The colour of your press pass determines a lot at Cannes, including your behaviour, discovers DONALD CLARKEin the middle of a scrum
YOU WILL have read, here and elsewhere, pieces about Cannes from journalists who – if the easy tone is to be believed – swan around the place as if on a day trip to the candyfloss factory. And it is, indeed, true that those with the right class of press pass can go for hours on end without getting into a punch-up.
The distinctions between badges are more obscure and difficult to discern than those between various types of subatomic particle. You may think you’ve done well by securing a pink pass. After all, a glance at the literature confirms that only a white pass is more prestigious. Look again, hack. In between white and pink, we find the quasi-aristocratic pink with yellow pastille. Ordinary pink citizens get past the gate after a short delay. Pastille people walk straight in. White folk – a metaphor concerning racism looms – are carried by on sedan chairs while being fed larks’ tongues by Catherine Deneuve.
This correspondent is certainly not complaining. Our regular pink pass does quite nicely, but it is, nonetheless, extraordinary what degree of barbarism you can still encounter. While waiting for the press conference with Oliver Stone, it rapidly became clear that the only way to progress was to use elbows, fists and knees. As the mêléeescalated, a young British journalist, also from the pink brigade, turned to me and marvelled: "I actually have to elbow people? That was just not how I was brought up." I had to agree.
Still, William Golding, writing in Lord of the Flies, made a good point about the bestial nature of humans. Both of us made it into the conference and, the next time I saw my colleague, she was battering a Hungarian photographer with a bloodied ox femur.
The caste system instils, in those towards the top of the tree, a degree of smugness. Yet, the folk with the less powerful badges – blue or yellow – tend to be those who demonstrate the most assiduous devotion to the Great God Cinema. Film Socialisme,the new Jean-Luc Godard film (see review), despite promising nothing but Marxism and impenetrability, attracted two packed houses in Cannes's second largest screen. Aware that the film would be a big draw, yellow and blue journalists queued for 90 minutes in the baking heat before being admitted in grudging dribs and drabs.
Chatting with those towards the front of the queue, it became clear that, crammed together in tight huddles for hours every day, they had formed impressively thoughtful ad hoc panels. Yes, a Brazilian blogger told us, Leslie Manville, star of Mike Leigh's Another Year, looks like a strong favourite for the best actress prize. Alejandro González Iñárritu's dreary Biutifulhas engendered more hostility than affection, but the queue all agreed that Javier Bardem is current frontrunner for best actor.
They might not have any idea what they are talking about, but the grunts in the front line do often have a better grasp of reality than the brass-hats in the staff room.
As Cannes has progressed, and the programme has failed to properly catch fire, talk has, again and again, returned to the vexed topic of all the films that are not at the event. Three in particular are conspicuous by their absence. Throughout last year, the top festivals – from Cannes through to Venice – put it about that they were to secure the premiere of Terrence Malick's Tree of Life. Yet the epic drama, starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Fiona Shaw, remains lost at sea. It was also expected that Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, a tale of decadence from Los Angeles's Chateau Marmont Hotel, would be ready in time, but, though shooting has finished, the paint was not quite dry on the picture's windowsills. A great many punters were also hoping to see Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan– a thriller set in the world of ballet – unspooling at the Palais des Festivals. That too failed to materialise. So, Cannes's loss might turn out to be Venice's gain.
