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Cérémonie
de cloture du 50ème festival de Cannes
1997 |
Cérémonie
de cloture du 50ème festival de Cannes
1997 |
Twelve days of breathlessness. With nine other people, my jury, whom I didn't know. The idea was to spend as much time together as possible, to prevent clan formation. Is that how it has worked? Let's say that it has avoided the worst... In the morning, before the eight thirty screening, we often had coffee together, in the small room next to the theater hall. Next, we could find each other back after the two morning films for a discussion-lunch, on the terrace.
And then, every other day, we were together for dinner. An
official meeting, and that lasted always three or four hours
! It was incredibly elaborate, you would have thought you
attended a philosophy seminar! A psychoanalyst worthy of
that name would also have been welcome.
In the jury, there were all types (...) Some used a highly
sophisticated dialectic, others not at all. In that case,
when you don't carry the baggage of university education,
you replace it with enlightened sincerity: I've learned a
lot about human interactions.
For starters, it's amazing to see the existence of a diffuse
sexism, that's there whether you want it or not, and that
does not depend on the intelligence of the people present.
Mira Sorvino, Gong Li and I - the American, the Chinese and
the Francaise - we were, despite our different backgrounds,
united in trying to make the intelligence vibrate other than
in the masculine... In a group like that, each tries to
prove his power. I had at times to work with great
strategists, wielding battle plans worthy of Napoleon ! An
example ? Someone who fakes having hated a film and who uses
such offensive arguments that it forces the others to put
themselves in the camp of the defense... No better way to
attain ones ends.
I must say that we've received a firm reflection of the
times in our faces. So, in the middle of that bidding war of
blood and violence, we had to be particularly careful not to
become moralizing, not to cling to repression and censure.
Defining integrity, judging the films on their
cinematographic merit rather than on their moral content,
it's not easy, I tell you ! The list of winners speaks for
itself, there is mourning, suicide, there's violence - but
dampened and largely hidden - and it ends somehow on a force
of life.
The double Palm is, I think, inevitable, if there's not a
masterpiece. The price for the fiftieth anniversary to
Youssef Chahine for his complete work ? When the people in
the hall began to applaud, I have turned back to the jurors
and told them, smiling: "It was a good idea!" When there was
a standing ovation, I have turned again, laughing: "It was a
VERY good idea!" Regrets about the prizes ? Very little...
Yes, something incomplete with the prix d'interpretation...
(...)
To see the films together also meant protecting each other against all that occurred between the screen and us. When there were unbearable scenes, the temptation was great to escape between the curtains. So, sensing a presence, holding a hand, whispering something to your neighbor, it helped to bear what one was watching. The last day, just before the prize ceremony, was also funny. We were sequestered in the mayor's house, on the heights, cellular phones confiscated, forbidden to return to the hotel, three per room, with the toilets at the end of the hallway, it was really a bit like summer camp! When changing, it was easy to find yourself in underwear, face to face with someone you didn't know very well !
Spare moments? When I played a "jewish mamma", keeping
myself busy by making sure that all my little world was
happy. As soon as a member of the jury had a problem, he
first came to me; for him I was the interface between the
festival and him. So I wound up solving problems with
irritability, with cars, with a smoking to iron, or overly
zealous body guards... There were also the phone calls from
Paris for reservations: because I was president of the jury,
many people thought that the Festival had left the hotel, or
at least a floor, at my disposition! (...)
The celebration day of the 50th year of the Festival I woke
up with blood-shot eyes, because of an acute conjunctivitis,
and I have passed the day putting in drops of cortisone. I
had to wear sunglasses non-stop. And then in the evening,
just before I went up the stairs, I heard a clamor, a
rumbling that arose from the crowd, from the photographers,
it was at the same time a adoring request and an imperial
order: "The glasses, the glasses !" It gave the impression
of a pagan rite on a base of primitive music, as in a Greek
tragedy. The veil that masked the goddess' face had to be
lifted... So, I've said to myself: "Courage, rather than
Iphigenia, let's play Antigone !", and I've lifted my
glasses, blinking my eyes. I've never been photographed that
much. Rather than undergo it, or even endure it, I've
accepted it, and it's been fine. Rather, it was
enjoyable.
If anyone was totally happy in all this, it was
Gabriel-Kane: beach, swimming pool, garden, child care, he
has passed 15 days of dream, even if he has virtually not
seen me: 15 minutes in the morning ("Hi, it's me, mom"),
around seven thirty, 15 minutes in the afternoon ("Hi, it's
still me, mom, you recognize me ?") and I was off
again...
Cannes, the day after the prizes, is Twilight Zone. During
12 days, noise 24 hours out of 24, bewildering. And last
Monday, the morning of the 13th day, I walk out in the hall
and there: emptiness, nobody, no sign, no poster, I
recognize nothing anymore. I call the limo service, the
people of the Festival with whom I've dealt during twelve
days. It's science-fiction: all gone, vaporized, as if they
had never existed... The Cannes Festival, does it really
exist ? In any case, I do: I will return to my life now.
With this wonderful memory.
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