His face told me something, but I couldn’t put a name to it. I knew I had seen her at the cinema, but in which film? She looked like a European actress, a Franco-French accent mixed with something else and a vague resemblance to Marion Cotillard.
Posted at 8:02 p.m.
Pretty, slender, elegant in a Louis Vuitton trouser dress. She quickly confided in me: she hates going up the stairs on the Cannes red carpet. All that time waiting, doing the potiche and posing for the photographers.
“I totally understand you! What wouldn’t you say to feed the conversation. The rise of the steps may upset actresses and journalists, but it is inseparable from the myth of the Cannes Film Festival. It is part of its brand image, like the Palme d’Or, no doubt more than the films in its competition.
It’s true, I don’t particularly like climbing stairs. The misery of the privileged, yes, I know. I go there when I’m forced to do so by a conflict of schedules in order to see or catch up on a must-see film. I really had empathy for this actress whom I had seen in more than one film. But which ones? I still didn’t know that.
To climb the steps in Cannes, you have to dress accordingly. Even when one is a simple critic. After two years of pandemic wearing the same gray kangaroo, I lost the habit of the suit. It takes what it takes. Except I didn’t have everything I needed.
In my hotel room, towards Le Cannet, there is no iron. The French don’t seem to believe in ironing. They fully trust the “pressing”. So I sent my suit to the dry cleaners as well as my shirt to the laundry, to be ready for the few evenings in Cannes that sometimes fill up my schedule as a festival-goer. A gossip columnist is never too well prepared.
I waited for a first invitation to a dinner or a party for several days. It’s 75and anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival. Should we celebrate it somewhere? Since the beginning of the festival, it was the dry breakdown in the radius of the invitations. “All dressed up and nowhere to go”, as they say in Cap d’Antibes.
I even feared that I had become a non-“gratin” persona when I realized that all my colleagues had been invited to the press dinner, but not me. Then at the precise moment when a colleague asked me to accompany her to dinner, I received the famous invitation. She must have gotten lost in the trunk…
The opportunity to wear my suit came on Wednesday evening, at the preview of Top Gun: Maverick. Said suit – it stays between us – is not a black or midnight blue tuxedo and looks a tad pale under the strict rules of stair-climbing protocol.
I was surprised when I put it on. Had he shrunk in cleaning? Should I complain to the laundress? Yet it made me feel like a glove in 2019! The good news is that if I don’t close any buttons on my jacket, I don’t look like a sausage…
I was about to walk the red carpet, then, when I was held back by the security guards. Did they notice that my outfit didn’t match the festival color scheme?
I understood that the climb of the stairs was in full swing and that I had to wait about ten minutes. We would not have wanted a nobody mingles with people and spoil the parade of stars.
I took the opportunity, as I was in the front row next to the steps, to take out my phone (which is strictly forbidden ON the red carpet, but not NEXT, according to the letter of the regulations) and sketch the portrait of young people men and women who showed us their most beautiful profile and their evening outfits.
I didn’t recognize anyone, except Omar Sy, who came to steppettes thinking he was Normand Brathwaite. He gave me a thumbs up as he passed me, a way of saying that he supported me in all of my personal, professional and administrative procedures. At least that’s the interpretation I gave to his gesture.
When Tom Cruise and the best-known stars finally climbed the stairs, I had already been hanging around the Palais des Festivals for half an hour. It was this European actress whom I couldn’t place who was right: the climb up the stairs, once we experienced it for the first time (and very incidentally had the impression of participating in the Cannes myth), it can be a long long time.
By the time I got back to the hotel, my shirt was as creased as before I sent it to the laundry. The (worldly) life is an eternal beginning. Friday night I had two invitations, to a cocktail party and a dinner party, and still no iron.
Fortunately, I am resourceful by nature, when vicissitudes become necessities. As it’s expensive, dry cleaning in Cannes, I decided to test the famous trick of shower steam supposed to smooth out a shirt hanging on a hanger in the bathroom. Conclusion: we’ll tell each other, it works average, this thing…
Running out of solutions, I nevertheless went to the cocktail party given by the Toronto International Film Festival, where I chanced upon its artistic director, Cameron Bailey. Charming and diplomatic, he had no comment on the state of my shirt or the quality of the films in the competition so far.
The puzzled look of Pénélope McQuade, with whom I work on radio, when I confessed to her a few hours earlier that I had not yet had a drop of champagne in Cannes – another myth linked to the Festival – convinced that it was time to remedy the situation.
At the bar, unfortunately the young bartender told me he only served beer. And as we had just changed the cask, it was mainly used as brew. Yet I saw bottles of champagne. “Yes, but unfortunately it’s not for this party,” Quentin told me (he sounded like a Quentin). While I had been waiting ten minutes for a beer without a false collar, a young woman ordered a flute of champagne… and was immediately served. I said nothing. I did like the Torontonians, I remained polite.
I felt crumpled and discredited when I came across the terrace, with a breathtaking view of Le Suquet, the filmmaker of Noémie says yes, Quebecer Geneviève Albert. She told me nicely, perhaps to cheer me up, that my suit was fine. This is a woman of taste, obviously. It is not for nothing that the critics praised his film and that it aroused the interest of international festivals.
On the way to the Critics’ Week jury dinner, given by Unifrance, I did not see Marion Cotillard on the red carpet of the Palais des Festivals, who should already have entered the Grand Théâtre Lumière. But on the terrace of Unifrance, I met this actress who vaguely resembles her and whom I finally replaced, on returning to my hotel. She is the muse of Yorgos Lanthimos, her husband. Her name is Ariane Labed, she doesn’t like red carpets, and I understand her so much.