A Shift in the Glamour of Cannes
This year’s Cannes Film Festival is missing something that has always been a key ingredient: star power. While icons like Jane Fonda, Demi Moore, and John Travolta are still present on La Croisette, the absence of major US studio premieres is quite noticeable. The blockbuster debuts that once defined the festival have faded, prompting festival director Thierry Frémaux to make an urgent call to Universal for some last-minute A-list magic. This led to a 25th-anniversary screening of The Fast and the Furious.
For some, this is a sign that Cannes has lost its magic. Traditionally, the festival is the pinnacle of the film industry calendar. However, this year feels different. The mood on the ground is subdued, with a slower build-up to the bigger films that usually dominate the first week. Despite this, the glitz and glamour remain, as they have every year since 1946.
Dame Joan Collins made a striking appearance at the opening ceremony, while Scarlett Johansson and Michael Fassbender are expected to attend to support their upcoming projects. As I walked along La Croisette, I bumped into Zendaya’s stylist, Law Roach. Normally, he is hard to miss, but here he enjoys a bit more anonymity, especially among the older crowd. He mentioned that he was winding down after a busy day and preparing to host a party with Magnum.
Beyond the A-listers, there is a sense that the atmosphere is more muted than usual. One director, who prefers to remain anonymous, a 10-year veteran of the festival, remarked on how much quieter the streets of Cannes are. While there are still many people around, it’s not the bustling energy it used to be. They also expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of the films in the lineup. The festival is often seen as a soft launch for awards season, with many Oscar-nominated films having premiered there in previous years.
‘They can be a bit s**t,’ they told me. ‘I think there’s definitely a type of film, maybe one can get a bit tired of seeing after 10 years. Most of the films are not the best, but at the same time, I’ve probably seen some of my favourite films here.’
One year, they joined a random queue and ended up seeing Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace. ‘I went in with no expectations and was just blown away by something that was unbelievably powerful and moving.’ They also mentioned that seeing films you’d otherwise be completely uninterested in, such as Star Wars: Solo, can be surprisingly cool in the setting of the Grand Theatre.
But what has dulled the festival’s sheen?
‘As glitzy and glamorous as it is,’ the director tells me, ‘you just can’t escape the fact that it is fundamentally a marketplace and the whole thing feels unbelievably corporate at all times. Even the £30 glasses of f**king rose at the Carlton just feel [like they’re] for the businessmen in suits rather than film people.’
This sentiment about two-week festival price gouging is shared by locals. I asked an ice cream parlour worker if he enjoys this time of year. ‘Do you want the truth?’ he asked before bluntly responding: ‘No’.
Straight 8 festival organiser Alex Glynn says he’s not as worried about Hollywood’s diminished engagement but agrees that things have steadily declined. He tells me: ‘I feel like there are a lot of screenings and events and things over the years I’ve gone to that feel like they could have more soul.’
Some in the industry point to another shift: the growing presence of influencers. Cannes has always had a tricky job balancing the need to keep cinema at the heart of proceedings with the need for social media visibility. The appearance of the likes of Molly-Mae Hague at previous events has frustrated cinema buffs.
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This year, the festival has got into bed with the owner of Facebook and Instagram, bringing TikTok influencer Reece Feldman to the red carpet once again to conduct interviews on his Ray-Ban Meta glasses, alongside other content creators.
Noticeably, a beach party that is normally hard to get into had no queue and plenty of room inside. It made me wonder if there’s been more control over these invitations, more chaos behind the scenes during an uncertain year, or whether influencers were simply put off because it wasn’t as ‘showbizzy’ as usual. Thankfully, the anti-influencer rule of ‘no red-carpet selfies’ stands firm.
There are still, of course, the die-hard Cannes fans. They lurk around the Palais des Festivals, dressed in black tie, hoping they can score a last-minute ticket for a premiere. I spoke to a pair who had been waiting for two and a half hours. With just half an hour until opening, they haven’t given up hope. One tells me they bagged plenty of tickets using this ‘begging on a placard’ method last year. But they had to flip a coin when only one of them managed to get a ticket the previous night.
It leaves me wondering whether Cannes can hold its place at the centre of the film world. I’m not convinced it’s over – but, as my director source put it: ‘I highly doubt it.’
