I attended the Cannes Film Festival for the first time this year. Well, “attended” online. And actually, it wasn’t the Festival, it was the market- Marché du Film. The Marché is where films, not in competition or selected for screenings, go to find buyers, distributors, and festivals to show it. Basically “We made this film, please watch it and like it and help us get it seen!”
Last year was the first year that Cannes had an online component. Three of my colleagues at the CFI got a pass for the Marché and, of course, I was totally jealous and felt left out. Sometimes our Executive Director actually goes to Cannes for the Festival, but, as a non-profit, we’re not rolling in trips-to-Cannes kinda dough. So, I was very excited when, in April, I got a text from that ED, “Need your birthday info for Cannes: NOW!!!” aka “I’m filling out pass info for everyone getting a Cannes pass; I need your birth date because you are getting a pass.”
I took a vacation the week before Cannes (July 6-15), so it was back to work and straight into Cannes mode. Our strategy as a group of four, to see as many films as possible, was to assign ourselves geographical regions. I got USA, Australia, and New Zealand. Fine by me. After searching through each day of screenings, country by country, and adding films to my agenda, I didn’t have much, so I asked for some more countries and also said I’d watch all the LGBT+ films. Even with all those areas to cover, it didn’t mean I would see every film I wanted to. Most films required an invitation. Simple enough, I had to click “Request an invitation” and paste in my ‘who I am and why I want to watch your film’ blurb and then wait for an email that I got an invitation. This meant planning in advance and requesting all those invitations with the hope I’d get them. I’d start every day with about 12 screenings in my calendar, lots of overlapping times. And each morning, I’d see which films I actually had an invitation for, and decide which of the overlapping films to watch and which I could skip (no invite, someone else on the team is watching, or I can watch it another day) and end up with only two or three films to watch in a day. Every day, I’d look over the screenings for the next day or two and request invites for anything I wanted to see, even if it was outside of my assigned countries, because, why not? It’s Cannes, I want to see as much as possible. And we used an Airtable (my religion 🙌) to keep track of what everyone was planning on seeing, so I knew if I was doubling up or not.
So, for ten days I watched as many films as possible. What a #blessed life I live, eh? Ya, watching movies all day is great, but I also still had to keep up with the rest of my duties at work. And watching films as a programmer is very different from just watching for entertainment. As I watch, I’m also analyzing. Every movie gets the 20-minute test; if, after 20 minutes of watching, I don’t like it or see that it is just bad, I stop watching. (I suggest this for everyone; life’s too short to watch movies you don’t like.) However, I can’t just say “meh, this isn’t my jam” and quit. I’m not just watching for myself, I’m watching for our festivals. I’m watching for our audience, and potential audience. I’m watching for my colleagues, because we can’t all watch everything. I have to check my personal biases at the door (the metaphorical door to the metaphorical cinema) and watch with both an open mind and also a specifically judgemental mind; judging if it’s right for any of our programming. I watched some that I didn't really like, but because they weren’t truly bad, I had to see it through to give it a fair review with festival judgement. But I also got to give up quickly on obviously terrible films because there’s no time to waste with a Cannes pass. I mean this in comparison to other programming viewing I was doing this summer for a couple of Canadian festivals as a volunteer pre-screener. I felt more obligated to see those films through, to be able to give them the comprehensive rating and notes that the festivals were asking for. But at the CFI, my programming instinct is more trusted, and I felt more confident that I knew when to give up and when to give something a chance. And, of course, which to give a thumbs up in the Airtable for a recommendation and which to give the thumbs down.
I started and finished my Cannes experience with some pretty good films. I began on Tuesday morning with Juniper from New Zealand, starring Charlotte Rampling as a gin-swilling grandmother who forms an unlikely and heartwarming connection with her rebellious young grandson. The first of three ‘older generation connects with younger generation’ films I’d see at Cannes. One, Jump Darling from Canada, being strikingly similar in plot points except no one’s addicted to gin and the grandson is an excellent drag queen. (They even end pretty much the same way, but I won’t spoil anything for you.) And another, That Was Life from Spain, about two women who meet in a shared hospital room, form a relationship, and when one dies, leaves the other to go search for her estranged family. So, that was the start, little did I know the theme of which would repeat throughout my viewing. The last was a film that had been on my radar (and To Watch list) for a couple years, if only because it’s woman-directed and starring Léa Seydoux. The Story of My Wife was a great finale- one of the few films in competition to also show in the Marché. I found it strangely charming. It had a tone throughout the quite dramatic story that felt like at any moment a joke would come out, like everything was right on the edge between drama and comedy and it felt like it would tip over into comedy if someone would just land a punchline, but it never did. It was quite tragic, but overall enjoyable.
The first few days of Cannes, I napped. Was Cannes exhausting? I’m not sure, but naps can really interrupt things and ruin the rest of your day with post-nap grogginess. Maybe bad movies make me tired- I don’t remember having to pause, and abandon, anything actually good because I was falling asleep on the couch.
My overall feeling of my week of Cannes is that of a Mediterranean holiday. Not just because I was pretending I was actually in Cannes. Venturing outside of my assigned geographical regions in order to fill up my schedule, I ended up watching several films from France and Spain about people on holiday and feeling oh so jealous of their ease. They lounged on beaches and in big summer homes. They went in and out of the ocean, letting their hair dry naturally. They wore very little clothing and didn’t care who saw their bodies. Yes, I was very jealous after I had just attempted my first summer beach vacation and did not have a good time, actually. Also, longing to travel to places in Europe after just discovering my yen for solo travel just before the pandemic travel-blocked me. 🎵 I want to break free 🎵 The stand-out of these dreamy Mediterranean holiday films was, well, actually in Croatia, which the synopsis clarifies is on the Adriatic Sea, which Google tells me is part of the Mediterranean Sea. And no one’s on holiday; the lead characters live there. Tragically, I had to watch Murina (which means “eel” in Croatian) in, like, 480p because that was the highest option, to which I wondered why Cannes, even in the Marché, would allow anyone to show anything less than 720p, at least. This one was also in competition and won the Caméra d’Or (award for best first feature), so I hope we show it at our festival and I get to see it in a cinema and truly appreciate the beauty of it.
Wednesday evening at my Spotlight Series meeting, everyone gave a one-minute “Where I’m at” summary and mine was “I’m at Cannes???”
I was pleased with the documentaries I was able to see. A quick backstory on one; the CFI hosts the European Union Short Film Festival every spring, and this year the film from France was The Amorous Indies (Les Indes Galantes). It required a long explanation in the synopsis to understand the context, but it was essentially a group of dancers krump dancing to a piece of an opera. I was captivated. So, back to Cannes, I see on the schedule a documentary titled Indes galantes and am excited to see it is about the making of the entire opera choreographed with krump, and other “non-traditional” dance styles. I’d love to see the actual opera in full, but to see some of it in this doc was incredible. I also searched for snow leopards in the Tibetan plateau with The Velvet Queen and got a fascinating insight into the lives of six trans women on a road trip in Spain with Sediments. I loved watching the dynamic between the women, a range of ages, all with different experiences as women and as trans people to share; both camaraderie and drama.
On Thursday I called my mom to wish her a happy birthday, after a day of screenings, and then probably put The Golden Girls back on for the evening. Yes, even when I’m watching movies all day, I still want some comfort watching to relax in the evenings. I don’t know how to live without having people talking on a screen all the time! It’s amazing I was able to turn off the TV and write this piece!
An unfortunate staple of film screenings now is the pandemic-set films. It’s unfortunate both because I personally don’t want to watch films about this “unprecedented time” and also because most of them are terrible. They rely too heavily on the premise and don’t actually have a good story; everyone with a camera in 2020 thought that documenting their isolation would be so unique and artistic. (You were all wrong; ya boring!) Even worse, maybe, is the title cards put on some films now. “This film was conceived, written, and produced before the COVID-19 pandemic” appears before a generic dystopian-future short film that has something to do with a virus or people wearing masks because of air quality. Like, okay, you want to make sure we know your idea was original and that you didn’t just take from real life to make your story? Well, too late for that, since dystopian-future films have been around for, like, ever, and yours is not special, actually. It’s mediocre like all the others.
Despite all that, I took a chance on a couple pandemic-set and -made films and was pleasantly surprised. Coincidentally, both films utilized long takes and used them well. #StayHome used the isolated environment and small cast to create a ridiculous scenario for its characters, and while I wouldn’t be able to tell you the plot points of the film without laughing, it’s not a comedy. I mean, hilarious stuff happens, but it’s taken so seriously by the characters that you are just in it with them. Trying to use a dead man’s face to open his phone with facial recognition is hilarious when you have the distance of watching it in a film, but if you were there desperately dealing with dead landlord problems, you wouldn’t really see the humor. The other pandemic film took the long-takes a step further, all the way, to a single-take film. Roaring 20s follows bits of conversations between people all over Paris, moving effortlessly between characters. (Apparently after an initial lockdown Paris said “I don’t know her” to Covid and the city was functioning like nothing ever happened in summer 2020.) Some are philosophical discussions between two people, some were mundane or silly, some with several people, some with just one. Most are walking, but some are sitting, taking the métro, or riding a motorbike. An incredible feat of choreography and cinematographer for sure.
I started and didn’t finish plenty of films between these ones good enough to mention. Some were abandoned very quickly; I didn’t even put them in the Airtable to say I’d watched them. Some were given a chance but didn’t make the cut.
Monday morning I watched what would be my favorite film of the week. Even though it’s from Brazil and someone else was covering that territory- this one looked really cool so I wanted to watch it. Okay, how do I describe Medusa? By its lighting? Like a pop music video, pink and purple neon surround the teenage girls, but sickly greens and flickering fluorescents create a disturbing long-term care ward. By the Christian hypocrisies? A group of teenage girls spend their nights in white masks hunting down and beating sluts and sexual deviants then singing praises to Jesus at school assembly the next day. Purity rings and black eyes. By the obsession with perfection? Losing her job at the plastic surgery practice because her scarred face means she’s no longer perfect enough to be seen there. Their self-righteous pleasure in sharing the town urban legend; a promiscuous girl who got acid thrown in her face. It’s a fuckin trip, man. And one of the best, weirdest films I’ve seen in a while.
Tuesday morning I watched an American film that I think I had passed on earlier, but reassessed at this late stage, where I was giving more films a chance because there were fewer left to watch. This American film, Moon Manor, surprised me. I’m not sure why I brushed it off at first, maybe it just didn’t seem like a festival film as much as others. But it turned out to be one of my favorite picks from Cannes. It’s about an old gay man with alhzemiers who has chosen to die. The film was full of so much love. Recounting heart-warming stories of his life, his friends and people around him. And many laugh-out-loud and delightfully funny moments. It’s a beautiful journey in one day and left me crying bittersweet tears for this man, his life, and the beauty and tragedy of it all. I’m just glad this was screening when it was, so I actually gave it a chance; it didn’t get lost in the sea of films on more crowded screening days.
Nearing the end of the festival, Cannes screenings were taking second priority to all my other work. My work days were pretty much back to normal. On Wednesday and Thursday, I only had one screening each, both in the evenings, finishing with The Story of My Wife.
And that was Cannes! From the couch.
I hope I go to Cannes someday. But it’s still pretty cool to say I've attended Cannes (even just the Marché du Film). I love programming. Watching films and assessing them for if they’d fit into certain festivals or programs. Seeing things before everyone else. The excitement of finding one you love and being able to bring it to your festival to share with your audience. It’s all different now with online access. And this isn’t a think piece about the future of festivals, but I think hybrid is here to stay, at least in some aspects for some festivals. Things like the Marché du Film make sense to be online for more access; we’re not all fancy enough to be going to Cannes but we need to see films too. And films need to be seen by programmers and buyers. But I understand the big fests keeping their competition to in-person; they need the exclusivity as part of their brand and it’s just a part of the industry. But now online screenings, screeners, entire festivals, and industry events are also part of the industry. As with anything- keep what works and change what doesn’t. Okay, maybe this is a little about the future of festivals.
My first festival experience was pretty much what I thought it would be, even online; very organized (Airtable), but confusing (first time), and by the time I’d settled in, it was over. And it’s never as glamorous as you think it’s going to be.