YES YOU CANNES!
Want to live like a star but without the blockbuster budget?
THE French Riviera was once described by Somerset Maugham as a sunny place for shady people. Each May, Cannes, with a population of 70,000, becomes a melting pot of movie stars, wannabe exhibitionists and billionaires.
Deals worth tens of millions of pounds are done during the 12-day film festival. At the last count, Cannes had six five-star and 24 fourstar hotels, so it is a shame that it is often dismissed as just a convention town and an over-priced tourist trap. It was not always so.
Former Lord Chancellor Lord Brougham is seen as the founding father of Cannes. In 1834, he set out for Nice, but a cholera outbreak prevented him from travelling further and he found himself stuck in Cannes, then a small fishing village.
It was love at first sight and he spent the next 30 winters there, acting as a remarkable one-man tourist board for the town. Soon aristocrats from all over Europe were flockingking there. A statue of Lord Broughamham overlooks the harbour, a place now teeming with the superyachts of Russian oligarchs.
It is worth taking a stroll along the Jetee Albert Edouard to catch a glimpse of the excesses on show. Last year, Italian fashion designer Roberto Cavalli hosted a party on his £25 million boat and was joined by top models and singer Kylie Minogue.
Martin Scorsese made more constructive use of the 164ft Odessa, conducting a series off meetings with distributors theree in an effort to persuade themm to back his latest project, Thee Silence. The serene surround-dings worked – Scorsese is noww shooting the movie with Liamm Neeson and Andrew Garfield.
This year the Coen Brotherss will serve as co-presidents of thehe 68th Cannes Film Festival Jury. The epicentre of the festival is Le Grand Palais, nicknamed Le Bunker, where the red-carpet premieres take place in the Grand Theatre Lumiere. The top films compete for the coveted Palme d’Or.
Tickets for screenings are like gold dust, so many wait for returns at the edge of the Palais steps. These ticket prospectors often do strike gold, but cyborg-like security guards will enjoy refusing entry if they are not dressed appropriately for the black-tie screenings. Free tickets are available for the earlymorning Critics’ Week screenings at the Espace Miramar, and free open-air beach screenings take place each night at Plage Mace.
The festival revolves around three iconic Art Deco hotels – The Majestic on one side and The Martinez and The Carlton at the other end of the promenade known as La Croisette. The Carlton featured in Hitchcock’s To Catch A Thief. The two distinctive domes on either side of the hotel were reputedly designed to resemble the breasts of a famous pre-war courtesan, La Belle Otero. The hotel terrace is a hub of dealmaking, but you do not need to be a guest to enjoy a sundowner there.
The Martinez boasts the biggest and most expensive penthouse suite (a mere £35,000 a night). The hotel’s Michelin-starred restaurant, La Palme d’Or, is one of the most popular and expensive places for dinner. A few miles up the coast is the iconic Hotel du Cap at Eden Roc. It’s where studio chiefs and stars stay, including Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Clint Eastwood. The Eden-Roc restaurant is perched right at the top of the Cap d’Antibes. It is a stunning location, and you can dine there or spot A-listers lounging by the infinity pool without being a guest there.
The hotel also hosts Charles Finch’s film-makers’ dinner and the legendary AmfAR charity auction, overseen each year by Sharon Stone. Last year, Robin Thicke, Lana Del Rey and Andrea Bocelli all performed, while Damien Hirst’s spec- tacular golden woolly mammoth skeleton (housed in a huge steel and glass case) sold for £9million.
Just outside Cannes is seafood restaurant Tetou, facing the beach at Golfe Juan. Two hundred years ago, Napoleon landed here with 1,200 men, having escaped the shackles of exile in Elba. He would certainly have approved of the restaurant’s mouthwatering bouillabaisse.
After a long day promoting Kung Fu Panda 2, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt chose to have a romantic dinner at Tetou – I hope they remembered to take some cash, as it doesn’t accept credit cards.
If eating at The Majestic or The Carlton is too pricey, try any of the restaurants in and around Rue du Bateguier behind the Grand Hotel in Cannes (such as La Mere Besson), or the relatively cheap and cheerful Italian restaurant, La Piazza, in the old harbour. The best reasonablypriced seafood in Cannes is served