Cannes Day Seven - The Long Queue

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We are officially in the middle of the festival. This is the period when sleep deprivation, and exhaustion seeps in to all the festival goers. You can see it in the faces of people walking into the festival area in the morning, it feels like a typical Monday morning like anywhere in the world. There is a certain slouch with the way the people walk, in complete contrast to the way they were during the first initial days of the festival.

There are advertisements placed here and there saying that you could "rent a yacht", "play golf" or if you're cash strapped as me, the next best thing you could do is to take a walk along the croisette near the festival area. This stretch of road along the waterfront is about a mile long and has numerous clubs and restaurants right in front of the beach.

These places are the haunts of celebrity hunters and celebrities alike. In the evening each of these places is chock-a-block with people. Along the road you will find a lot of street dancers and performers taking up their space and attracting people with their antics. It's like the Marine drive of Bombay except that it's filled with Europeans and you can't understand a single word that comes out of their mouth.

Every now and then you will pass an American talking very loudly on his cell phone "YES DUDE!!! I'M IN CANNES, CAN YOU BELIEVE IT, I KNOW"!!

I tell you, no wonder they don't listen to the rest of the world's perspective...it's not their fault they are just hard of hearing.

I did manage to secure a ticket for the red carpet screening for the evening's highlight film, Two Lovers, the film stars Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow and Vanessa Shaw among others. The film directed by James Gray was a last minute entry for this year's competition section. Joaquin Phoenix is torn between the girl chosen by his family and his love for the new, volatile neighbour.

Set in Brooklyn, the film was a walk back to good old romantic films churned out by Hollywood in the 50's and 60's. As I promised, I did scan the festival area for the most deserving candidate for this ticket. There were two strong contenders, a film student who I had seen standing since 9 in the morning and a thirty something chubby man.

The first time I saw this guy was at about eleven in the morning, I decided to give the ticket to the film student, the reason being - his placard had se' vous plezs in seven languages. As luck would have it he turned out to be an AMERICAN!

Anyways, I too got to watch the film as there was a simultaneous screening for the press at the same time. I owe this to Dev Anand who stood me up! He had agreed to meet at seven in the evening for a short interview but when I called he said that it was late and that he was a bit tired as well. He promised me that I would get my interview the next day at twelve. Imagine, first a date with an old man and then to be stood up by him...

Man, this has got to be the pits!

This wasn't the only place where I got stood up, well not in the same way, but yes I did stand for an hour and fifteen minutes in the afternoon for a press screening of Indiana Jones. Just as my turn came to enter the hall, the usher pulled the dreaded sign board saying "COMPLETE'/FULL". I couldn't believe my luck. For a hall, which has a capacity of 460 people, I had to be the 461st person! Being a good Buddhist I just put this on my KARMA and walked to catch lunch at the nearest cafeteria.

On a daily basis there are about 240 films screened in 40 halls around the festival area.

The size of the halls ranges from a capacity of 35 people to 2,300 people. This is a huge list to go through and it is quite a task to decide which film to watch. Apart from the regular festival films there are also a lot of films screened for distributors. It's a big venue for buying and selling films. Ranging from the down right ridiculous horror films to large blockbusters, all formats are there to be seen.

Later on in the evening press screening queue for Two Lovers I mentioned my Indiana Jones incident to two German journos. They just looked at me and said, "pah!!! Pop corn film!! Why did you even queue up?

I didn't have the energy to have a debate on popcorn films with them at the moment. I just wanted to make sure I got my seat this time round. We were, an hour and a half away from the screening, the hall had a capacity of 800 and I was the first in the queue!