Glamour takes the mask off at Cannes
For nearly everybody who has come to the Cannes Film Festival after months in various stages of lockdown and caution, the transition is headspinning.
Even in normal years, Cannes is an onslaught. But this time, plunging into full-capacity theatres and teeming red carpets is like stepping into another world. The morning after the Val Kilmer documentary Val premiered at Cannes, its co-director Ting Poo was still reeling.
“Yesterday was so surreal. Just seeing the film with a full theatre, and here at the most prestigious film festival,” said Poo. “To go from not being around people to that experience in a day was incredible.”
The pandemic is far from invisible at Cannes. A negative Covid-19 test is required every 48 hours for even those vaccinated — unless they got their shots in the European Union. Moviegoers wear masks indoors. Everything is a little muted. But in places like the Cannes red carpet, life is almost normal — if “normal” can apply to a stretch of carpet where coteries of stars drift in every few hours.
Glamour has been unmasked, maybe more than any other time in the past year and a half of pandemic.
Over the first few days of the 74th Cannes Film Festival — held later than usual, and after last year’s edition was scrubbed entirely — the red carpet has looked much as it has always before. Ahead of the festival, its director Thierry Fre´ maux said dinners would be more favoured this year than cocktails.
“The pandemic is not conquered,” Fre´ maux said last week. “So we all have to be careful, even though most festival-goers are vaccinated.”