the sky of south of France. You could smell the money spent from miles afar and you could see the 10 drones missing that fell in the Mediterranean sea to pollute even more than Dicaprio’s yacht.
1976 is a feminist movie in which every shot could be a Tumblr profile picture. Sadly Tumblr is dead and so was the audience during the movie. Maybe it was a great movie, maybe the audience was just exhausted from the craziness of Cannes. A lot of us fell asleep for a bit. If a part of the audience falls asleep during a premiere at Cannes it’s normal, now, if most of the audience falls asleep during a premiere at Cannes, you might wanna reconsider your career.
DAY 10
Virginie Efira in Revoir Paris offered a sad rendition of the Paris terror attacks. While the movie has some potential for tears, it isn’t exactly what people expect to see at Cannes International Film Festival. This movie will be released, it will work, it doesn’t present a new way of seeing the world, and it already stars 2 of France’s biggest movie stars. Why should it be at Cannes?
St. Vincent arrived at Prada special 2nd night in a simple but efficient outfit with an eccentric guitar and electrified the audience. Well… the audience who watch the performance. Out of the 100 people present in the room, only maybe 15 actually shut up and listened to her. Cannes is also that, people pretending to be rich and care about art but haven’t seen a movie or a concert in years. Now show them a red carpet invite, they’ll be shaking for hours. At least, the 15 people screamed to cover the sound of champagne being poured and mini foie gras hamburgers being stuffed in influencers’ mouths.
DAY 11
It is drenched, stomach empty and tuxedo dirty that we all watched the Awards ceremony. A lot of us were disappointed that Lukas Dhont’s queer coming-of-age story CLOSE didn’t win the Palme d’Or but we were saved when Le Figaro-(I know)-validated movie Triangle of Sadness won. It celebrates -among a lot of other indescribable elements- poop, puke and blood. In the end, we come to Cannes to be moved, to be shocked and to reevaluate our perspective on cinema, on art, on life. The 30 thousand festival goers left Cannes like they would a Balenciaga after party, sick, exhausted, ears buzzing, heart in tachycardia but full of hope for the state of contemporary art.
