Paul Cannes 2011 Blog

Heaven on a beach

Not wishing to be too spoiler-tastic, but anyone reading this who has seen one particular movie at Cannes 2011 will understand to what the title of this blog refers. For anyone else, simply suffice to say that a baffled consideration of sea and sand culture from a unrelentingly pale and pasty Englishman is what lies at the heart of this final blog post from the bestest film festival in the whole of France-land.

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The Palais des Festivals in Cannes during the Saturday premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean - On Stranger Tides.

Pirates of the Premiere: On Stranger Behaviours

It is a well-known fact that we live in a strange world, and few aspects of it are perhaps quite so strange as what happens to otherwise sane and rational people when they are placed within sniffing distance of global celebrity. And anthropologically-minded sort that I am, where better to observe this curious phenomenon first-hand than at the Cannes premiere of the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie?

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Good Cannes-ers

For all its merits, the Cannes Film Festival is also a nexus where a number of the cardinal sins meet, have a few beers, and then go on a little rampage. Pride is perhaps the main offender, but that's primarily because the offence of rudeness was as inexplicably overlooked by the original compilers of the seven deadlies as Stanley Kubrick continually was by the Oscar voting drones.

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Candid about Cannes

Hi, hello, and welcome. I journey to Cannes this coming Monday, the film festival commences on Wednesday, and I’ll be a drooling wreck from lack of sleep most likely by about lunchtime on Friday. Plus, thanks to a clamour as entirely silent as the one for Anne Widdecombe to appear on a new BBC show called Strictly Come Exotic Dancing, my blog is back.

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Parting shots

12 days of competition, 23 movies seen, approximately 24,600 words written (and counting). Two days spent watching films, a further full day expended queuing to see those films. Fuelled by an unending stream of tea and pastries, constantly besieged by mosquitoes. That was my Cannes Film Festival 2010, my first visit to the legendary event, and here a few final thoughts about the whole shebang.

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The Cannes frontline

I tend to spend my days at the Cannes Film Festival sheltering in the stronghold of the Palais, relatively safe amongst my fellow hacks, a good percentage of whom are every bit as pale and socially dysfunctional as myself. Yet sometimes the lure of the sun, the undertow of curiosity, and the tug of showbiz glamour is too intoxicating a cocktail to resist, and I head outside to join the crowds.

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Palais politics

The Cannes Film Festival prides itself on its unimpeachable Leftist credentials, with the cancellation of the event during the turbulence of 1968 being proudly recalled as an instance when Cannes stood shoulder to shoulder with the youthful student firebrands. Yet for those on the ground at Cannes, it can often seem as if the socialist spirit has gone walkabout.

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