Getting suited to Cannes takes time
CANNES, France - Anyone who doubts that the world's film critics are different from the average Us Weekly reader should have been at Salle Debussy during the opening-night festivities for the 62d Festival de Cannes. Salle Debussy was not the venue for the opening-night film,
I tried to see some of this from the street, but the best I could do was shoulders, the backs of heads, and gates that allowed getaways for the sedans dropping off Tilda Swinton, Said Taghmaoui, the festival's grand jury, and others.
But I digress. My plan was to see the opening ceremonies from within the Lumière itself. That I didn't is a sad story of bad timing and worse attire. Someone with the festival was kind enough to produce a ticket to "Up." To retrieve it, I had to follow her assistant through the bowels of the theater in a way that made me feel like Lorraine Bracco following Ray Liotta through the kitchen of the Copacabana in "GoodFellas." The woman we went to meet ("la femme du billet") took one look at me then looked at her watch. "You will need to be Superman," she said. "You will need to change fast into your black smoking jacket to be let in. Run!"
Indeed, the premieres are formal affairs, which explains grand juror Asia Argento's rather astoundingly constructed floral print gown (one of the most beautiful articles of clothing I've ever seen). In any case, I was not dressed to be her date. I was dressed like a middle-school math teacher. I got the ticket at 6:10 p.m. The ticket specifies that the door for the opening ceremonies close at 6:35 - unless, of course, you're Jean Rochefort or Elizabeth Banks walking down the red carpet; then you can take as long as you'd like.
Getting to my room, putting on my tuxedo, and being back at the doors in 25 minutes is impossible (the cuff links alone take at least a week). So I stood paralyzed, feeling sad. I tried to sweet-talk a gentleman at the door ("You can put a giant paper bag over me."). Then I tried the woman working to his left ("Would it help to imagine how handsome I'd look?"). They both told me the same thing: "No smoking, no entrance."
At a film festival, as in life, nothing makes you more desperate to see a movie than being told you can't, even one that comes out in two weeks. I turned away from the Lumière, watching women in gowns and men in tuxedos begging for tickets. It didn't seem fair that they'd succeeded in meeting the dress code - in some cases, quite handsomely - but failed to get their hands on the one thing I had. Logically, they stood a far better chance of seeing the movie than I did. So I picked the woman with the nicest dress (three-quarter-length, stripes, some pouf: Lily Allen sass; Michelle Obama class) and gave the ticket to her.
Afterward, I called a friend to see what she was up to. As it turns out, she was next door at Salle Debussy waiting for a different movie to start. So I headed there, where the red-carpet events were being closed-circuited and projected onto the screen. Frankly, the only better vantage would be one of the apartments on the Croisette, above the Chanel store and directly in from the Lumière. (Every once in a while a man with several giant camera lenses would look up there beseechingly and whomever he made eye contact with would wave him up to take pictures. Very Fellini.)
The projected view in the Debussy, which was full of critics who'd already seen "Up" that morning, was great. (It was a big TV.) They, too, "aaah"-ed at Argento's dress. And they were not happy when the screen went black. In fact, they booed. The glamour feed had been snapped, and it was time to watch a movie. (See, movie critics: Just like Us.) 