A bunch of Columbia grad students she knows are booking an Airbnb together, writing one-page essays about how much they love cinema for their applications. It sounds too good to be true. Unconvinced, I pull out all the stops on my application. He humors my request, patiently. I book a flight to Nice, four nights in a hotel room. I start taking French lessons again, with a tutor who used to work for a film distributor.
I inhale too much cold brew one morning in Brooklyn and a plan starts to form: a plot in which my Three Days in Cannes pass presents itself as my chance to fashion myself into a foreign correspondent. So this is how I got the idea to enter Cannes as a party reporter, break into the heart of the film world, and write about it.
Blinded by my vision, I run into a stroller in Park Slope. The boy across the aisle turns out to be a three-day-in-Cannes veteran, a software engineer and film enthusiast, still wearing a face mask, named Jackson. Having been to Cannes last year, he has a strategy.
But he loves it. Jackson has two cardboard signs in his bag. He explains that this is because if you want the ultimate moviegoing experience attending a premiere you need to beg for it. This is the one scenario where young cinephiles meet film industry officials: standing with cardboard signs under the sun, wearing recycled prom tuxes.
Jackson is now in a tux along with a few other boys he met on Letterboxd, begging for Claire Denis tickets. There are still some hopefuls holding out for the Elvis premiere: girls with their hair and makeup done, wearing heels and bright pink and red dresses.
