Trolling the Croisette
CANNES BEGAN ONE DAY EARLY THIS YEAR, BUT IT MIGHT AS WELL HAVE been one week longer, or one month. The festival can feel like it’s been happening for ages before it’s even started, thanks to the anticipation of the lineup, the ceremonial unveiling of the lineup, the ceremonial evisceration of the lineup, and of course the pronouncement of the entire festival as dead and ready for the slab long before anything has even screened.
The process is partly foreseeable for an institution with such an outsized reputation—live by the sword of fame, die by the sword, you might say—but amid the noise, it’s worth distinguishing between the opportunistic or lazy hype and the legitimate cases for improvement. For example, you might hazard a guess that companies basing their business model on customers viewing movies at home might have a vested interest in reducing Cannes solely to a phase in the publicity-and-awards-awareness rollout. (Not
