despatch from cannes09
'But don't you know who I am?' The paparazzi at rest.
Cannes - Day 6:
I find myself standing in a line awaiting entry to the film Precious (which in review was a mighty, mighty good film).
I've found lines are actually few this year - it's reported by industry press that attendance is around 30 percent down for the market at least.
You've got to say that's really something - that means a lot of money not here and perhaps an interesting turn with local distributors having a slight edge at the negotiating table.
Seasoned Cannes Aussies who spoke on the QT said parties were down by two thirds - which means of course that they now have to buy their own food.
This in itself is an interesting experience. It seems the cheapest thing in the supermarket is wine - which fixes one of the "fewer party" issues. There is a strange time loss that comes over me though when I go shopping here - one minute I'm buying the necessities and the next I'm standing back in the apartment next the fridge holding a block of cheese. My fridge is full of the stuff.
As to the festival, there are noticeably fewer people around also - and I'd have to say younger too.
There's a fair contingent of Aussies here in the main body of the festival this year which is really great and their works are of a seriously high calibre. It's very heartening and there's certainly a sense that something's a goin' on!
But something's always a goin' on here. There's the inordinately long walk to get to the red carpet which once you get there is over in a flash - quite literally. But I've been studying that science - and as you'd expect in many, many cases the film is quite simply secondary to the walk.
On this walk past what has to be 300 photographers, if you're famous the flashes are blinding. If you're not, it's like walking into a western saloon where the piano suddenly stops playing. There is a fantastic intensity of colour and energy though - it's quite something. But either way, there are some sensational outfits and it is everything you'd think it to be.
In fact all of Cannes is. From the film festival side of things it is totally alive and when a film goes well, there is not a better audience to share it with. The rapturous applause for Ken Loach's Looking for Eric can bring a tear to the eye and shiver up the spine in this environment. Discovering the buried gems with a small audience is also enormously rewarding - the sharp Brit prison film Bronson was but one.
For me perhaps the most exhilarating work to date though was the epic Japanese revenge tale set in the 1500's, Goemon. I have quite simply never seen action like it. Vividly textured, thundering sound, violence to a level of the film 300 yet great innocence, set action pieces and a kind of colour, scale and concept realisation I haven't seen before. Really something.
But the market ... man, I just can't seem to get my sense of direction right. It's quite massive, over a couple of floors and large spaces filled with hundreds of booths. Once you're in you just can't seem to get out. It actually reminds me of that great line in the Magnificent 7 when Yul Brynner reminds Eli Wallach that the new walls in the village were not built to keep the bandits out, but to hold them in.
It's everything righteous and everything evil in the film industry all in one place and right next to each other.
Signing off,
Richard Sowada
Published Thursday, 21 May 2009
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