I land in Nice sometime before lunch. 'Too much to do, to little time', I tell myself. So I'll go visit Nice another time.
I hop on an Uber to Cannes with two new friends I just met at the airport check-in. They're talking Dutch between themselves, but Ted is actually Romanian - she rejoiced when she recognised my ID card earlier. She's been living in the Netherlands with her family for the past 5 years and they speak Romanian at home. What followed was a mix of Romanian explained in English, English explained in Dutch and Dutch explained in English, the latter for my sake. We managed to comprehend each other in this strange Babylonic way, comme it faut at the Cannes Film Festival.
We get to Cannes, the Uber stopping right in front of Gare de la Mer, accreditation office. It's 30 degrees outside, I haven't slept in two days - two days of changing flights, airports, and wrestling with the administrative problems de rigueur. I check in my little suitcase at the wardrobe and then go stand in the seemingly endless queue that actually ended up moving pretty fast. Before I know it, I'm next in the queue, I'm told to smile and my picture is taken ahead of me fully coming to my senses. That's it, I burst out crying. I'm sweating all over, I'm overwatched and famished - I'm positive my shirt was unbuttoned the same way I'm pretty sure I could've easily gone and take a shower first, get changed, look presentable. I'm wildly disheveled in that picture, you can see the tears rolling down my face, I'm struggling to point my tired eyes directly at the camera, but I wouldn't want it any other way. I check out my luggage from the wardrobe before leaving, stroll around one of the festival boat areas, then finally sit down on the rocky pier and breathe in the sea.
There's about a dozen people on that pier, all of us with backpacks strapped to our backs, all of us breathing in the sea, looking at one another, at our badges, at our faces. It's in that moment I realize they took a good photograph.
I take a bus - the first one Google maps recommended - to my accommodation. Only after I get off and walk for two kilometers, I realize there were other buses that got me closer, but nothing can bother me now. I throw my things in my room and then take a shower. I put on my swimsuit and the lightest clothes I have on top of it. I empty my TIFF 2021 backpack (God bless it, that backpack is a hero), and I suddenly get an incredible idea. I carefully place my laptop in the backpack and on top of it I shove my shoes and my suit still on the hanger and in its cover. That's because I know I won't be back until late.
Freshly transformed into a snail, I'm back on the road taking the same 2 kilometres route since a road already taken is a road well-known, although not necessarily the best one. Obviously, I get lost, my GPS fails me, and I start searching for the address of the next film in the programme. The address is a beach - it's Cinéma de la Plage. As if controlled by outside forces I teleport myself into the Mandelieu-de-Napoule station and get on the train without a ticket. The ticket controller comes to scan my, well, my nothing, and I show her a barcode of which I was certain was supposed to be a public transport pass. She says that's only valid on buses and that the fine is 50 euros. And then that I'm cute and she's gonna look past it, but only this time. I thank her and then assure her there won't be a next time.
I get off at the Cannes station and immediately spot a boulangerie. I get in, ask for a quiche Lorraine, pay, leave. That pie is gone off the face of the Earth in 5 seconds.
I see a giant queue and go take my place in it. It's for Peter Weir's '98 The Truman Show, starring Jim Carrey. The festival's film - the poster's film, the tradition continues. And it's quite something to see it on the beach.
I'm now comparing my outfit to the ones of other people in the queue - I'm wearing a llama print T-shirt and all around me are people in incredible dresses and elegant suits. How beautiful the people in Cannes are!
I meet an American woman on a tour across Europe, I lose her in the crowd but then somehow we're sat next to each other again when the film starts. I look again at the people on the beach. They haven't got the slightest clue I have an entire suit in my backpack. It's getting dark. I take off my shoes and all along while the film is playing I feel the sand tickling the soles of my feet. But now it's dark, so dark that you can no longer see even the ladies' elegant heels sparkling.
Only Truman Burbank and the simulation of his reality. And a wholesome guy selling "the best caramel peanuts in the world, two for five". I get myself two for five since I can't just take one for two-fifty and since sharing is caring. All this time, Truman is trying to escape from his projection of a world. Burbank wants to travel, to go on an adventure, to drop all the financial worries and all the "normal" things that would tie him to that artificial life even more. We're just there watching him. Since '98 we've been watching him. But I know that if Truman would now look at me rather than in his mirror, he would see that I accomplished what he set out to do. Well, what I set out to do as well. Especially me.
Even though it's a Science Fiction Drama, it makes you go through every emotional state there is, especially when you see it in the context of the festival. It made me think about the very people behind the festival. Cannes is The Truman Show, but a Truman Show without Burbank, where everyone is True. In any case, we're talking about an extraordinary organizational precision, coming from 75 editions of experience. I'll keep a look out for the highlight of the 2022 edition, but right now I can say for sure that you see freedom in a whole new way with your feet in the sand - which if that peanut vendor sold with the branding "the best sand in the world, two for five", I would buy it without thinking twice. Oh yes, the peanuts were super sweet, I didn't get to eat all of them. Now that I think of it, the only thing I had to eat the entire day was that quiche. I've been floating like this the whole time, as if immune from exhaustion, hunger, cold and unbearable heat that suddenly became bearable or even desired.
Truman is actually searching for Christof (Ed Harris), but apart from that he doesn't really know what he's looking for. Freedom, at the price of truth. A rendezvous with the Creator. True love. And in the same spirit as the Pirandellian influence that brought Burbank into our lives, I don't know what I'm looking for either, I'm wondering what I'm looking for, what am I looking for here, there. But I'm enjoying the moment. I shake my sandy feet and then rush to Grand Théâtre Lumière to see Coupez!, directed by Michel Haznavicus, Hors Compétition. I know there's a gala dress code and I'm prepared, and prepared for any surprises down the road too. After an exchange of bonne soirées with the security guards - very spruced up themselves - I kindly explain that I am, in fact, a snail, and that I have my suit in my backpack. "Est-ce que je peux aller me changer en costume?", to which the guy replies "Non, ici". So I move to the side and put on my suit on top of the clothes I was already wearing. I wasn't going to undress in front of Grand Théâtre Lumière next to an ice cream kiosk.
The good part is that one of the people I'd just met - a Belgian film student who came on the cinéphiles accreditation - saw me preparing to change and offered to cover me. I told him there's no need for that, I'll just slip on my second nature - the suit one - thus enveloping my orange llama print T-shirt in elegance. He laughed - he was in the same situation as me, except he didn't have a suit in his backpack. He asked, naturally, if I have a spare one. A shirt maybe, but not an entire other suit.
Anyway, the Belgian cinéphile disappears and I go back to the gentleman who told me "Non, ici". Proudly I say to him "Voilà!", to which he replies "Quelle transformation impressionnante!". He laughs. I laugh. We both laugh.
I get in the theater for Michel Hazanavicius' Coupez! / Final Cut. A cute film to watch, not at all complicated, though complex, relaxing at times and entertaining at others. All this at first glance. Beyond that, I also noticed a Tarantinoesque imitation with a parodic tint, a Pulp Fiction broadly reinterpreted, in a conceptual sense, only this time into a... zombies Comedy. Hazanavicius doesn't seem to brush off this association, on the contrary his film embraces it through not-at-all-subtle references to Pulp such as characters wearing a T-shirt that says "directed by Quentin Tarantino". The fact that the '94 feature still breeds new films, progenies of the year 2022, is truly amazing. The untold truth, however, is that we can see the same concepts play out in Nae Caranfil's '93 E pericoloso sporgersi (I have a review of it in Romanian here). Though much more simplified compared to Pulp Fiction's narrative construction, the one in E pericoloso sporgersi is still the first of its kind (of the '90, otherwise both being preceded by similar epics such as Akira Kurosawa's 1950 Rashômon). Nevertheless, I think Hazanavicius' idea to draw inspiration from Tarantino came not as a parody but as a strictly functional feature to be weaved into the rest of the film, streaming from his great appreciation of such a world cult phenomenon like Pulp. I am also of the opinion that Coupez! is not a zombie comedy. That's what it says on the internet, granted. That's also what you can see when you watch it if you so choose. But I believe this film pertinently and gracefully ironizes the shortcomings in the actors'/directors' guild. It's a collection of clichés that crystallize in the second half of the film. The first half shows the final production, while the second comes along to enlighten us vis-à-vis the production process, in a similar way to Pirandello's play.
So far, the films of the first day (the one's I managed to see, of course) all converge to this basic idea of showing the brute material, the behind the scenes, the real things frequently encountered in the industry. I'm partly basing this on the level of laughter in the audience upon hearing certain inside jokes. The very performance put on in this humorous, self-ironic way may be the reality of every-day work life for people in this business. With the risk of contradicting the great and powerful internet, the film is rather a director comedy than a zombie one. It encourages you to look at the production process, using the conspicuous zombies and intentionally "bad" acting to draw attention to the comedic nature of it. It was a feast.
Hazanavicius showcases fragments from the production process of any film, and you could say he does that in a very economical way - it looks like a film that uses little to say a lot, and that's a big thing. It supports the idea that you don't need much for the final product to be of good quality. I admit that in the first half of the film I had the impulse to walk out of the room a couple of times, but I'm glad I chose not to do it, as I was left pleasantly surprised at the end. I myself like explanations a lot. Good explanations even more. And the "pulp fictionian" perspective helped a lot with that.
At the same time, I hate clichés, naturally. But I enjoy the films that know how to ironize them, reinventing them and granting them a new dimension, in a way not everybody can but Hazanavicius wonderfully succeeds. The fact that it doesn't feel heavy, that its purpose is to mirror and not to profess, the fact that the end comes suddenly - the way it does so often in real life -, all this makes of Coupez! an impeccable comedy. If I'm left with anything new upon having watched it, it's with the certitude that I was allowed to think for myself, without any narrative being shoved down my throat. That's exactly why I can safely advise you to never leave the theater and to put all of your trust in the films you're going to see.
It's true that there are many films that are going to make you shrug your shoulders at the end, indeed. And then there are some like Coupez! that make you wish true cinema was not the exclusive treat of diehard cinéphiles. Cinéphilia is a sport in itself too, after all. What's more, you can never forget that, yes of course, you have a llama print T-shirt under your suit, you're sweating rivers, you want to go to the toilet but the ones on the beach are closed. The people around you don't see that, they only see the elegance. So take advantage of that and never walk out of films in the dark (even if you're sat at the row's end and you wouldn't bother a soul). Because it's not every day you wear a bowtie at the cinema. Because all that the others will see is a silhouette walking away. But enough about you. The real reason you decide to stay and for which I'm glad you're staying is that you have great confidence in the films you're about to see. Maybe a lot of them will end up disappointing you, who knows? That's guaranteed to happen with some of them. But you surely won't want to miss Coupez!, directed by Michel Hazanavicius, the French film the competition opened with, never JUST a zombie comedy, the thing you read about it after one Google search.
It was a full day in every possible way, even though I didn't get to use my swimsuit, but you never know when you have time for a dip in the sea between films. And that's exactly how it should be.
The swimsuit stays on during screenings.
Next Cannes feature - Tout est foutu, but not exacly tout and not really foutu. How do you pronounce "Mungiu"? - check back in few days.