(Cannes) “Have you ever been told that you look like Tom Hanks? As we were at the world premiere party ofElvis by Baz Luhrmann, I didn’t dare ask her if she meant Tom Hanks as Colonel Parker, with his old pelican’s double chin. I also didn’t ask him “How old do you think I am?” She wouldn’t have caught the reference to the old Oil of Olay ad.
Posted at 6:19 p.m.
I won’t be 50 yet this year. Tom Hanks will be 66 in a month and a half. When I passed under my nose at the Palais des Festivals, Thursday noon, on my way to the press conference ofElvis (and me to the bathroom), he glanced my way because two dozen photographers were shouting, “Tom! Tom! Tom! »? Or because he furtively recognized in me a double?
“God created 40 look-alikes for each person,” says the main character of Boy From Heaven by Tarik Saleh, film presented in competition a week ago. On the way to the toilets, I also met Monia Chokri, member of the short film jury, who was giving her prizes on Thursday evening, then the whole Belgian film team Close, my favorite of the Festival. But I digress.
“Yes, sometimes. This is what I answered to the young woman I met near the bar at the Palais Stéphanie Beach, on the seafront near the Croisette, who asked me this question about Tom Hanks. It even happened to me in Cannes, directly on the red carpet, during the climb of the steps of the gala screening of Mommy by Xavier Dolan. Right, Julianne Cote?
Should I be flattered that a young woman finds me a vague resemblance to an actor 17 years my senior, not particularly recognized for the finesse of his features, simply because he has the particularity of being world famous? I’ll answer that first question with a second: would you, gentlemen, like it to be implied that you have all the physical attributes of Forrest Gump? That’s what I thought.
What I failed to specify is that this question, which was intended as a compliment – I believe, in the context – was not disinterested. The young woman hoped that I would quietly give her the bracelet that identified me as a guest of this private party so that she could let a friend in.
I won’t tell you if I gave him my bracelet, more or less discreetly, risking worsening the tendinitis I have on my index finger by compressing my hand to pass it through a synthetic hoop. It would be risky. I wouldn’t want anyone to be reluctant to offer me other invitations to parties in the future.
The young woman, however, thanked me for my valiant efforts and immediately offered to buy me a drink. Then she laughed, a short, dry laugh, because the drinks were free, and she left immediately. Anyway, I had already had a Negroni and was eyeing the exit.
I had arrived on the red carpet of the premiere ofElvisweaving in zigzags between the starlets and their ball gowns, to the sound of Blue Suede Shoes. I left the party ofElviswhere we served – in homage to a dubious taste – fries and burgers, when the DJ integrated the rhythm of Small Town Boy to that of Tainted Love, as at 98.5 FM on Sundays. By not having heard any song of the King.
I won’t tell you if I still had my bracelet, but when I got to the top of the stairs, after walking the 300-meter red carpet that led to the exit, spied on by dozens of onlookers massed against the fence hoping to see a star (and obviously disappointed not to recognize Tom Hanks in me), I did not remember that security guards usually cut the bracelets at the exit of the parties. Fortunately, because I would have had cold sweats…
I entered the party by cutting through a line of dozens of people trying to sneak in on the sole faith of their “I swear I’m on the list” or “I know so and so”. They didn’t have a magic bracelet. Another young woman, emerging from a small grove near the exit, asked me if I would offer her mine.
I almost didn’t go to this very popular party. I’m not 50, but I’m not 20 anymore, as Charles Aznavour used to sing. I had just rushed to write my review ofElvis after the gala screening, it was almost midnight and my bed was giving me sweet eyes when I came out.
What convinced me was that I had missed the party given at Albane’s to Crimes of the Future by David Cronenberg, two days earlier, because of “I-am-too-old-to-go-to-parties-that-start-at-midnight”. I told myself that I had to kick my ass and that my most worldly readers had the right to know if Priscilla was still going out in clubs.
I wasn’t so much hoping for a chance meeting with Sharon Stone, Kylie Minogue, Shakira or Emmanuelle Béart – all seen on the red carpet – as a face-to-face with Tom Hanks, to whom I could finally have asked the question. “Tell me Tom, do you think we look alike?” »
I didn’t meet anyone I could recognize, not even Robert Lewandowski. The only one who spoke to me was this young woman who wanted my bracelet without buying me a drink.
“Humiliation is my engine”, I had said, presciently, to my colleagues in the To have to and Sun, earlier in the day, telling them that a pen had leaked into my backpack and that it had stained, not only my notebooks and my fingers, but in a way that I can’t explain to myself, the collar of my white shirt. My only White shirt. The one that I absolutely have to wear with a suit and the bow tie that I borrowed from my brother-in-law 15 years ago to hope to be admitted to the evenings and gala screenings of the Festival.
I was reassured by the fact that my neighbor at the screening ofElvisa sister of New York Times who I often meet at festivals, hadn’t noticed the ink stain on my crumpled shirt. She even complimented me on my blue suit asking me, perhaps jokingly, “whose is it from?” “. As I don’t always understand the irony, I answered him.
Returning from the party, on a Croisette livelier than usual in this year of “return to normal” of the Cannes Film Festival, gentlemen in suits with bow ties and ladies in evening dresses rubbed shoulders with young people in camisoles or in a t-shirt. They were a few hundred at the Cinéma de la plage, transformed for the occasion into a giant karaoke, singing in chorus with Aznavour. “It seems to me that misery would be less painful in the sun…”