Good blood

`Film is like a vampire," Deborah Warner commented on Sunday night. "It eats you up. It just consumes you

`Film is like a vampire," Deborah Warner commented on Sunday night. "It eats you up. It just consumes you." The acclaimed English theatre director was relaxing after the warmly received Cannes launch of her first feature film, The Last September, at an entertaining party on a terrace overlooking the Festival Palais, as the guests consumed fine champagnes and delicious smoked salmon served on perfect blinis.

She was joined by the film's young Irish producer, Yvonne Thunder, a former assistant to one of the film's executive producers, Neil Jordan, and by several members of the cast, including Fiona Shaw, Jane Birkin and Lambert Wilson. Among the guests was sometime Irish resident Hamish McAlpine of Tartan Films who, with his wife, Karen, is among the lucky few staying at the festival's most desirable address, the notoriously expensive Hotel du Cap out in Antibes.