En ville

May 28-30

I’ll probably lump a lot of days together at times, so try to keep up. :\

I’ve definitely not had the fire under my ass to wake up the past few days, but I have enjoyed and looked forward to class every day so far. I get up my usual hour and a half early like I do at UGA, but that means 9:00 am here and I am so loving sleeping in. I think I’ll go to the café across the street every other day for breakfast—the amazing cappuccinos and crowds of UGA kids are quite a draw, but I’m blowing through my spending money! The lady at the café is starting to recognize me, I think, and is always extra friendly when I ask for extra napkins or spoons in French.

Oh, on an extra fun and earth-friendly note, I’ve survived fifteen days so far without drying my hair. When I put my usual leave-in conditioners in it, it turns out fine! I’mma definitely stop drying my hair so much in the States and make Al Gore proud. :P

Nate’s class is intense and laid-back at the same time. We take turns reading the best reviews (gonna brag real quick: all of my reviews have been marked “read”!) about each film and then discussing them as a class. I love hearing how everyone attaches to a different part of the movie—amateur acting, insufferable editing, an innovative directorial technique… Nate also has this amazing way of touching on everything I want to talk about, like what I’m thinking but what I haven’t found words for yet. I hope a bit more experience (OK a lot more) will bring me that skill.

I’m slightly worried about my upcoming reading of my “Death Proof” review. I brought it up in Charley’s class, since I’m going to write about watching my worst movie (Death Proof) and best movie (Diving Bell) in the same day and what that taught me about my tastes in film. Everyone acts really nice when you say you don’t like something; maybe they’re worried they made a mistake in liking it, or maybe they just don’t want to cross you. So I got a few nervous laughs the first time my frustration with Tarantino came up, and I really don’t want to fight people later but you never know what will happen when you have this strong a hate… :P

I’m loving all the writing we’re doing! The stress is definitely on with due dates every other day (and actual class for only two weeks), but I seriously could write ten pages every day. Allison’s first pep talk on good grammar=so awesome! There need to be more teachers who inspire people to write well, which has me leaning toward major #1 (English) again, but…

The film industry seems like so much fun! On Monday we had Nate’s friend and Athens Cine collaborator, James Bond (that seriously is his name and he loves it, drives a hot sports car…), over to visit. He is one of the leading projectionists in the world and designs screens for events like Sony’s private screening of Spider-Man 3 in digital, Chicago’s outdoor movies at the park (his set-up can withstand 100 mph winds in the windy city!), and of course our beloved Cine on West Hancock. I definitely do not know much about film technology, but he was so excited about what he does and explaining it to us that I understood a lot and enjoyed it! Another friend of Nate’s, David Blake, visited today (Wednesday) to tell us about his experience distributing two social awareness documentaries at Cannes. He told us exactly what it has been like for him, but it was so refreshing to hear something encouraging for once, instead “Yeah, you’ll probably be a waiter for awhile unless you know five millionaires.” And he was a really funny Brit, saying things like “I won a bet with my friend and now he has to walk down the Croisette starkers.”

Afternoons at JLP are very relaxed—we have to work around our essay-writing meetings with Charley, but otherwise we have free rein to go wherever we want to once we’ve done our work. The first night here I enjoyed cooking some dinner (pre-cooked raviolis secured at Petit Casino, the only real grocery store/not bodega that was open on the day-after-Sunday holiday) and just reading my travel guide/writing a bit/getting to sleep really early. I hear there was a wild party, but thankfully I didn’t hear it through my earplugs! There’s plenty of fun to be had over the next week and a half, but the Cannes-itis hit me like a TGV that night and I had. to. sleep.

On Tuesday I took Allison’s directions to SPAR, the super-big grocery store beyond the JLP bridge, with Tolu and Amanda and we got crazy groceries for the upcoming weeks. I had been thinking that I’d save money this way, and I definitely can if I live off what I have now (a heap of delicious food), but I have to admit that I love grocery shopping too damned much. I’ll probably go there every other day! After some more mad hot cooking, I trekked off to the beach at sunset with the semi-embarrassing aim to watch some guys throw up. Adam Speas, Jonathan, Chris, and Brian were attempting the “4 Liter Challenge” (the metric scale equivalent of the “Gallon Challenge”, where you try to drink a gallon of milk in an hour without throwing up), and thankfully it went down at the beach. I actually could not watch the guys as they eventually had to vomit into the Med—despite all the hype I did feel a little like I was watching an episode of Jackass and therefore felt kind of dumb. But yeah, it was hella funny. Kaison (who turned 20 that day!) took some mad paparazzi pictures—“nono, throw up over here where I can see you!”—and Freeman took a video that will probably find its way to YouTube. We all (including the contestants) have probably not laughed as hard in our lives.

This afternoon, Samantha, Tolu, Kaison, Jonathan, and Adam and I all went to Grasse to see the perfume factory there. Grasse, the infamous setting of Perfume: Story of a Murderer, is the perfume capital of the world since it can grow so many different and potent types of flowers, and since the flowers don’t bloom until July we skipped the fields in favor of the old factory and museum at the best perfumerie, Fragonard. We followed my ghetto sense of direction up one small hill until we hopped a bus to the centre ville, and we twisted and turned up about six hillside boulevards before the nice bus driver dropped us off right at Fragonard’s door. We ambled through two floors of the museum, gaping at the displays of old perfume bottles and fading labels. When we eventually reached the start of the guided tour, the attendant told us there were no more English language tours, so we decided to just go along with the French tour. There were signs in French and English all along the path through the old factory, and I was shocked by how much of the French tour guide’s presentation I understood.

A few fun tidbits about perfume: it takes two tons of jasmine flowers to distill one liter of jasmine essence! Jasmine does not respond to the high temperatures that other flowers can be distilled at, so they gather its essence by pressing it between layer after layer of glass and using a special technique to rinse the essence off each glass plate! A “nose,” or master perfumer, must be able to recognize over 3000 scents (most humans can readily distinguish only 200), and they have to give up smoking, drinking, and going to sleep too late to keep their olfactory sense in top condition!

Samantha sadly got a headache from all of the scents, but I hope she had fun ambling in the gardens outside while the rest of us spent the rest of regular office hours pawing through the factory shop. I used a 10% off tourist brochure coupon to get one amazing, light scent, the top-selling Belle de Nuit, and another cheap bottle of eau de toilette that smells just like walking through Cannes! Now every time I want to remember my days in the Riviera, I can splash on “Riviera Bleu” and smell like it! :D

After looking through an alleyway of tempting cafes and kitchen shops, we decided to walk back down the hillside to the train. Thankfully we allotted an hour to the task, because I had not realized just how many winding streets the bus had carried us over! I loved having the time to take in the old city, however, and I have an impressive photo album of all of the houses I’d like to own once I make it big as a… film critic? English teacher? Lifelong student (at this rate)?!

The beginning of the end

So the festival's done with, and so might be my journal for awhile. I'll keep you posted, but I have a feeling I'll have enough writing, at least for this week. Lots of love from France!

Lauren

27 May 2007

With the help of my snooze alarm, I slept until 11 am on Sunday, a feat never before accomplished on this trip nor in my regular life (excepting sick days). All of the competition films were being rescreened for the folks who hadn’t seen them, but I had seen most of the films and indeed all of those at the Debussy theatre, the only room Cinephiles could enter on the last day of the fest. So, I slept, took a long shower, leisurely wrote my fourth review, carefully dressed and put on my makeup, and caught a 2:45 train into Cannes to prep for my final film.

I checked a few items of my mental list of festival to-dos. I took a video of walking by the Palais; it’s not very good, but later down the road I think I’ll smile at my amateur attempt to recreate part the festival experience. Also, I looked at all of the beachside newsstands for a good price for Empire; it ends up that they all charge 7.80 euro because the mag is imported from England, but I bought one and found it was well worth the cost within the first few pages of coked-up, incredibly “me” humour (to put it the Brit way).

Other goals were not met. My brilliant idea to eat at FNAC one more time and work on my journal on the roof was foiled by the day of the week, so I took a very long Sunday afternoon stroll past all of the closed shops on the Rue d’Antibes to my final destination at *gasp* McDonalds. I got Le Menu Best Of for Le 280 (I impressed myself when I easily rattled off “deux-cents-quatre-vingts”), and it was a surprisingly great sandwich, much cheaper than my intended Chinese salad at FNAC (a good thing because I was running out of cash). And since I had secured one of the coveted small booths I felt free to write in my journal for two hours before turning on the red light for the closing ceremonies.

I hooked for about two hours in the bright sun; good thing I had slathered on sunscreen. Even in my sweaty squintiness, though, I found it really easy to smile at everyone walking by and to brush off the few people who looked confused or tried to mess with me. I got several tickets to the later showing (My Blueberry Nights all over again!), and eventually only Kaison and Freeman graced the red carpet to the star-studded ceremony.

Chris and I decided to wait for Samantha to come to Cannes for the late show, and we amused ourselves by getting a final nutella banini and tagging along with Geoffrey to the pretty average casino (gambling hall, NOT grocery store) before he caught a train home. Two hours at McDonalds again was not a terrible fate as we read through a bit of Empire. Once Samantha met us we hustled to the balcony line only to meet a lady who wanted to give us her orchestra seats! I had actually snagged one for myself earlier in the evening but wasn’t going to ditch my friends, but her pair of tickets allowed us to wait another almost-hour in the windy VIP line at the base of the red carpet. The closing ceremonies had taken a long time (oh, yeah, I did watch those and was generally pleased with the results—Javier Bardem got shafted for the best actor prize, but Julian Schnabel snagged a well-deserved best director award and the popular Persepolis shared the jury prize with Silent Light), so we had to wait past the 23h00 screening time to even get into the Palais. But it was all good, because all of the fancy stars had to walk/drive past us to get out of the city. Gus van Sant walked right by my shoulder after we had been gushing about how cool he is, and I saw the really really good-looking Diane Kruger as well as Julian Schnabel himself through their tinted Renault windows. It. was. fabulous.

My third appearance in the orchestra section was wonderful. I got in super early considering how tardy everyone was, so I got my “cote” seat only three seats down the row from where Samantha and Chris sat in the center section. I also found a secret bathroom while I was waiting and was thrilled to not have to wait in a line for once. The final out of competition film, L’age des tenebres (The Age of Ignorance), did an excellent job rounding out my festival experience. Granted, I would love any piece of crap film if it had Rufus Wainwright singing opera in it, but this one was decidedly not a piece of crap. It was funny to hear the Quebecois accents as the main character, Jean-Marc Leblanc, fantasized about being Rufus Wainwright or having an affair with Diane Kruger to take a mental break from his crappy government job and crappy wife and kids. The absurdity of everyone around Jean-Marc, from his coworkers to the road rager he hits with his car to the Ren-Fest girl he meets at speed dating, spoke to the absurdity of life in our times—no one can deny that our war on terrorism, telecommuting age can be pretty effed up. So even if we didn’t learn what happened to Jean-Marc, his quitting his job to start over at the lake house his father loved was really empowering.

It’s a strange feeling to be free of the festival. I don’t quite feel like I’m cut loose, without a purpose, because I have a feeling I’m really going to enjoy all of the writing in Nate’s and Charley’s classes the next two weeks. But the festival gave me the strange experience of not wanting to keep dreaming after the alarm goes off; I had a train to catch and two or three movies to see, and I honestly enjoyed the struggle to keep going everyday. I learned a lot about myself, like how I can either completely shut off my hunger until the next convenient moment to eat or, oppositely, eat something at every snack bar that crosses my path, or like how I can survive with only four hours a sleep per night for several nights and still be completely cheery, or like how I can carry my life around in one big purse. Several successful days alone in a town where I only half-speak the language beat a lot of my timidity/fear of rapists out of me (joking about the last one, but only halfway because I was raised to be very wary of all strangers). I had no qualms relying on the kindness of others to get into 16 of my 22 screenings at the invitation-only Grand Theatre Lumiere, but I also reaffirmed that I want nothing to do with some of these others in the industry. I’m still not sure if this entertainment writer thing is for me—it’ll take a lot more soul-searching that I frankly do not have the time for right now—but if, at this moment, someone offered me a job at any magazine or newspaper that would send me to the festival each year, I’d be ready as soon as I ate another piece of bread and nutella.

My penultimate day at the festival. Oh snap, I used that word correctly!

26 May 2007

I made my last visit to the Majestic Saturday morning only to find that there were no copies of Screen. Again. Do they just decide not to print this stuff if they don’t meet deadline (granted, hard to do when there’s so much going on every day)? I really missed reading their takes on the last few films I saw. Even though they write their reviews based on how marketable the film is to its desired audience, a little too businesslike for my tastes, they kept good tabs on where each competition film stood; I felt a bit adrift without them.

Tickets for Mogari no Mori (“The Mourning Forest,” a Japanese film—hi, Megan!) were easy to come by. I have to admit that, after finally “sleeping in” before catching the 10:12 train, I just wanted to keep sleeping, so… I did. I watched all but the last 15 minutes of the film, which I drifted in and out for (and had some trippy dreams that I hope I didn’t sleeptalk about), and the general consensus was that I didn’t miss much. It was one of those films where I could tell my cultural background didn’t give me what I needed to really appreciate the story. The lingering shots of the forest made me see it in the magical way the old man did, but I obviously found it hard to keep paying attention to long periods of “doing nothing” or at least doing something (like screaming) over and over.

Jill and Ryan stayed for the next film, Samantha went to McDonalds (her mothership), and Kaison and I went to shop a bit. We pawed around a lot of fancy chocolate/wine shops, buying nothing, and I sniffed several perfumes/touched a lot of jewelry that I didn’t buy while he read reviews in Metro, the daily film newspaper. Eventually we made our way to FNAC (my mothership); no signed copies of Persepolis to be found, but a poster did taunt me with the date—four days before I knew I loved the film—that Marjane Satrapi was in the store. Samantha came to meet us on the covered rooftop café while I ate a delicious “Chinese salad” (sautéed chicken, rice, cucumbers, and sprouts on top of some lettuce). As we discussed our possible plans to go to Cap d’Antibes, this well-dressed British guy a table over gave us some directions. Apparently, he’s lived in JLP for 5 years and has some fabulous friends who bring him to yacht parties and casual afternoons with stars like Leo DiCaprio and Bono. I was more than startled to hear that he’s never seen a film at the Palais, but he was similarly shocked that we knew of none of the party places he goes to. His friend, a more down-to-earth visiting Brit, said “Cheerio!” when they left.

We tried a second time to get into Pirates of the Caribbean at the Arcades theatre in Cannes after a bit of slumming around JLP. Kaison, Tolu, and I caught a later train back to Cannes and went to Monoprix for candy before meeting up with Bill, Mandy, and Laura, who said that the theatre was closed because of a black-tie premiere there. I’ve gotten used to disappointment at the festival, so it didn’t bug me much, but we weren’t sure we could make another evening of just wandering around old Cannes. Thankfully, Adam called to say that he and about 7 others were in the theatre; the uppity guards for the premiere must have mislead Laura because of language issues, or they were just being jerks. I coughed up 8 euro and wandered up some typically French, narrow stairs into a theatre the size of two dorm rooms. The screen was small, taking up only the upper half of a smaller side of the rectangular room, and the restrooms peeked from a small entryway at the side of the screen—very glad I didn’t have to use them and thus be seen by the whole theatre for a restroom run. It was no Grand Theatre Lumiere, but it was pretty fun to see an English-language movie in a typical French theatre. I didn’t hate the movie as much as some people did, but it kind of got on my nerves how, if there was anything campy that they could do with the characters, they took it to the extreme. I’ll respect Disney’s wishes for early reviewers and not spoil the plot for you. But I think if you like Pirates you’ll enjoy some of the in-jokes, Johnny’s typically flawless performance, and all of the crazy action scenes (especially on your bigger American movie screens).

We had a brush with the law while we sat for half and hour on the train back to JLP. Police were everywhere outside of our car, about six of them present around a man they had handcuffed. Everyone thought this was funny, and Kaison wanted a keepsake so he took a photo. Immediately after the flash all of the cops pointed up at our car, and one of the hugest guys I’ve ever seen actually comes into the car, looks at Kaison and says “Votre appareil-photo” like he’s going to confiscate it. Kaison did some quick talking and showed him how the picture didn’t even turn out (it just got the reflection of my arm in the window), and he left just before I couldn’t hold in my nervous laughter any longer. So that’s how we learned not to mess with French cops, even if they don’t pack heat: they’re worried they’re not photogenic.

The day I met Martin Scorsese

Just taking a break before we go to see Pirates of the Caribbean (in English) at one of the theatres in Cannes! Yay, a movie that isn't about abortions or bestiality!

Lauren

24 May 2007

On the ninth day of the festival, I think it finally hit me how big a deal this thing is.

It took much longer than usual to hook for tickets for Ocean’s Thirteen, the big movie out of competition in the festival, in the morning. Bill, Laura, Mandy, and I all got tickets, but Samantha couldn’t find one (this proved to be a good thing for her later). I had a numbered corbeille seat, front and center in the balcony, and I sat surrounded by tons of big French executives who were cracking in-jokes and e-mailing deals over their Blackberry phones. I won’t spoil any of the movie for anyone, but I have to say it was hilarious! More so than the first two, but still with all of the high-tech, “gotcha!” action. I might have been extra excited because I was one of the first 2,000 regular audience members to see the film everyone in the U.S. wants to see this summer—how weird and amazing was that?!

When we walked out of the Lumiere, I heard screaming fans over by the red carpet, but I walked by pretty fast to get my trade mags and use the restroom at the Majestic (I do this so many times a day that the guards all know me and don’t even bother to check my bags, whereas for some reason they don’t even let some of the other Cinephiles in). I walked back to gather with the UGA group on the grass, and girls and guys alike were going insane: the cast of Entourage was rehearsing for the episode they’d be shooting at the Ocean’s Thirteen evening premiere, and most of the people I know got pictures with them! I don’t watch the show (yet), so I didn’t mind missing the rehearsal, but just thinking about how big this festival is in the entertainment world, that a popular TV show would film here and millions of viewers would wish they were here...

Most surreal moment of the day, however, was our meeting with Martin Scorsese. Yes, THE Martin Scorsese talked to, among others, my class at his directing master class in the Debussy theatre. We had gathered on the grass to get our VIP tickets for the event, and it felt so great to walk right up the blue carpet instead of waiting in line for the cheap seats. Tolu, Laura, Bill, and I sat four rows back from the stage. While we were waiting, one kid whispered to his friend “Hey, I think that’s Quentin Tarantino,” and then an entire section of cameras started aiming a little ways beyond my head. I got a little testy again at how much everyone was falling all over themselves for this guy (and how much he was lapping it up); it was too weird that we were in the same room, and even though I wasn’t close enough to spit on him I was satisfied that he was about to learn from a really good filmmaker.

I kept coming in and out of thought during Scorsese’s talk. We watched clips from six of his films (now I know where to start, since The Departed was *gasp* my first Scorsese film), and how much he still remembered about all of the scenes’ details amazed me. He has it down to a science, but it comes so naturally to him after all his years of loving and working in film—very interesting to see in action. He cracked a lot of jokes and everyone on the trip wanted him to be their grandpa. And the last few minutes he talked about the world cinema foundation he’s starting via Cannes to preserve and archive films all over the world like he’s done in America; he said we’re responsible for making sure future generations get to experience cinema (and the world it reflects), which is a weighty yet intriguing challenge.

The rest of the afternoon was a blur after the excitement of seeing Martin Scorsese. Lots of kids went to the red carpet for the Ocean’s premiere, which I knew would be a mob scene (some girls got pushed over in the mad rush to reach out to Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, and George Clooney!). Kaison and I schemed to go to one more premiere later that night, the Russian competition film Alexandra, which turned out to be a good and bad experience. We actually got to see all the stars in a much less extreme atmosphere; they walked down the red carpet again after the premiere (which is sort of uncommon, so no big crowd had gathered), and I didn’t get any pics but definitely saw all of the guys and Angelina Jolie as well, in her beautiful yellow dress. Alexandra ended up being incredibly slow, with a beautiful, swelling score but no action to accompany it, and after no amazing “Russian grandma saves the day on the battlefield” moments like the synopsis seemed to promise we left early to catch the train. Which sat in the station for an hour late for God knows what reason. We had a jolly time reminiscing about all of the American TV shows we like to watch, but when we got back at 1 I died only to revive at 7 to finish two more film reviews.

25 May 2007

Got into the 11:30 screening “We Own the Night” along with Chris, Kaison, and Jonathan, but not before I got yet another nutella banana panini, or should I say “nutella banini” per my tired but creative misspeaking at the snack bar. Oh my gosh they’re good. I fully plan on investing in a panini press in the U.S. for the sole purpose of making baninis. Despite almost everyone else’s opinion, I had fun with “We Own the Night.” Anything with Mark Wahlberg is bound to rock my socks off, and he and Joaquin Phoenix make an interesting pair of good/bad brothers whose conception of family changes when their police family gets them into a drug war. My favorite scene had to be the car chase in the rain; there was no goofy music playing to up the tension, only the sound of the windshield wipers and skidding cars. It really looked and felt as chaotic and scary as it would be if you got into a multiple-car gunfight in real life.

“Une Vieille Maitresse,” the first period piece by “the French princess of erotica” Catherine Breillat, was playing right after “We Own the Night,” and tickets were curiously easy to come by. We assume it’s because most of the market people have picked up and shipped out, but we seriously were half of the way to our usual corner when a lady came up behind me and asked if I needed tickets. People in line were holding extra tickets out for anyone to take. We got even better balcony seats than we did for the first film (good because I left my glasses at the apartment and needed to be close to be able to read the subtitles), and I liked this movie even more than the previous one. The story was so strange, about a libertine who has decided to settle down and leave his lover of 10 years only to cross her path again on his honeymoon; he tells his wife’s grandmother the full story of his affair to gain her confidence, and even though it seems like he and “the old mistress” hate each other he eventually leaves his wife for her again. The film was as sexy as you’d expect from Breillat, but all the sex scenes worked for the complex characters and beautiful costuming/landscapes. It’s certainly not the Palme d’Or winner, but it was very enjoyable to watch.

We came back to JLP briefly to change, but then the plan was to go back to Cannes to watch Pirates of the Caribbean at one of the traditional movie theatres there. We talked to the tourist agency and even found the theatre online and felt secure in the movie time and its being in English, however another late train ride and the following sprint down the Rue d’Antibes proved futile when the ticket takers said the film started Saturday. We pottered around for awhile, trying to think of things to do over some amazing ice cream, and eventually we just started walking toward old Cannes. The streets became narrower and steeper and made of cobblestones, and cute local art stores dotted our chosen boulevard of restaurant after restaurant. We’re going to have to go back, because I want to eat a real, full meal again and the menus at all of these places looked great. Adam led us up some crazy stairs between apartment buildings to the church on the top of the hill, and we were treated to the most breathtaking view of the city. On one side we could look all the way past the Palais and down the row of hotels on the Croisette, and on the other side streetlights winked from hills leading toward mountains beyond a bay. I got a few pictures of us climbing the church walls (and almost falling three stories out of holes in the walls), but eventually it began to rain, and we stared longing at all of the restaurants as we jogged toward the train station.

So many films, so little time

Shorter entries for these next two days. In all of the chaos of getting the most out of the last few days of the festival, I have a) not had time to write (at least not anything but reviews for class) and 2) forgotten some of the smaller anecdotes about my days. The films, as always, are the most important part, and you’ve probably seen that my days follow generally the same patterns anyway: wake up, eat breakfast in/not in a café, take the train that’s running late…

Lauren

22 May 2007

I saw one of the worst and one of the best films of my life on my mother’s birthday. I got up not too early and added a bowl of half-eaten granola to the stack of dirty dishes in our sink before I headed to Cannes to see Death Proof. I know, “Why on earth would you do that? You HATE Quentin Tarantino!” I’ve always thought it’s important to know what you’re talking about, especially if you’re disagreeing with it, and I figured I might have some fun seeing the longer version of Death Proof before the obnoxious premiere later that night. And I hadn’t researched my options well enough to know if there was anything better to do that morning.

About the best I can say for the film is that it had a bitchin’ soundtrack. There’s never been any doubt for me that Tarantino has some talent behind the camera. The shots he creates can be gorgeous, and if he is ripping off other people’s material (which he is) he usually does it in a way that’s very entertaining. I did like Kill Bill, and I at least thought that Sam Jackson’s character in Pulp Fiction was hilarious. But, for me, Death Proof could not do enough tricks to interest me in a dead story. All the violence and fast-talking that made his other films look edgy and fun were pointless with two sets of nearly identical, vapid characters and no payoff in the plot department. And I know that grindhouse films never had good plots or complex characters. That argument in Tarantino’s defense does not work for me. He has somehow conned most of my generation, and even the Cannes Film Festival for crying out loud, into thinking he’s an auteur of our times, a “good filmmaker.” He owes them a little more than a glammed-up piece of garbage. His saying that grindhouse films, and other sorts of admittedly fun trash, are “classics” is making people have bad taste, end of story.

Ugh! I had to cheer myself up with a bit of shopping before I came back to JLP to write a review. I wish I could talk about one of the fun stores I went in, but I got my sister a present there and it would totally give away my brilliant gift-getting skills! I did take another trip to FNAC, my new favorite place because of its relatively cheap, uncrowded café on the roof, and seeing the comic book of Persepolis on the shelf reminded me that I needed to see the film the next day. I also browsed through almost all of the little alleyways between the Palais and the Miramar, the Croisette and the train station—basically all of Cannes where the festival is taking place. BTW there aren’t a million Sephora stores like I thought. I think there are only two that take up a whole building floor apiece and have entries on two streets.

I cleaned up at my second-favorite begging corner near the merry-go-round and got into the premiere of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly with Samantha. We watched the red carpet scene on the big screen in the theater (air conditioning! a girl’s—and sweaty Frenchmen’s—best friend in the rising Mediterranean temps). The cast and director’s team released boxes and boxes of orange and blue butterflies before they came in the theater, and after one of the butterflies landed on an actress’s eyelash and refused to get off for a few minutes the director scooped it up and brought it inside, to the horror of the jumpy Lumiere usherettes. I felt sick for the first quarter of the movie because it was filmed from the main character’s perspective (if you haven’t heard about the film, it’s based on the book former Elle magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby wrote by blinking one eye, the only part of him not paralyzed by a stroke he had at age 42). Soon, as “Jean-Do” got used to his new lifestyle and decided to free himself from his “locked-in syndrome” through his imagination, the film expanded to encompass his memories and his beautiful perspective on the landscape around his hospital. Jean-Do’s perseverance alone was staggering, but the optimism of his therapists and stenographer, and especially the grief of his 92-year-old father, had me misty-eyed throughout the movie. I still cannot imagine what the incident was like for Jean-Do and his family, but the movie made me feel like I had lived it to the greatest extent that it could. The ovation afterwards lasted over 10 minutes, and even though my hands went numb I kept clapping louder and louder. Wonderful, wonderful movie that I hope will win the Palme d’Or and that everyone back in the States will get to see.

23 May 2007

Samantha and I had kept the plan under wraps, but we were going to go to Cap d’Antibes to snoop around the posh Hotel du Cap and hopefully see the diving board into the ocean, the poodle graveyard, and stars staying there (Brangelina and the cast of Ocean’s Thirteen, to name a few). However, I woke up feeling really sick! I took a very atypical nap an hour after I waking up, and after she’d walked a quarter of the way to the Cap and back we went into Cannes to get some McDonalds and get to begging for tickets.

I made a killing at my typical corner at the Palais when I hooked for tickets to the 4:00 pm show of Persepolis. You know how prostitutes in movies always have their own “turf” and get ticked when other people invade it? That’s me and my shaded corbeille/orchestra tent corner and all of the old French people who try to get tickets there without signs as cute as mine. I got my first ticket within ten minutes (record time!), and even though they usually seem to smell the first ticket on you and refuse to give you another one for awhile I snagged one for Chris as well. Samantha had procured one for herself at her own spot, and we got in with plenty of time to find center seats at the edge of the balcony for a perfect view of the only animated film in competition.

Persepolis has gotten a bit of press recently because Iran did not want Cannes to screen it. It’s about Paris-based author Marjane Satrapi’s experiences growing up in/leaving/returning to Iran in the 1970s and ‘80s, during all of the upheaval with the shah of Iran. Basically, Iran went from being relatively Westernized under an oppressive ruler to suddenly very religious (with women having to wear veils and everything) under an even more oppressive revolutionary regime. There was a lot of suffering, and while the film didn’t mince words on that front it was tempered by Satrapi’s cute sense of humor. The film perfectly matches up with her original comic book, and the young Marjane in the film was adorable! There was just as big of an ovation for this as there was for Diving Bell, and it was really touching to see how moved Satrapi was. It must be a profound thing to put your life before so many people and to have them embrace you like that. One of the voice actresses stuffed a jasmine flower down her shirt (an in-joke from the movie that I’ll let you enjoy when you see the film), and everyone was waving and shouting and reaching out to pat her on the back as she finally left the theater.

We went back to JLP to write some more and eat food that didn’t cost as much as all the designer clothes on the Croisette, but about half of the group went back for the movie on the beach. It was so nice and warm for most of the evening, but I stole a blanket anyway (ha!). We got there with time to spare and made a full UGA row, taking turns with each others’ passes to go out for food at the snack bar. The film was Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz, a strange but very cool, semi-autobiographic film. Even though it didn’t have the title song in it to jazz it up a bit, I could see why it won the Palme d’Or. But with all of these weird choices showing up as past winners on the screen on the beach, what weird film will take the prize this year?

Laundry list

Got a lot done doing laundry/hanging out for free internet at the laundromat! Here you go before the internet breaks again! :P

Lauren

20 May 2007

In the middle of the night, I had this very fuzzy dream that I got out of bed, stood in the bathroom for a long time, did some laundry in the bathtub, and then took what seemed like hours to stagger back to bed. I know that dreams can come true at Cannes, but this one did and it was weird. I woke up “late” at 8:00, and when I was brushing my teeth I noticed that I was wearing different pants. The dream started coming back to me, and to my horror I saw my old pair of underwear wrung out and laying on the side of the tub! I’m really, really glad that a) I put clothes on after my midnight “laundry duty” and that b) I didn’t wake up my roommate in the process. She did ask “What was with all the water on the floor?” when she woke up, and eventually I told her the story like I’ve told it here, because it’s pretty funny. But I’m going to stop taking AmBien so I don’t steal a scooter and drive to Antibes in my sleep or something.

I actually missed my first train because I forgot my phone in the room and, shockingly, the train arrived early while I was running back to the apartment to get it. I knew I didn’t need to be in line for the movie I wanted to see until 10:15, though, so I didn’t stress and caught up with Jill and Ryan since they’d missed the first train too.

When I got in line at the Hilton, I was standing right next to Mrs. Eidsvik! She’s very fun/easy to talk to; we shared notes on our favorite competition films, she told me how to get into the Salle du 60e, and she described most of the local train stops to me to give me an idea where to go on my vacation weekend (Grasse sounds nice because it has the perfume factories and a big pharmacy, Fragonard, full of beauty products, but there were a few others I wrote down that have Renaissance-era fortresses and stuff that I don’t see in the new/touristy Cannes and JLP). I got into the film at the last minute and found a seat next to a nice French guy who laughed really loud throughout the movie, Caramel, which was indeed hilarious. It was about several women from Beirut with unorthodox love lives who support each other as they work at a beauty shop. I didn’t know that they spoke French in Beiruit, but when one of the girls used the fake name “Marie Pompidou” to avoid being recognized when she got plastic surgery, the Frenchies sitting around me just HOWLED.

I found a treasure trove of classy little bars and cafes down the street where the Ferragamo store is on the Croisette. I browsed through a “Petit Casino” about the size of my old dorm room, but I decided on a café almost at the Rue d’Antibes and got *gasp* a salad! Something that wasn’t a panini! It had kind of strange dressing and peas, corn, cheese, turkey, ham, and rice (?!) on it, but I was glad to eat from some food groups other than “grease.” I took my lunch to a bench near the Cinema de la Plage area of the beach and had fun watching the fancy people and people dressed up like superheroes and gladiators walking by.

I had several hours before the other film I had picked out for the day, so I explored most of the shopping between the train station and the Palais. I ended up running into Tolu, who was so sweet and got me a ticket with her producer’s badge, and Ryan and Jill as well. I didn’t make it to Tolu’s movie, but I did go shopping at Zara, a Spanish Express-type store that Angelique infamously led us to for underwear, of all things, on the NYC trip. I saw the most gorgeous trench coat ever—white with vampy lapels, a cinched waist with a big buckle, and gold-trimmed buttons. I even called my mom (yay!) to let her know how cute it was. It seriously dented my wallet, but it will be a highlight of my wardrobe for a long time. As Tolu would say, it is one hot fire trenchcoat.

Jill and Ryan kindly waited for my shopping spree to wind down, and we went over to the Palais to try to get into a reprise screening of Breath, a Korean film in competition, at the Salle du 60e. No go. They hate our temp badges at every guard station, and we didn’t want to wait in line in the broiling sun only to be turned away an hour later sunburned. We did walk all around the back of the Palais, and I even got a crappy picture of the Artists’ Entrance, which was pretty stealth.

We ran into Bill and Mandy, who were similarly prowling the market area on our second-to-last day of power. Bill and I decided to walk toward the Hilton for a place to chill, since the market café was filled with *sigh* real market people, and I got a nice surprise call from my sister from Japan! She sounded really good, despite a lot of homework, and I am super-jealous of her bullet-train taking and conveyor belt sushi eating. We got some delicious soft-serve ice cream at a beachside stand (I had a deliciously green pistachio), and I went to wait for another hour-fifteen at Miramar for XXY, a curious and very realistic fantasy film (in the Children of Men sense) about a girl who has all of the sex chromosomes and becomes a hermaphrodite at puberty. Oh, and the short before it featured a woman who suddenly started growing leaves out of her pores like hair. I’d freak out if that happened to me!!

I called my dad on my walk back to the train station and killed some time before my train by eating several things from vending machines. When I got back to JLP, everyone was either sitting in the lobby or eating over at Sugar Caffe, a local favorite. I did both.

21 May 2007

Our first visit with an industry person happened this morning, but I couldn’t get too excited about it until I finished my first film review for Nate’s class (an unusual situation for me—I usually never procrastinate until the last minute… but I guess I have an excuse here :P). Going up to the solarium, we fit at least 11 people into the “8 person capacity” elevator and Charley made a cute quip that we were chosen for the program based partially on our ability to pack into elevators. We met with Paul Cox, an Australian “humanist” filmmaker, and while I enjoyed hearing an industry person talk about the social responsibilities of filmmakers (instead of fiscal ones), he got a bit preachy. I felt awkward that he was rubbing some of the kids the wrong way, and I honestly I would have preferred to hear a bit more about filmmaking and a lot less about gun control when I had to take two hours away from the festival.

We got out of class a bit too late to get tickets to the afternoon premiere, so most of us decided to stay in JLP until the evening. I had a pretty fun time picking out some laundry detergent at Casino and then doing my first two loads of laundry at the laundromat up the street. Thankfully the manager was there to give me change for my 10 euro bill from the Coke machine, and also thankfully I met a nice Mexican man there who could tell me in English how to open the washing machine after it was done. I worked on a few journal entries sans internet, since the manager had gotten sick of everyone sitting outside on computers but not paying for laundry and turned off the wifi. But I have to say to my tired (and maybe just simple) mind the swirling laundry in the washers and the oversized dryers that I could seriously sit upright in were mesmerizing.

Got into Cannes a little early, at around 5:30, so I had time to eat a *~*nutella banana panini*~* for dinner before I went to my usual plot of sidewalk with my sign. That panini was delicious, if messy, and I think the tourists had just as much fun watching me get nutella all over myself in my fancy dress as they do when I ask for tickets. I had to hook a little longer than usual for this one (A Mighty Heart, with Angelina Jolie), but I ended up with a corbeille ticket with a specific seat number (weird, but very official), and when I ran into some of the other kids I got one of their corbeille tickets for Samantha. We tried to stand near the red carpet as we walked up the side, but the guards were pretty adamant that we keep moving. We showed them when we got inside the Palais and then waited at the doors, and I saw my first star up close: Gerard Depardieu! He’s really getting older, but he’s always been fun and it was pretty cool to be a few yards away from Cyrano.

The scene on the red carpet is always broadcasted on the theatre screen, so I did get a close view of the celebrities last night. Angelina and Brad looked amazing, as usual, and it was so moving to see Mariane Pearl and her son attending the film as well (she’s as beautiful as Angie, and he was too cute in his little blazer, holding his mom’s purse!). It ended up that my friends had the best seats to see them inside the theatre—Laura sat two rows in front of Brad and Angelina (gaping only, no pictures because they checked her camera at the door), and Samantha’s seat on the wings of the corbeille afforded her some to-die-for close-up photos of the stars. I couldn’t see over the edge of the corbeille section, but my seat for the movie was great and it was a strange but exciting feeling to be in the same room with two of the most famous people on the planet.

I liked A Mighty Heart well enough. Everyone knows I quibble about small things in films, so of course I cringed when they put Sheik Gilani’s name up on the screen to point him out right before the main investigator found him; if you have to tell the audience that blatantly who is who, then you haven’t told the story right. Angelina’s performance really moved me, though; she had all of Mariane Pearl’s grace (and didn’t stand out as much as her real life personality does), and I have no idea what it must have been like for her in the one scene where Mariane breaks down. I got very choked up.

I wanted to see my typical two films per day, so I rushed out of the theatre during most of the applause to set up shop where anyone walking out with an extra ticket for the later show could find me. It got down to the wire, but eventually this French guy came by and asked me if it was just me looking for a ticket. I kind of misunderstood him when he mentioned something about walking up with friends—it ended up we walked up with his friend, a fellow international sales businessman for French television—but his orchestra tickets allowed us to walk all the way up the red carpet in front of the cameras. The seats could not have been better, just two rows behind the actors and director, and I felt a little awkward but played it off pretty well. I kind of sneakily pretended not to speak much French so that I could listen in to their conversation, but they revealed no sinister plans for taking me to a “hotel party” and generally talked shop. They left right after the film, Gus van Sant’s “Paranoid Park,” but they understood my wanting to stay and watch the actors get their ovation. The film was a little too artsy for how well it understood the slacker skateboard kid demographic, but the young actors (cast over MySpace) did a great job, especially the lead (he had the vacant teen stare down! he barely blinked!).

Our taxi skills honed after the first premiere, Bill, Laura, Mandy and I made a beeline for the taxi stand near the train station. At least 20 people were gathered at one end, so when a taxi pulled all the way down to where we were standing we jumped in to avoid being mobbed. Our taxi driver was the same guy who drove us back that first night, so I knew we could speak English with him. It made for a late night when I called my mom to celebrate the first hour of her birthday according to French time, but I was a little wired from an exciting night of premieres anyway.

Too tired to think of a good title, so... here you go.

I'm finishing up my first French load of laundry (an experiment I'll write about in the next day or two). Here are the few days I've had time to catch up on.

Lauren

17 May 2007

To celebrate our first early premiere at Cannes, Samantha and I got up early and had breakfast at a cute café across from the Cannes train station. Another delicious and ample serving of orange juice, coffee, and bread and jam! Getting into the Palais was no big deal with our passes (scored during the My Blueberry Nights windfall), and we had plenty of time to walk leisurely up the red carpet and take some pictures.

The film, “4 Weeks, 3 Months, and 2 Days,” was amazing. We had the perfect view from the corbeille section, for starters—we sat at the very edge of the balcony and our eyes were level with the middle of the huge Lumiere screen. The film lasted about 2 hours, which admittedly seems long with talky foreign films, but the entire film was intense from start to finish as we watched a Romanian girl help her friend get an illegal abortion. Although visually the film was pretty discreet (not much blood or nudity), each shot lasted for over ten minutes and you could not get your mind away from the immediate cruelty and complexity of what both of the girls went through to protect their reputations. I didn’t feel “good” when I left the film, but the film dealt with the issue of abortion so intimately (and I would say objectively) that I think it has to be a front-runner for the Palme d’Or.

We were going to try to go see Zodiac at 3, but the intensity of 4 Months and the lack of sleep led us back to Juan-les-Pins instead. It would have been so productive to have gone for groceries in that rare bit of free time, but guess what: it was a French holiday. I ended up having time to update my journal and do a bit of cleaning around the room before I went back to Cannes around 7.

I met with my first bit of festival disappointment that night when I tried to see Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge, an Un Certain Regard film starring Juliette Binoche. After being a bit delayed by a late train and hi-definition coverage of Jake Gyllenhaal’s walk up the red carpet for the official 7:30 Zodiac premiere, I got into the line near the blue carpet (! so pretty!) only an hour early. It ended up that so many people with press and market badges wanted to get into this star-studded premiere, and since the theatre was even smaller than the main Lumiere theatre even the 70-odd people ahead of me in the Cinephile line were turned away.

I didn’t have another film to go to that night, so I wandered for a bit, getting my trade magazines and shopping a bit (I got one of the cute Cannes messenger bags—doesn’t have “Marche du Film” on the side but still makes me look official). I hoped I would find someone from the UGA group at the Cinema de la Plage so that I would have seen 2 films in the day, and I eventually spotted Freeman in line. We got good seats (and blankets!) because we were there an hour early, but eventually 7 other folks we knew showed up.

The Cinema de la Plage has a Classic Palme d’Or theme this year, and the one we saw was “Sailor et Lula,” or “Wild at Heart,” David Lynch’s 1990 winner. It was fun already to watch 800 people mill onto the beach and see the Cannes logo blowing across the huge screen in the wind, but the movie was killer. Very, very strange (and it got stranger as it went along)—intentionally campy and full of crazy violence/sex scenes like “Kill Bill” or “Grindhouse,” I would say. Nic Cage did some major kung-fu style dancing, and the movie followed a crazy parallel with “The Wizard of Oz” until the end when Glenda appears to Sailor when he’s temporarily knocked out in a gang fight. I think I’m always going to wonder about, and be a little afraid of, “buffalo-hunting.” :P

In the dark the guards could not see how guilty I looked when I spirited one of the too-few Stella Artois blankets away from the beach. It was so cozy, and I want a set of them for my apartment! We ran to the train station in hopes of catching the last train, and although we got there well before the 12:04 trip the ticket windows were closed and the coin machines were testing our gangsta. Thankfully the guards let the few in our group without tickets just get on the train anyway, and I was soon asleep in preparation for the next day’s 6:30 wake-up.

18 May 2007 (written in line at Critics' Week)

Even though I was incredibly sleep-deprived from a week of travel, late screenings, and early trains, I woke up at 6:30 am to try to see the 8:30 press screenings of Les Chansons D’Amour. I got to the train station at an awkward time—I had just missed the 6:56 train and a nice old man standing in the doorway told me about the strike. I freaked when he said there were no more trains but found out that the 8:10 was still on schedule.

I ran to the Lumiere and narrowly missed the screening. If I had had enough time to beg for tickets or to think of the French words for “Come on, there has to be a seat for such a cute girl,” it might have worked. But I think 8:30 is just too early to watch a film anyway, so no more dreams of press screenings for me.

The next film I had heard was good, Nos Retrouvailles, was showing at the Miramar at 11:00, so I had plenty of time to amble around the Croisette. The breeze was so cool and the sky completely cloudless that morning, and it was a really delicious feeling to be so on-my-own in the south of France at that moment. I scoped out a few good cafes on back alleys and looked in a dog clothes store (sadly no cute French phrases on a T-shirt for my cute French dog) and then I got in line for the hour-fifteen-minute wait.

Press and marche people still got into the theatre first, but I liked not feeling like dirt as a cinephile—we make up most of the audience at Miramar’s Semaine Internationale de la Critique, so we call the shots. The theatre felt like a high school theatre, relatively small and dim, but the excitement of having the director and his crew in attendance electrified the crowd. I couldn’t stop thinking about what a neat experience the day must have been for the first-time director—finally letting go of the work he’d dedicated so much of his life to, unsure if anyone would love it enough to take him to the actual competition in a few years or if it would tank and die at this infant screening.

Apparently critics loved Nos Retrouvailles, because the host of the program burbled about its brilliance while pumping the director’s hand, and I’ve seen at least 6 screenings of the film at more and more exclusive theaters in the last few days. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it either—I couldn’t feel anything about it. The story, about a slacked son who tries to get some money for his slacker father by going with him to raid someone’s house, was absolutely average, and nothing about the story or how it was presented made me care about the film’s outcome. The soundtrack was pretty good, though, and might be like a Garden State soundtrack in France.

If it were possible for me to be depressed at Cannes, I probably was when I left the Miramar. I’m an eager film student, and I had just had absolutely no reaction to a film that respected critics thought was “great.” I attributed much to my sluggish brain, but it was unnerving.

I was going to give hooking for tickets at 30 minutes chance and then leave to sulk and/or sleep a bit. After only 5 minutes of smiling on “my corner” between the orchestra and corbeille tents, a nice press lady came up and gave me a ticket! I’m sure I just gaped at her for awhile, thinking she was just another old French lady asking to trade a badge-requiring “brun” for a free “bleu”; it was unbelievable that someone was helping me after the morning’s sleeping/eating/traveling/thinking challenges.

Les Chansons d’Amour was just what I needed at that moment. The songs (it was a musical—strange even for French art house) were so creative; they flowed together but they showcased all sorts of styles in popular music, and they could be about anything from jealousy over an overextended threesome to the beauty of Paris on a rainy day. The lead actor might know too well that he’s cute, but that doesn’t take away from the original premise that he’s cute. I could watch him with his faux-hawk, blue velvet jacket, and childish humor all day.

I was going to meet Samantha at McDonald’s (the U.S. embassy) at 4:30, but when I walked by the blue carpet at the Debussy the Cinephile line was trickling toward being empty. I was mainly curious to see if I could get in with just my badge and not a ticket, and before I knew it I was into the Un Certain Regard premiere of “L’Avocat de la Terreur.” It was a surprisingly intriguing documentary about Jacques Verges, a lawyer who had defended “freedom fighters” of most international terrorist movements of the past half-century He definitely knew how to complicate the issue of interrogating terrorists (i. e. why is it OK to torture them like they’re not our same species), but it was chilling to hear him talk about his gourmand habits while he ignored any questions about his undoubtable involvement in jailbreaks and even new terrorist acts.

I almost stood in the similarly sparse Cinephile line for the press screening of the Coen bother’s new film “No Country for Old men,” but I was getting pretty tired and feared I wouldn’t enjoy it as much as I should. It all worked out well, though, because I ran into Samantha’s friend Asam Speas at the entrance of the Majestice. We got our trade papers for the next day, read them on the train home, and found afestive group back at JLP to search for food and goof off at the beach.

19 May 2007

After a fun day on my own, I got resocialized on Saturday morning when Allison took the whole group to the gare maritime to get temporary market badges. Everyone looked as tired as I was, which was kind of a relief (I’m not the only one!), but we all had fun swapping stories about crappy market screenings and techniques for procuring tickets. As usual, the gare maritime was not where we needed to be, so we trundled over to the Palais and the badges materialized.

I took a brief tour of the marche with Allison and some of the guys. Since the red carpet and the blue carpet were already taken, a bright green carpet leads into the basement of the Palais where the marche is. At the entrance shelf after shelf holds all imaginable trade journals—I impressed an actual market guy by quickly snapping up a Screen (my favorite mag) while he still looked for his picks. We all got pretty excited when we walked by a ticket counter in the basement, and I tried using the automatic machine while one of the Adams tried the “I don’t speak French” card with the man at the counter. No luck—the tickets are only for real buyers and sellers, and even then they’re often “stand by” seats—but the flashing signs for 20 tickets left to “Sicko” and 69 tickets left to “Breath” were tantalizing.

A lot of people did what ended up to be the smart thing by going to the Cinephile office to get tickets, but I made a beeline for my corner to look for tickets to the Coen brothers’ new movie, “No Country for Old Men.” Sure enough I had a ticket within 20 minutes, and Samantha, Kaison, and I walked up the red carpet to some decent seats in the center of the balcony. I could definitely tell the film was based on a Cormac McCarthy novel after the hell I went through reading “Suttree” for my American lit class this past semester; the story ambles like a true Southern tale, starting in the middle and assuming you know certain information, quiet and slow like a Southern drawl until a moment of extreme violence surprises you. I was nervous throughout the whole film (a scene where the main character waits to be ambushed in a hotel room made me stop breathing in suspense at one point), and Javier Bardem made absolutely the most methodical, creepy, and purely evil villain I have seen in a long time. Two thumbs up, even if I’m not sure if it really ties with 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days like Screen said it did.

We went to McDonalds for lunch (to get something besides paninis), and it was a madhouse. It really isn’t that much cheaper than any other food, but the entire American audience at Cannes seems to think so. I got a “Chicken Mythic,” which had breaded chicken, lettuce, tomato, and zesty mayonnaise, and it was pretty darned good. Amanda met us and told of her last minute “date” with the creepy Frenchman who gave her a ticket, and Tolu told us an even better story when she got in from Juan-les-Pins. Apparently she met this producer from Atlanta in a shared taxi, and since the woman was going back to Atlanta early she gave Tolu her producer’s badge! What a windfall! Tolu’s really modest about it and doesn’t use it much or uses it to get tickets for her friends, but she definitely had the best day ever that day!

No afternoon films really interested me, so I went back to JLP around 3. I finally had some time to do me: I washed the dishes, cleaned up all of my trade papers, and wrote on my blog (as you can tell, I’m always a few days behind on my write-ups). We tried to get back to JLP for The 11^th Hour, Leonardo DiCaprio’s global warming documentary, but the train got us in really late. I broke away from the group at a run, anticipating a fight with the guards about my lowly temp badge, and they ended up refusing me entry. Samantha and about 5 others got in but queued up too late and were denied even though they had tickets. The story came out later that night that Freeman actually shook Leo’s hand after the screening (!), and that Bill, Laura, and Mandy hopped the line to eventually meet (and take Facebook profile pictures with) Darryl Hannah, who was in the audience. Very cool.

I huffed back to the train and almost had a blowout. The lines for the ticket machines were huge, and I eventually got up to the one that didn’t take change or read my card. I then got in an even huger line, minutes ticking down toward my train’s departure and no chance to leave for another hour, and the lady at the counter told me I couldn’t get the student discount (it was a “white” day? but she gave other kids the discount later. I will kill her on sight if we ever meet again). I got on my train just as the doors were shutting and found a seat but next to a smelly person. I was pissed, but I tried to let it go as I walked down Marechal Joffre to my apartment.

The extra time at night was pretty good for me. I finished up all the chores I wanted to do during the day (like starting my first review), and I got to chill a bit since I really was overtired. I got to bed and took an AmBien, which had some sinister effects later in the night...

Ma premiere festival et la premiere du festival

Ohoho, an entry somewhat on time! You'll figure out why in my next post, but I'll give you two words to keep in mind for now: French holidays.

Lauren

16 May 2007

Cannes looked completely different on the first day of the festival, even though it already had the mini-facelift of film and festival posters a few days before. Barricades (how French!) took over all the main thoroughfares I had learned to use on the Croisette, and about 50 times as many people clogged the streets. We got a gentle introduction to the endless lines at the festival when Allison took us to get our Cinephile passes—she took care of most of the grunt work while we all enjoyed the fancy McDonalds across the street, and no old French people cut in front of us when we waited the short 20 minutes around 11:30 to get our badges. Sweet! I felt so official and made sure ASAP to keep my badge turned backwards so it looked more official than it actually was.

We tried for a half-hour or so to see the celebrities going to the My Blueberry Nights press conference, but they didn’t go on the then-under construction red carpet where we were standing. Jonathan, Geoffrey, and I got tired of doing nothing and walked down to the Hilton, where we got some extra trade mags to kill some time. Even though nothing except the opening film (Blueberry Nights) was playing in any of the official Cannes competitions, we saw a lot of market screenings and decided to take our chances with the hotshots at the Star Theatre.

Some precise navigation, a trip to FNAC (like Best Buy only BETTER), and a nonchalant “Invitation 14h00 SVP” sign later, we were talking to Pamela Rodi, executive VP of marketing for Myriad Pictures, and on our way in to see Factory Girl! It was reassuring to see that even a market person had some trouble with the screening procedure (Pam didn’t have paper tickets but just told the snotty guard that we had to be let in). We also had had no idea how easy/not embarrassing it would be to ask for tickets—she wanted us to see the movie as much as we did! I was grinning like an idiot and shaking a bit for the few minutes before the film started because I was so excited with our success (an easily-gotten but nonetheless impressive achievement, because it turned out that only one other group of about 5 guys got in to see a film that afternoon).

Factory Girl, a film about Andy Warhol’s muse Edie Sedgwick (who was played awesomely by Sienna Miller), was a good first film of the festival for me. It definitely had some intricate cinematic elements—lots of black and white grainy footage, weird drug scenes—but it wasn’t too over the top experimental like some films are. I also enjoyed how it tied into our experience at a film festival; the film toyed with the idea that Edie’s search for glamour in the film business with Andy Warhol led her to ruin, and you definitely have to check yourself and see the glitzy world of filmmaking as it is if you want to keep your integrity even at a film festival (really a business event)!

The train back to Juan-les-Pins got to Cannes about 40 minutes late—plenty of time to talk to the other successful filmgoers on our trip and to get used to the fact that French trains will never be there when you expect them to be. I had a whirlwind dinner of half a cup of cereal, half a yogurt, and half a pear (all left on my table), got dressed and made up in record time, and left only to remember something I’d forgotten in the room three times before I caught up with most of the UGA folks at the train station. Everyone looked so nice in their dresses and tuxedos—I can’t wait to see someone else’s photos on Facebook, because honestly after all the chaos the last thing I wanted to do was fuss with my camera!

We got to the Palais and dispersed to beg for tickets. The red carpet was an absolute mob scene, so I found a place in front of the side entrance to start smiling at old guys who might have tickets. I was photographed too many times by pros and tourists alike, and I was filmed three times (thankfully never interviewed). I really didn’t feel as exposed as a lot of people had warned me I would feel, but when 7:15 came and I hadn’t gotten a ticket for the premiere and hadn’t seen any celebrities I did feel a bit disheartened.

Samantha and I killed some time at the Majestic but eventually got out to hook for tickets to the later premiere, which turned out to be much more fun. We stood near the theatre exit at first and had a good laugh looking at all the non-celebrities walk slowly and gloweringly by the scores of cameramen in hopes of getting their pictures taken. Eventually I wandered further out and found Bill, and we seriously were talking for about two minutes, holding our signs but not looking at the crowd, when a man came by with two orchestra tickets. Maybe two minutes later than that a really nice (and handsome!) French man gave me an extra ticket and called his wife (!) to make sure that she really wasn’t coming and that he could give the ticket to “une jolie, jeune americaine.” Eventually we stood there and got enough tickets for all of the UGA kids who had stuck it out, and at 10:45 Bill, Samantha, Laura, and I walked up the red carpet.

No celebrities were there for the later screening, but walking up the red carpet was pretty exciting. (Bill was most pleased that he had three pretty girls walking with him. ;P) We didn’t take any pictures because we had been warned by the two students who did get into the 7:15 premiere that our cameras might be confiscated, but I was glad to be able to just take it all in. The Grand Theatre Lumiere seats a staggering 2000+ person audience, and we were escorted to the very front by some classy-looking ushers—how cool! We had tons of time to look around in awe and to enjoy being off our feet and in comfy chairs for the first time in several hours.

Call me a geek, but I did get goosebumps when the intro symbol for the Festival de Cannes appeared on screen. The movie itself was a combination of drooling over Jude Law, fidgeting from being achy and hungry, and puzzling over Wong Kar-Wai’s style’s translation into an English-language film. I generally liked the movie, despite some quibbles over predictable plot recurrences, goofy dialogue, and too many slo-mo and extreme close up shots. I had been wanting to see it for a while, and as always Wong Kar-Wai drew amazing performances from all of the actors (even silver-screen newbie Norah Jones, who lived up to a part written as more reaction than action).

We gathered about 15 UGA kids at the taxi outpost near the train station and took surprisingly cheap cab rides back to Couleurs Soleil. After writing down a few of my thoughts on the movie, remaking my bed in the wake of Wednesday’s maid service, and washing my face, it was 3:30 am. I got up at 8:30 to start my second day of the festival and still felt incredible.

Une nuit blanche

I am still very tired (and excited!) from last night's opening of the festival. I couldn't get to sleep too well because my heart would not stop racing! It'll be awhile before I have time to write up yesterday's events (or post ANY pictures, for that matter), but here's what I was up to recently.

Lauren

15 May 2007

Last day of “freedom” before the festival! I got up at 9:30 to be ready for class, and still the electricity wasn’t working… So I let my hair dry on its own again, to no terrible result, and I got to talk to the cute electrician in French to get things sorted out. Then I got a text from Allison saying that class was postponed til 12! Bad for her, because it ended up that the trains were testing her gangsta and then the festival folks said we couldn’t get our badges until Wednesday after she got all the way out to Cannes… But then I had more time to get some groceries and eat my amazing discount banana/mango/coconut/almond granola (!!).

Today’s classes were more like real class. Everyone introduced themselves and said their favorite movies in Nate’s class, kind of nervously because it’s hard to tell what Nate likes (even though he says he doesn’t judge our film tastes, which is good). I felt like I defended my favorite Talented Mr. Ripley fairly enough. The class will definitely be a free-form, “speak up if you have an opinion” kind of thing, which I’ll need to work on, but it’ll be good once we’ve seen more movies and done more things—more material to talk about.

I think I’m really going to like Charlie’s class. He has a really cool approach about synthesizing your experiences in Cannes and gave some good examples of what other students saw and did to get us on the right track. He also gave us the skinny on why European films have less linear plots (not as much need to distribute as in the U.S.) and why there’s more sex than violence (apparently, European studies show that watching violence makes kids violent but watching sex makes kids more sociable and “productive” :P). I’ll need to keep up with my journals in dark theaters and train stations, but I’m sure the essay I want to write will strike me, as it usually happens in my strange, strange brain.

Everyone tried to go their own way to get to Cannes (for trade mags and maps to get oriented before the festival craziness), but we all ended up on the same late 4:00 train. Saw Charlie and his wife there, and they gave us the good tip that night premieres always rescreen at the Palais at 8:30 the next morning… It ended up that Samantha, Ryan, Jill, Geoffrey, and I wandered our way around the main drag, and we got a lot done! We saw some weird human-sized puppet show in the Canal+ tent on the beach, got most of our mags in the swank Hilton lobby (no guards!), got politely shown the door in the Carlton (lots of guards!), and inadvertently got filmed near the HollywoodReporter tent in the Majestic. I’m not sure, but I think Gael Garcia Bernal walked by me on the Croisette…!

We booked it back to the train station because I had misread the hourly departure time for JLP, but the train station was a zoo from what we heard was a transportation workers’ strike. ? Could be; it’s France. We met up with most of the other Cannes trip folks (some were just arriving), and eventually Tolu got wise and asked a station guard for directions and we followed her five minutes later to the correct train on the opposite side of the station. It was packed, but there weren’t as many smelly/complaining French people as there were yesterday, and we got back just fine.

I got back and ate a very “French” dinner of apple slices dipped in melted brie (a wheel the size of my face for 3 euros!). I also talked to my mom and sister tonight—yaaaay! It’s always good to hear from them, and it seems like they’ve had a fun time getting ready before Megan goes to Japan tomorrow. They’re probably going to read this soon, so hi y’all! :D

Not lost in translation

Gotta move fast before the internet in my apartment lobby craps out again (it's already broken twice! I'd use the free wifi at the laundromat, which is faster, but I bought the internet here and am stubbornly trying to get my money's worth). Here are two of my journal entries from the last two days. I'm sure all of my posts will be weird and long like this.

--Lauren


13 May 2007

I’m finishing up a long 18-hour day in Juan-les-Pins. I’m thanking my lucky stars that French time is six hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, because I couldn’t make it to the end of the day otherwise!

I barely slept the night before the trip. I wasn’t even obsessing over everything I hadn’t packed or every French phrase I could say but will never need to! I just kept falling asleep and then waking up fifteen or thirty minutes later and having my usual cuckoo dreams.

Packing was painless! (Generally painless at least—I did forget several things near the end, which Mom and Megan has to remind me of in my sleep-deprived state, but we found them all before we left for the airport.) We got to the airport in plenty of time, the international check-in was empty even of tumbleweeds, and I had two hours to sit by myself after a nice ABC lunch with the family to read the packet of reviews for my critical reviewing class!

I met up with Bill (who was actually on my flight) and Mandy, Jonathan, Andy, Tolu, and Chris (Flippo!) at JFK—how convenient that the flight from ATL dropped me off at the exact gate we’d leave from! A raspberry white mocha and lots of candy later, I got to my solo seat closer to the front of the plane than the others, and I surprised myself with how easily I made friends with the lady sitting next to me. She reminded me a lot of my mother and her friends, and we had a great time chatting about her daughter (also a journalism major, who went on to work for the LA Times), her plans for buying either a bichon frisé or a havanese, and our trips to the south of France (she’s staying in Julia Child’s old villa with her two friends and business partners, plotting a route for the culinary tour business they are setting up).

I don’t think it was the coffee, either (excuses, excuses—but I was really tired enough to sleep through the caffeine rush), but I barely slept at all on the flight. Maybe thirty minutes, tops. Even a pretty boring in-flight movie (Music and Lyrics), a surprisingly filling menu of airplane food, and a posh little Delta eye mask couldn’t help me get to sleep. I eventually got over the whole needing to sleep thing when the sun came up on the other side of the plane (1:30 am Georgia time!) and was content to sit, numb with sitting for so long, and stare off.

The Cannes group reassembled pretty quickly after the flight landed, but we had a few delays with cranky old customs lady in one of the two lines and with the unfortunate but probably expected loss of Andy’s luggage after three (four?) connecting flights. The airport is always very peaceful mid-morning on Sunday, so we had little trouble making our leisurely way out to the taxis. After a bit of bad French on my part and a hair-raising ride through the narrow stop-signless streets of Juan-les-Pins, we finally arrived at Couleurs Soleil!

I wish the past day were not the sleep-deprived blur that it is now, but that’s not to say that I haven’t had tons of fun. Allison greeted us with a warm (and thorough!) welcome orientation, and after meeting/waking up my roommate Samantha we gathered some folks together to go get lunch in downtown JLP. We went to an adorable café across from a park, and je me suis amusee bien en entendant aux enfants francaises et en mangeant le plus formidable croque monsieur que je mangerais jamais. I will definitely go back to that place, especially because the waiters were all so nice and the food was so good and cheap!

The rest of the afternoon/evening sprawled into one long attempted shopping trip. We did successfully get Mobicarts (the cashier seemed to appreciate my conducting the transaction in French) so that we can stay in contact with the people in Cannes. We also explored the laundromat, which, before our discovery of 25 euro, month-long internet in the apartment lobby, was our only available means for contacting the outside world. Which really means that we sat in without doing laundry and pirated it.

We took a brief break to get in some sun at the beach with about six of the guys. The beaches are really as crowded as they look in the tourist posters! It seemed like all of Juan-les-Pins was out with its dogs—clean little malteses, goofy-cute French bulldogs, hulking St. Bernards. I need to make myself “Oh, it’s a puppy” in French a bit more, maybe because saying it in English is getting to sound like a broken record. We also had fun watching a group of French types bury a guy in sand and give him sand-boobs; even if they sound hotter, they are still teenaged boys.

The search for dinner brought us back to our odyssey around the small streets and big traffic circles of JLP. We stopped by Casino to get groceries to cook: it was closed. We stopped by Porno Panini man’s shop: he had no bread. (We did get agrum Schweppes there—delicious!!) Every other little pizza/panini restaurant was charging an arm and a leg (and sometimes French insults) for dinner, but eventually we found a little snack bar that made 4 euro paninis. Half of my “pollo” (pronounced like it looks) panini disappeared quickly in my “hanger”, but it was so big that I got to enjoy the rest as a “midnight,” or 10 pm, snack.

I got to sleep early, after buying internet access that didn’t work but so well at night, and I. passed. out. I woke up once or twice in the morning due to some scooter noises (glad to learn that my earplugs could fall out!), but Tylenol PM carried me through to my first early day in JLP.

14 May 2007

I ate my first authentic French breakfast today! Well, technically it was called “le petit-déjeuner italien,” but it consisted of coffee, orange juice, and an apricot croissant and I ordered it all in French at the cute café across from our apartment. I also managed to get a French-English dictionary at a local bookstore and “orange framboise” Tropicana and “la crème laitant de corps” (lotion) at Casino, the local grocery store, after Mandy and I enjoyed our early breakfast and before we went to our first day of “class.”

Class was more of an orientation to Cannes life. Allison gave us some tips on everything from getting our phones to work to how to hop the train out of Juan-les-Pins for free, and I acted upon all that advice today, as I will discuss a bit later. Nate Kohn outlined his critical writing class a little better (yay deadlines!), and Charlie Eidsvik gave us his impression of Cannes before we begin filtering our own into our personal essays for his film class. Apparently Director’s Fortnight will have some of the best films because the selections are made with the director’s guild in mind, and Un Certain Regard screens some unsubtitled but easily infiltrated films in nearby La Bocca. So in all ways I have a bit more direction for the upcoming festival.

We circled by the café again after orientation to get lunch (I had a delicious raspberry tart!), and then by Casino to get more supplies (I had forgotten Nutella and bread!) But eventually we got down to business and went to Cannes for a preview. Oh. My. God. The town is very pretty—you come into the train station after driving beside the sea for a few minutes, and you can spy blue down the alleys between most of the very “French” stucco and wrought-iron buildings. Great shopping is everywhere, cheaper on the more inland streets but all Hermes and Cartier on the main drag, l’Avenue de la Croisette. All of the classy shopping on la Croisette was offset, of course, by tons of advertising for Cannes and its associated films; Bill, the self-professed “kid” in our group, gaped at the Transformers posters, everyone liked the advertisements for Evan Almighty and Ratatouille, and I snapped some pictures of the Focus Features banner (presumably above their section of a fancy hotel).

Glamour and camp collided for us at the Palais, the main theater (for premieres and competition films). The Cannes 60 poster, with a bunch of familiar actors and directors jumping on a trampoline, loomed over the almost-constructed red carpet, and some rockstar supermodel music started pumping right as we walked by. And then we saw the screen for the films on the beach, which stood behind a much more relaxed scene of French boys playing soccer (and flipping us off) and everyone eating ice cream. We all enjoyed watching the two-story carousel on the boardwalk; while we were too cheap to pay the 1 euro per ride, we resolved to get some pictures on it in our dresses and tuxes on a premiere night.

We got back from a very hectic train ride (strange and broken automatic ticket machines!) just in time for our welcome party on the top floor of the apartments. Allison, Nate, and Charlie and his wife provided a great spread of pizza, salad, fruit, and wine, and we all had a good time mingling and learning everyone’s names. The top floor was much cooler than in the morning, thanks to the breeze blowing through the open windows, and the panoramic view of the sun going down over the mountains behind the sea was breathtaking. This is where I’ll be working for the next four weeks?!

My roommate Samantha and I started walking to the beach between a few waves of Georgia kids, and we met up with UNC-grad Geoffrey to stare at dogs, run on top of the hills of imported sand, and tell little French kids what time it was. On our way back up the boardwalk (we were too skittish of hurting our sandaled feet on the rocks to climb across them), Samantha’s Bulldogs sweater found us a new friend—this guy walking down the beach was actually a UGA grad and has two short films in the festival! He reminisced with us about his days in Grady’s old film production program and his film appreciation class with Eidsvik, and we definitely called the dawgs to the horror of all French onlookers for his video blog of the festival. We’re totally going to his screening, and hopefully he’ll get back in touch with Charlie and Nate to talk to our class.

I’ve been winding down this evening, charging up my laptop in the non-existant wifi bubble in the apartment lobby. The night guard is playing some funny French techno radio, and the doors to the courtyard are open and are letting in the great smell of seaside flowers. Earlier I got a strange phone call from some French guy and almost hung up but eventually parsed out that he was going to deliver Ryan and Jill’s lost luggage; that was the most excitement of the past hour, but I’ve had fun in general chatting with the various Cannes program passersby.