Day Five at the Cannes Film Festival for me. I wake up at 11am, having allowed myself a lie-in after last night’s 3am return to the apartment. I am woken by Tony returning to the flat, already having seen one film in the morning. Such is the nature of staying cocooned in one’s sleeping bag for a few hours longer in the morning. I think I could probably see about six films if I really pushed myself and ran from one screen to the next. As it stands, I want to enjoy myself here and not burn out, so the most I’ve done in a day is four, so far.

You may think from the sounds of my diary entries that (other than queuing for a few films and not getting in), I have nothing to complain about at the festival. No qualms or minor aggravations to grumble at. Well, I thought that for purposes of constructive criticism, I would highlight two gripes I have encountered so far. I feel it is only right for a festival this size to have a couple of peculiarly recurring instances, that don’t feel synchronised with the intended feel of the festival. Here they are:

1) People don’t seem to be able to walk around each other, instead, they bash into each other. I am used to a certain type of unwritten societal structure where people on the pavement and pedestrianised roads walk in the same direction, on the same side of the road that they would drive or cycle. They do not do that here. Highway code, pah! People will watch you as you walk towards them, and then still somehow manage to walk right into you, whenever you’re not looking. I don’t get this.

2) I’ve been to four screenings now where I’ve sat down and sixty-year old plus men have come to sit down next to me, and their breath absolutely stinks. I mean really smells. Every-time they cough or sigh, or just generally shuffle about in their seat, a foul waft of rancid air emanates. This has not been the case with female neighbours – just the men. I wonder what they’re eating before coming into the screen to make their breath smell so bad? Whatever it is, remind me to not eat any before going into a public screening with a large chance of sitting next to a total stranger. The smell of rotting flesh and a creamy sauce is not an attractive one. Leave it out :p

 …halfway between a Tarkovsky film and the novel Le Grand Meaulnes.

With that done, I shall go back to the day’s experiences. Sunday was hot. Really hot. It was noticeably warmer than the other days I’ve been queuing for films. You could smell the extra degree or two in the air as you sat with everyone else for a few hours – daily screen programmes unfolded and covering heads, sleeves rolled down to protect arms. So what did I do? I rolled my t-shirt sleeves and trouser legs up even further, and exposed more of my pasty, pale skin. After two hours in the sun queuing to get in to Salle Debussy, I was turning pink. A reddish pink that screamed “you silly fool, buy some sunblock.” As Hubert Parry wrote, I was glad (to get into the cool confines of the screen).

The film I was there to see turned out to be really rather good. Argentinian director Lisandro Alonso’s fifth feature JAUJA, stars Viggo Mortensen as a colonial captain, in an unnamed place, and an unnamed time (I assumed somewhere in the 1800s). It’s presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio, and looks like it was shot on film and then digitalised (but I could be wrong here) – giving it the look of a overly-saturated colour film from the 1960s. There’s no soundtrack. Some fantastic tracking shots over wide, open landscapes. And Alonso seems to have particular skill at bringing characters from the frame position of extreme close-up to somewhere deep within the background of a shot. And vice versa. So far, so good. Then, about fifty minutes into the film, which has had no soundtrack up until this point, Mortensen’s character, Captain Dinesen, falls asleep beneath a blanket of stars in the sky, and then…well at the very least I’ll say we’re introduced to a soundtrack which I thought initially sounded anachronistic to a film which up until this point, had been very true to the era it was set in. I don’t want to give away too much, but by the time the film had finished, I found it to be halfway between a Tarkovsky film and the novel Le Grand Meaulnes. A really intriguing piece of cinematic magical realism. The lights went up in the auditorium, and there were Lisandro, Viggo, and the rest of the cast, being applauded by everyone. I nipped up to the centre of the screen (having sat right at the front for the screening), and got a few photos of Lisandro, just before he produced a small bottle of white rum (or it could have been vodka), downed a third of the bottle, and then shared it around the cast and crew, and the audience kept clapping. What a guy, and what a great director!

I feel privileged to be down here for this short space of time, soaking everything up.

I went back to the apartment after this screening. Cooked myself some pasta and got changed into my DJ once more for the evening’s performance in the Grand Theatre Lumiere. Just as soon as I’d eaten the pasta, I got an email from Tony inviting me out for dinner, for what was to be Becky’s last night in Cannes. We’ve all been off watching different films, and time has flown so quickly that I have barely had time to catch-up with the lovely PhD student extraordinaire Ms Becky Innes. I dashed out and met the group at the Casablanca Restaurant, where I ate cheese and bread to everyone else’s full meal. Sat outside on another warm Mediterranean evening, it struck me again this notion of time travelling quicker at Cannes. As I am out of my usual routine of Marketing Manager or Film Education in the Arts Picturehouse Cinema, I have lost track of the days, and of the duration of my stay down on the south of France. It reminds me of holidays to Montpelier or Barcelona with my best friend and his family when we were teenagers – only with a heck of a lot more films, and the fact that I can grow a moustache now! There is a fleeting and temporal feel to the whole affair. Here you listen to other cinema exhibitors’ or film festival directors’ success stories, hopes and fears for the future, and reminiscences of Cannes Film Festivals of the past. It’s a beautiful thing.

I stroll over to the Grand Theatre Lumiere for David Michôd’s second feature THE ROVER – a film starring Guy Pearce (yay) and Robert Pattinson (hummm), set ten years after a collapse of the western economic system, and more specifically, set in Australia. If you have seen his superb debut, ANIMAL KINGDOM (starring Ben Mendelsohn, who is here on Tuesday for Ryan Gosling’s directoral debut LOST RIVER), you will know just how good this director is. This film doesn’t disappoint. It has a great soundtrack made up of distorted instrumentation, and comments nicely on the fragility of society and the decency of people within it. I did however leave thinking similar thoughts to myself after watching THE ROAD a few years back. Any well-made film about the breakdown of society tends to do that to me.

I looked around at the scores of people out having a great time in this film festival. The well-maintained flower beds. The cars that drive up and down the streets. The lights that are functioning and importantly on in the evening. And I thought, I’d like this to be maintained. Please don’t let this vanish. I’m not sure whether it was all the film’s doing, or a shadow of a thought from the meal earlier on, but once again, I feel privileged to be down here for this short space of time, soaking everything up. Experiencing this.

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