The Cannes Film Flesh-tival
Once it was about elegance and glamour. But, says SARAH VINE, today’s ‘stars’ have tarnished it with their tawdry naked ambition
The 2015 Cannes Film Festival, you may remember, was remarkable chiefly for an incident in which a group of middle-aged women were allegedly turned away from a screening for failing to wear high heels. Several leading ladies, including emily Blunt and Kristen Stewart, breathlessly denounced the festival’s organisers as sexist pigs. The following year, Julia Roberts turned up barefoot in protest. everyone agreed: the red carpet is no place for sexism.
There might be some logic in this — were it not for the fact that in all other respects, women’s self-imposed red carpet dress-code seems to range from vulgar to super-vulgar.
It’s always struck me as somewhat irrational the way socalled feminists will screech about the injustices of high heels while at the same time indulging in the most demeaning acts of self-objectification.
Take this year’s festival. Susan Sarandon, 70, a famous and outspoken advocate of women’s rights, arrived with her chest so cantilevered it could practically double as a supper tray.
Quite apart from looking like someone’s vampire grandmother, what is she trying to prove? That older women have bosoms too? We know that.
There is an argument that this is what Cannes has always been about: getting yourself noticed, by hook or by crook.
It worked for Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren, and it’s working for Z-list, unknown Italian model Lara Lieto (no, me neither), whose blue chiffon strapless number was so poorly secured around her ample assets it looked like it was trying to make a break for it.
The difference is that while all three women are beautiful, Bardot and Loren also possessed demonstrable talent. Bardot, the original ‘sex kitten’, became a global icon in her early 20s, while Loren has an Oscar, five Golden Globes and a string of other awards to her glamorous name.
True, Cannes has always been showy — famous when it started in the Forties for allowing paparazzi to get up close and personal with the great stars of the day as they sunbathed, dressed to kill and partied the night away. Those willing to flash a little flesh were guaranteed adoring attention.
But it is only in recent years that the reality TV and Instagram brigade have turned it into a tenday celebration of tawdry nearnakedness, desperately hoping the world’s press will take the bait and mistake them for someone interesting.
And so much of the elegance of days gone by has been lost in the process. Presumably, Miss Lieto’s style objective (if she had one) was a nubile ‘just fallen out of bed’ look.
The effect, sadly, was more ‘tripped over my net curtains after one-too-many cocktails’.
NOT that baby-blue chiffon always has to look this dire: when Princess Diana did it back in 1987, she looked incredible. But then you can’t buy class. A point that British-born Gone Girl actress emily Ratajkowski (again, nope) proved when she offered her grateful followers on Instagram a preview of her red carpet outfit — minus the outfit.
Just the jewels, a collection of expensive-looking rocks, and the obligatory orbs, cupped in her hands in a classic telephone-boxescort pose.
After that, the dress was something of a disappointment, a rather dull satin number with nothing much to recommend it save a contradictorily demure glimpse of sideboob. Yes, it was slit to her hip, but compared with some of the other dresses on show, it was hardly impressive.
Still, she made up for it later. At one of the wild parties Cannes is so famous for, she seemed thrilled when her friend and fellow model Bella hadid approached her from behind and proceeded to administer what looked like a thorough breast cancer check-up. Ugh.
But even this looked positively