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In the Bathroom Lines at the Super-Parties of Cannes

If the act of getting into Cannes parties were a video game (nobody do this), here’s how the levels might break down in order of sheer difficulty: level one, fest-sponsored happy hours and lunches open to anyone with a press badge; level two, beach parties hosted by various alcohol sponsors, smaller films playing at the fest, and trades; level three, hotel and/or beach parties hosted by distributors like Mubi, A24, etc.; level four, hotel and/or beach parties hosted by Hollywood-movie-starry films playing at the fest; level five, annual or biannual celeb-studded events at extra-bougie venues, like the Vanity Fair party and the Kering Women in Motion dinner; level six, private, esoteric villa parties located somewhere up in the hills overlooking Cannes; level seven, yacht parties. I’ve only ever made it as far as level six — last year, I was invited on a yacht, but moments before I was due to embark upon it, it was suddenly and mysteriously illegal for it to dock (I can’t expand further on French yacht law).

This year, I spent several evenings vacillating between levels three (where you see your friends and colleagues and actually have fun), four (where Harrison Ford looks you in the face, very briefly, before a security guard asks what you are doing in VIP), and five and six (where the French people at the door Pretty Woman you until you show them the inexplicably large physical invitation you had to walk 30 minutes to pick up earlier that day and then had to carry around in your hands all afternoon because it’s too big to fit in a purse — an act of purposeful debasement designed to test both your willingness and your loyalty as a future party attendee).

My first party was Mubi x the Match Factory at Plage 3.14 (level three), where I immediately got into the long line to pee and witnessed a delightful exchange between our country’s two foremost John C.’s: Reilly, who is on the Cannes jury, and Cameron Mitchell, who is leading the Queer Palm jury. “John?” said John C. Reilly, reaching out to shake John Cameron Mitchell’s hand. “Hi. John Reilly. We haven’t met before, but you know lots of friends of mine. Jane Adams, Jennifer Jason Leigh?” Mitchell asked Reilly which films he’d liked, and Reilly replied, not unkindly, “I’m on the jury, so I can’t say.” When Mitchell went into the bathroom, I felt the need to fill a silence being experienced only by me. I told Reilly I liked his jaunty chapeau. He looked startled by my presence and expressed gentle confusion about the co-ed bathroom situation, but when we met back up at the sink, he showed me how to use the faucet, which was a confusing automatic that appeared manual. I also spotted writer-director Davy Chou, hugged the lovely auteur Isabel Sandoval, and left early because I was due a few steps down the Croisette at the Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny party (level four).

Fascinatingly, I was not granted access to the premiere of Indiana Jones, but I was invited to the after-party, a situation that implied a fresh and existentially complex Cannes side level that I have not yet assigned a number. The line ran down the block, and so did the crowd of French people shrieking “Harrison!!!” When I finally got in, I spotted a person I knew, and we decided to see if we could get into the VIP area, where all the big celebrities always hide at these parties so they don’t have to, for example, let civilians compliment their hats. We strolled in, faux casually, and immediately found ourselves face to face with Harrison Ford, who looks fantastic for a man of his age and number of plane accidents. Nearby, a pregnant Karlie Kloss chatted cheerfully with Bob Iger, maybe about landing her future child some kind of Disney+ original streaming series. Mads Mikkelson and Martin McDonagh meandered around the room, the latter there to support Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who I hear is in the movie, but it’s hard to say for sure because, again, I have not seen it.

The Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc.Photo: Victor Boyko/Getty Images for Air Mail/Warner

Exactly 24 hours later, I was at the after-party for The Idol (level four), which began at 12:30 a.m. and for which HBO provided post-premiere shuttles from the Palais since its nightclub venue was relatively far from the Croisette. The party was elaborate and intense, its vibe very midtown Manhattan bottle service. A quote from the show — “Hello, angel,” which the Weeknd’s Tedros unfortunately says to Lily-Rose Depp’s Jocelyn when they first hang out — was emblazoned on the front of the Palm Club in neon lights. Inside, a gigantic sign read, “You should be having way more fun,” which is another quote from The Idol that felt like a targeted personal insult as I had to spend much of the party sitting in a corner writing about the premiere of The Idol. At the center of the venue, shaped like a gladiatorial gauntlet, the Weeknd stood behind the DJ booth and implored everyone in the crowd, many of whom were indeed filming him DJ-ing on their phones, to get off their phones. Behind him, Depp smoked and danced surrounded by the rest of the cast, and at one point I saw Julia Fox giving Laura Palmer realness in a sheer, plasticky white gown, white makeup, and black lipstick. When I left, someone handed me a record of “Double Fantasy,” the Weeknd’s song from The Idol that is about something or other.

Before I caught the strep throat that was going around the fest this year and had to retire young from the game, I stopped by my last party, the Airmail x Warner Bros. Discovery bash (level five), which was intriguing due to its backstory: Graydon Carter, now of Airmail but once of Vanity Fair, used to throw the Vanity Fair Cannes party each year to great effect (see: my personal collage board) before he left the magazine in 2017. This new party, it would seem, wasn’t not thrown for the purpose of trying to throw a better party than Vanity Fair’s. “May the best man or woman win,” said Carter when asked about this hyperniche Bravo-core rivalry. “They are doing theirs with Prada, and we’re doing ours with Warner Bros. so it will have a different feel to it.”

The party’s other backstory is just as absurd: Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav was co-hosting the lavish event to celebrate Warner Bros.’ 100th anniversary, while back in the States, its writers — many of whom are certainly responsible for the movies that were being projected in an hour-long compilation loop directly onto the pool throughout the party — were striking in hopes that they might make enough money to afford to keep writing movies while paying for food and housing. Nobody brought this up at the party in my earshot despite the fact that Zaslav’s recent actions (which as of this week include removing inpidual credits on Max, née HBO Max, née HBO Go, née HBO Now) may soon cause all three unions to strike. I saw Zaslav out of the corner of my eye, darting around like some white-haired phantom, at least ten times, always in conversation with a different but equally famous person.

This party was held at the same place as the Vanity Fair party — Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc — and featured many of the same details tweaked just slightly or not at all: the same entryway mirror painted with the publication’s logo, the same bartenders, the same passed apps that nobody ate, many of the same guests, the same yachts floating ominously in the near distance. The cumulative effect was surreal, as though no time had passed since the first party, where we had all become trapped for eternity like the oblivious bourgeoisie in The Exterminating Angel, punished for our greed by an angry god and doomed forever to eat small portions of fries with no plates and watch Alessandra Ambrosio take selfies with her friends in the bathroom. Or perhaps that avalanche actually had engulfed us all at the Vanity Fair party and now we were locked together in limbo, waiting for it to become crowded enough that Bezos might disembark from his superyacht and decide which of us was entering heaven or hell.

But no, it couldn’t be, because the weather was much better at this party, and probably as a result, more celebs showed up: much of The Idol’s cast, Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost, Sting and Trudie Styler, Rebel Wilson and her wife, Boy George, and, of course, Leo and Martin Scorsese, who walked into the party relatively early and at a very fast clip, with Leo putting up his hands and asking photographers not to film him while also vaping furiously. As they walked in, a random man turned to me and said loudly, “Leo.” Marty and Leo were escorted to their own little private area outside in the back, where security guards turned away any well-wishers who were not of the rank of De Niro, Jason Statham, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, and an as yet unknown baby who was suddenly crawling all over De Niro (thus not his own baby, who was born one mere month ago). Leo spent most of the night on his phone.