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.