Barely six o’clock and it’s already a rush, Wednesday, at the foot of the steps of the Palace. Cannes burns with love for Elvis. Rigorous vintage atmosphere. Bella Hadid appears in a Versace dress from 1987. Indian actress Deepika Padukone sparkles in a metal sheath from Vuitton. Shakira appears in a bustier, her arms gloved in black Gilda style. The person in charge of protocol loses patience, he would like these baby dolls to flee the flashes to avoid traffic jams on the red carpet. The swaying chords of Don’t Be Cruel barely drown out the screams of fans as Baz Luhrmann’s film crew show up, in the wake of Austin Butler, reincarnation of the King – but did he really die at Graceland in 1977? ? – and Tom Hanks, much sharper than on screen in the skin of Colonel Parker. The former wife of Elvis, Priscilla Presley, accompanies them, visibly intimidated by this rock’n’roll barnum. They will receive twelve minutes of standing ovation, a record to beat for this edition.
“There are films that are symphonies and others that are like concertos where an actor or an actress takes on all the action and it’s wonderful to watch, despite a not crazy script” , estimated in Nice Matin Benjamin Biolay, juror of the Un certain regard category this year. What about that fake Luhrmann biopic? Was it a fugue, a requiem, a kitsch opera? All this at once, no doubt…
In the sky, luminescent drones draw alternately the face and the hips of the rocker. Love me tender, love me true. For Elvis’s party, Stéphanie beach, Warner, associated with the brand Campari, new partner of the festival, did not skimp on the scenography. This flashy evening, the most popular on the Croisette, was probably not the most successful. We are never sufficiently wary of American dreams.
In the VIP area where you sip a “bombardier”, an explosive cocktail, Claude Lelouch praises his colleague Baz Luhrmann. He loved her energy. Above all, he who dined with the King in Vegas in 1969, during the filming of A Man Who Likes Me, seems amazed by the performance of Austin Butler.
The concert of Maneskin, the Italian winners of Eurovision 2021, begins. Its echo collides with that of the giant karaoke that Arte organizes at the cinema on the beach. Two beaches, two atmospheres. The Franco-German channel has decided to celebrate its thirty years in music. Just after the open-air projection, and on the sand, of the documentary that Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Ange Leccia devote to Christophe, who was one of the greatest admirers of Elvis. “Individually, in my own little world, in my bubble, it was very delicious the 1960s. It was Technicolor, the discovery of new music, the arrival of the greatest genius,” explained the singer of Blue words disappeared on April 16, 2020, at the age of 74. The last of the Bevilacquas was the first of the cinephiles, piling up to 500 films in 35mm in his Montparnasse lair. On screen, he wanders morosely in search of musical perfection and quotes Drama of Jealousy by Ettore Scola, with Monica Vitti and Marcello Mastroianni, two other of his idols. He replaces the vinyl one by one in one of his old jukeboxes. The notes of That’s All Right, again and again the King, escape from it and mark out, in this night of happy nostalgia, our lost paradises.
