Cannes you dig it?

Did I want to go to Cannes for the film festival? The invitation was impossible to refuse – and so I packed my bags with a mounting sense of excitement.

The occasion was a showing, at the world’s most prestigious film festival, of Randall Plunkett’s Out There – a short Irish horror film which has been getting a great reaction wherever it’s shown. I play the lead male, opposite Emma Eliza Regan – and so I wasn’t just going along for the ride!
We stayed at a villa belonging to the Dunsany family in St. Jean Cap Ferrat – the first of many wonderful surprises. A trip to the Grand Théâtre Lumière was next: what a beautiful cinema, the biggest I’ve ever seen!
I booked a ticket randomly and went to see Grisgris not knowing anything about the film. I was bowled over. It tells the story of a young man from Chad, whose left leg was paralyzed. I started to piece the puzzle together when the live feed from the red carpet showed us Grisgris himself arriving and delighting the crowd with a magical dance-piece on the red carpet. And, yes, it was amazing, despite his fully paralyzed left leg, on which he balances, more as a crutch than a limb.
Films of this ilk may not, as a general rule, be particularly enticing: we all have a natural distrust of sad-but-true stories that have the potential to drag us down, but this one was wonderfully emotional. Tears of joy streamed down my face at regular intervals, leaving me inspired and uplifted. Don’t miss it if you have a heartbeat.
Tickets for ‘invitation only’ films were few and far between. Punters lined up outside the reservation area, holding placards saying ‘invitation pour Grisgris’? in the hope that someone might give them their ticket… No fear of that happening with me!
I also had the dubious pleasure of catching Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive – which follows the centuries-old romance of a married vampire couple. If you’re into slow films with even slower dialogue, very little action to speak of, and a brief appearance or two by John Hurt, then this might be the one for you. But not me. Tilda Swinton is great, but the film is about how boring it is to be immortal. Thanks, Jim: I’m now very glad to have the clock of certain death slowly ticking away for me. Whew! Let me outta here!
We had lunch at a fancy restaurant along the Croisette. Our cameraman Philipp Morozov couldn’t resist going over to the table opposite to ‘network with’ – i.e. chat up – an actress, who was not just beautiful, but radiantly so. It turned out she was one of the lead actresses in a cannibal film called We Are Who We Are about a father and two girls, who eat passers-by, including unfortunate flat-tyre fixers. The father is well past remorse but the two daughters have a hard time, erm, swallowing the meat of the prisoners they take (and cook). It’s a well-cast film, with a tense storyline. It could have been 20 minutes shorter and the finale was OTT, but it was worth seeing…
The biggest surprise however was when Sultan El Seif, a school friend of Randal’s, came to town in his Ferrari. He has a house in Cannes – but you get the feeling that he has a house in all of the most beautiful places in the world. He invited us to a club called Palm Beach, where Snoop Dogg was headlining.
We were able to skip the queue of about 500 people – a first for me! Our table in the VIP section cost €12,000 – enough to feed anybody for a year. Oh yeah, drinks excluded.
Cannes is not cheap! We procured a bottle of whiskey for €350 and a bottle of vodka for €1,000. You’ll be glad to know that the Princes of Persia were unimpressed – apparently they’ve seen it all before!
Along the way, we also met the guys from the Hardybucks, which was fun. Plus, a random tip: Christopher Tornoff is a genius. You’ll see over the next months.
We didn’t catch the winning film, La vie d’Adele (‘Blue is the warmest colour’), but it had been heavily tipped, given its lesbian theme and the fact that gay marriage is such a hot topic at the moment. I’ll watch it when I get back – and not only for the extended, explicit lesbian love scenes. I promise!
As for Out There, the film was a massive success! We played throughout the festival at the Short Film Corner and the turnout was incredible. There was brilliant feedback from audiences, suggesting that it could be the first success of many for Randall.
I am now in love with the South of France. The waiters and barmen in Cannes remained friendly and upbeat, despite the obvious stress of a city more than tripling in population for a fortnight.
I will be going back, festival or no festival. Oh, and I didn’t get to give Ethan and Joel my card. Ah well… next time.

Conor Marren plays the lead male in Randal Plunkett’s Out There.