Stars on the Croisette

Since my parents bought their flat in Cannes, almost exactly five years ago, I've never quite made it to the flat during the film festival. One year, I left on the day the festival started, which was something of an anticlimax. This year, though, I arrived yesterday morning, the day after the festival kicked off. I was expecting the town to be absolutely thronging but it is quieter than a normal day in the middle of summer -- in the daytime, anyway.

After lunch at the lovely Da Laura, we spent a few hours on Bijou Plage, my favourite of the public beaches. Again, it was surprisingly quiet. The sea was unsurprisingly cold, although I did swim. We had some rotisserie chicken for dinner and then headed down to the Croisette. Perhaps fortunately, we missed Lady Gaga but saw someone called Jessie J performing a song called Price Tag. Down by the Palais des Festivals, it was première time -- for We Need To Talk about Kevin. I think we missed Tilda Swinton et al. arriving but you can get quite a good view of the red carpet from the street so I snapped away just in case. Papa, meanwhile, says he saw Harrison Ford, and from the back, which was all I saw, the guy he mentioned could well have been Harrison.

The official festival website is not very well organised so it's quite hard to find out which films are on when and which stars to look out for. Eventually, I found the schedule in the press pack. It seems we could see Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz tomorrow, when Pirates of the Caribbean 4 will be shown. The new Terrence Malick film, Tree of Life, with Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, meanwhile débuts on Monday and both halves of Brangelina (plus enfants) are in town from their nearby chateau (Angelina, of course, made the front page of local rag, Nice Matin, alongside a giant panda, relegating a drug-related murder to page 13)).

Papa, not Harrison

As a resident, Maman could apply for tickets to certain screenings but we didn't get picked in the ballot (out of 1500 tickets, 12 went to people with surnames beginning with Z and only three to Ws; I call shenanigans). We can, however, go and see various nautical-themed movies, including Das Boot and A Night To Remember, which are shown for free on one of the beaches. Tomorrow night may, however, be more glamorous as we have invites to some swanky party on the Cap d'Antibes, courtesy of a marketing buddy of Papa's. I don't know whether Clive Owen will be there but it should be fun either way.