FAR and away the most stellar - and by a very long way the most expensive - event in Cannes was Thursday night's Cinema Against AIDS benefit gala for which the cheapest tickets were $1,000 a head and the best seats cost $2,500 each. Cher and Elizabeth Taylor came to Cannes as guests of honour for the evening which began with the world premiere of the latest Jane Austen adaptation, Emma, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Greta Scacchi, Jeremy Northam, Toni Collette and Ewan McGregor.
Following that black-tie screening, the guests were bussed or limoed into the hills for dinner at one of the area's leading restaurants, Roger Verge's Le Moulin des Mougins. Most of the movie's cast joined Cher and Elizabeth Taylor at the party, as did Prince Albert of Monaco, Elton John, Hugh Grant Patricia and Rosanna Arquette, Woody Harrelson, Francis Coppola (who, like Greta Scacchi, is on the Cannes jury this year), and Leonardo DiCaprio and Julian Lennon who seem to have been at more parties than anyone else in Cannes this week.