It's all films and shabby directors at Cannes. Where are the A-listers, laments VICTORIA GALLAGHER-O'HOULIHAN

I was thrilled when The Irish Timesasked me to cover the Cannes film festival for normal people, but devastated when I got there. What is the point in buying a whole new beach trousseau – full price in BT at this time of year – only to spend 10 days indoors watching a bunch of fruity films?

Don't get me wrong – I'm an expert on movies. I would hardly have been shortlisted for Xposé's Search for a Presenter otherwise. But most of the films on offer at Cannes are reading films. You'd think in this day and age, when bearded nerds can make Avatar, that they'd have the technology to switch everything into English. But no – you have to read or you won't know what's going on.

Mind you, I'm not sure some of the films at Cannes would make any more sense in English than they do in Urdu. Take Jean-Luc Godard's Film Socialism. The other correspondent from this newspaper and his badly dressed colleagues said it was "a brilliant deviation from the bourgeois strictures of narrative and cinematic form", whatever that means.

I think they're just being polite. I didn't have the heart to say, but the projector at Film Socialismwas broken. It displayed a bunch of random blurry images, such as lolcats, a parrot, and people on a cruise ship. Even the subtitles were faulty. Words such as "NKVD archives", "Space is dying", "Kamikaze Divine Wind" and "British Left Israel" kept flashing up over the wrong pictures.

I did like the lolcats, but I fell asleep before I found out what happened to Hitler and Stalin. Mostly, Film Socialismreminded me a lot of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I didn't understand most of that, either.

I know what you're thinking. Where are all the yachts and the parties and the celebrities? Well, when you're not watching movies, you have to spend your time queuing for movies. I once queued at a rugby match, but at Cannes you are queuing for hours and hours alongside people who like to pretend that the projector at Film Socialismwas working properly, or that all you need to make a movie is Juliette Binoche and a swimming pool.

They also like to make-believe that directors are better than A-list stars. Every time I rushed toward a crowded red carpet with my microphone, there was some shabby little film-maker standing there. The festival did provide some older people your parents might like (Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Woody Allen) but that’s hardly like seeing Channing Tatum up close, is it?

When Godard cancelled his press conference, it left a space in my itinerary to hit a yacht party. After a brief pedicure, I boarded a splendid-looking vessel. As we sailed out, I thought that finally my Cannes festival was kicking off. But I had hardly swallowed a mouthful of Kobe beef when I realised I was now stuck on board with The Wrong Sort of People.

"Didn't I see you at Film Socialism? Wasn't it coruscating?" asked one foreign gentleman in corduroy.

Sigh. it was going to be a very long boat ride indeed.