Cannes Diary: Coming Home

When the high heel controversy hit Cannes, my first thought was unless you’ve been here it’s impossible to know how steeped in tradition it is. There’s that iconic image of a beautiful woman on the red carpet at Cannes. She ain’t wearing flats, my friends, I can tell you that. She’s wearing high heels. Men in tuxes, women in glamor and heels. The mistake isn’t that they want women to dress up — it’s that they turn others away for choosing not to. There is a tradition to it. You might argue that the tradition needs to die but then we all have to stop salivating over the beautiful women and their beautiful clothes on the red carpet. If it doesn’t matter.

Either way, Cannes, like a lot of European cities, preserves its past in its food, in its architecture. Cannes is not a progressive city as far as I can tell. The shops change on Rue d’Antibes, maybe the technology changes but change is slow. This is a city with doors and walls and structures from the medieval period still intact. They have rules and you are expected to follow them. For example, after doing some souvenir shopping this morning I went to the Palais hoping to get my shuttle voucher. I’d come down with a cold in the middle of the night and barely slept. I took that as a sign that my Cannes experience was mostly done and done. When I got to the press office they told me that I’d have to wait until 3pm to pick up my ticket. That was that. There is no sense in arguing because you won’t win. They don’t care if you are a whiny entitled American or not.

We kind of do what we want in the US. That’s the great thing about life in America and maybe the terrible thing about it. We’re free and we like to conspicuously demonstrate that freedom in so much as our society is built on consumerism. As consumers we have the ultimate power. We have laws that must be followed (most of the time) and we wait in line and drive according to the rules of the road but if something doesn’t make sense to us we tend to scream and yell about it until it gets changed. Our individualism is our barbaric yawp. This has blown up in our faces with the climate crisis, factory farming, pollution — we’re monsters globally, giant consuming, discarding walking horror shows. Having stricter rules would mean to many that we were bowing to socialism but just between you and me if you want to save the world you’re going to have to tame stubborn American individualism. Good luck with that.

This entitlement thing Americans have is probably really annoying to people in other countries who must deal with us. I’m sure once a European lives in the US long enough and gets a taste of that entitlement? They’re probably kind of excited about it. It feels good to have your temper tantrums attended to. It sucks to feel ignored. C’est la vrai.

Meanwhile, my Airbnb host had informed me that I would have to leave my place clean or else face a 30 euro charge for cleaning. I spent much of the day cleaning the flat, vacuuming up bread crumbs, wiping down the water spots in the bathroom, shining up the stovetop, dumping my coffee filters, throwing out my uneaten food from the tiny fridge, and stuffing all of the souvenirs I bought into one of my suitcases. This could potentially lead to a disaster of epic proportions as one of the wine bottles might crack, or something might pop open and spill out, ruining all of my clothes. I hoped that I packed things neatly and securely. With my luck, skill and history, though, chances are that something terrible will happen somewhere along the line.

My trip to Cannes this year has been different from last year. It’s not just the films that seemed different. One thing that will never change, though, is there never being enough time to see everything, never enough time to write. Half of your trip is beating back jet lag. When that goes away you suddenly realize how much more you still have to do.

There were some rumblings about about how this season at Cannes wasn’t as good as it’s been in years past. I wondered if people have that impression because so many the stories were so much about women. Is there a fundamental truth now that women’s stories have become irrelevant? Not as important? Can it never be “hard core” unless there is some singular male in crisis?

But then I remembered how Blue is the Warmest Color shook up the festival last year. A powerful moving drama that honestly didn’t even need the sex scenes to be erotic or highly charged. I don’t know the answer except to say that I didn’t think this year’s selections were any worse or better than previous years. I don’t have the one year I hold up against all others and say, that was the best one. Okay so maybe there wasn’t a moment like seeing All is Lost for the first time, or Tree of Life — or other unimaginably brilliant films playing to a packed house awash in total silence and awe (and then maybe boos).

I was thoroughly dazzled by Carol, though I wish it had been screened in the big theater and not one of the smaller ones. Youth was a life-changer for me, one of the most important movies I’ve ever seen about art and life and aging. Inside Out and Mad Max: Fury Road rocked the house. Mad Max received rounds of applause after each action scene. That was a thrill to see.

All the same, I did feel a distinct sense of melancholy. I don’t know what I would have done without seeing some friendly faces like Patrick Heidmann, Pete Howell, Jeff Wells, Anne Thompson, Erik Kohn. Mostly, though, as usual I liked taking pictures of the place and especially of its dogs. I realized that my morning “commute” has much to do with how I experience Cannes. When I stayed above the train station I would walk through the tunnel every morning. It would tell me so much about the place — a sleeping family of homeless Gypsies, a discarded bottle of Dom Perignon. This year’s walk is around the corner, down to the dock and straight through the tourists to the Palais. I mostly see visitors to Cannes, not residents. I wonder what it would feel like to wake up in the Hotel Splendid or Hotel du Cap. If a car drove me into Cannes how would I see the city?

As time wears on it speeds up. It seemed like the blink of an eye coming this year after closing out last year. After all this time I haven’t come to the big reason I bother with this expensive festival every year. I’ve taken all of the pictures, eaten every type of food available, shopped, driven, stayed in various parts of it. I don’t know if returning to a place year after year is the right call for anyone, least of all someone who has reached what hopefully is the half-way point in life. But something pulls me back every year. As much as film critics annoy me in general I find them inspiring in how they attack difficult movies and how they stay up late for midnight shows and how they kill themselves to see everything.

I’m finishing this in the Nice Airport, one of my favorite places on earth because birds fly through it. I don’t know where they come from but over the din of conversation and announcements I can hear their chirping. I’ve finished a foamy cup of coffee and have a long flight ahead. I know that I’ve always got so much to say but end up saying very little of it. A young German girl is laughing so loudly I’ve had to put on headphones. Bob Dylan’s Most of the Time starts playing. It reminds me how I think of Cannes after I leave:

She ain’t even in my mind
I wouldn’t know her if I saw her
She’s that far behind
Most of the time
I can’t even be sure
If she was ever with me
Or if I was with her
Most of the time

…Most of the time. By this time next year I’m sure I will be in this same place, writing similar words, so happy to be getting on a plane heading home to see my daughter who will be turning 17 on Monday. Nothing is better than hitting the ground at LAX after being gone so long — that big, ugly city of dying dreams is home to me and always will be.