Back at Cannes … But Why?

Everything has an expiration date ... or, at the very least, an evaluation date. Milk lasts 10 days, orange juice a few weeks, cars need love every 3,000 miles and relationships should be given the sniff test after a year. Marriage? I'm single, but from what I've observed, after five years of coupledom, you might want to do some soul searching and maybe get that Hefty bag ready. You get the point.

 

What in the hell does this have to do with the Cannes Film Festival, you ask?

 

Well, like lettuce or yoghurt or lifelong vows cooed to someone while wearing a rented monkey suit or dress that will never be worn again, film festivals also have an expiration date. Of course, those dates are subjective (but seriously, don't drink milk after 10 days; that is not up for debate).

 

Now, before you jump to conclusions, I'm not saying that festivals such as Cannes or Venice or Toronto have grown stale. On the contrary: They still represent the heart and soul of cinematic discovery, glamour and exhausting movie passion crammed into a very concentrated time period. For me, however, no matter how big the event, the luster of these events often fades. I've been attending film festivals for 18 years and have found, strangely, that after approximately three years, I get tired of attending a specific festival. This happened with Telluride and Sundance, and last year during my third visit to Toronto, my favourite film festival, I started to feel that it wasn't worth the effort.

 

Blame it on how brutal it is to travel now or the crowds or the collection of bottom-feeding journalists or too many awful films among a few great ones, or perhaps that feeling of "been there, done that."