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Cannes festival
The local train station, I was on my way back from the opening of the Film Festival waiting for the local train Cannes-Nice. One is a little dispirited returning by train at night alone with sole companion my sweet Maltese. After all the glamour, the riches, the temptations to be "in" is as human as sweating in the heat of the Riviera. Then the encounter with Alex head of a large successful movie company was no help "Journaliste ah! c'est très bien, très bien" We were together at Sorbonne in "lettres modernes" and I had by far the better mark and the favour of my professors. But Alex comes from an old family and although he had suppressed the "DE" after his prénom it was all there in his carrying, his elegant clothes his week end a la campagne and surtout his bachelor pad smack in the Quartier. “Journaliste?? "Ah! c'est très bien, très bien” I would like to take you to diner with me at the palace but it is a sitting diner with Huppert, De Niro, Schwartzeneger " Fuck you I thought "Sorry I have dinner with Puccini (my maltese)" from the opera family. I suppose you will talk music hm??? ". The Cannes train station is a drab affair unfitted for the most glorious movie festival of the planet. Few youngsters were waiting along with me there was only one empty spot near a young Chinese couple. She was in her early thirties? It is difficult to tell age on the ridden free pale Asiatics. She was bespectacled balding and had a childish smile as if she knew a better joke. We sat together in a four sitter coach. Under her large proletarian cotton hat there was an unremarkable face, only her smile would bring into life her delicate features and then you could tell she was attractive. She wore an overcoat on a tee shirt and blue jeans with flippers. It was remarkable that in spite of her cheap clothing she had such exquisite pedicure, every inch of her pretty toes were masterfully lacquered. We had little time for conversation as many phones were ringing on my cellular and her English was very spotty. What do you do in Cannes I finally asked her. She understood immediately "I am a Japanese actress. She took a small carnet note and peeled a vignette with the name of the company. “Come to my movie tomorrow". I said yes and we parted in Nice making sure they knew how to get to their hotel. At 2 pm I was in Cannes the next day looking for the theatre house. 'La Croisette' is a famous movie house. It has changed names and is difficult to find. The by now dark movie house I was led into the balcony and found a place just in time to see Yuko (Yuko Nakamura is her name) getting off the toilet and pulling up her slip. Followed a scene with a drunken room mate who exhibits a plump nakedness to which I am totally unused familiar only with great art Japanese movies where even today couples hardly hold hands (Still walking now on the screens in France) Then the movie took off it is a good story of a striptiseuse (Yuko) who falls in love with the Japanese Antonio Banderas. Striptease is may be an exaggeration as Yuko just does erotic dances on the stage. " But I am opening my legs on the stage "She tells Banderas in a confrontation digne of Virginia Wolff This tight gripping exchange where she unveils herself introduces us to a great actress where emotions are bubbling under a restrained veneer heritage of thousand years of deeply bowing to each other. He is up to the challenge and the love scene is one of the poignant erotic and poetic brought to the screen. A small candle throws a Rembrandt colouring to this clasped sometimes savaged bodies whose frenzied rhymes carries you along. T? Yuko and Banderas has another charmed exchange light hearted where they toss each other a coca cola bottle who will finish it?? The movie is otherwise replete with Kitsch, deja vus, interminable Japanese "strip tease " a silly scene where the movie producer (of a grandmother age) throws her bra in a fountain to the applause of a young crowd and to the muted disapproval of the Cannes crowd who has seen better especially at this time of the year, especially here in Cannes. The trip to her family's place and the arrival at home after a ten years absence to have discovered her mother's death "Yesterday" She means yesterday before the opening of the festival?? It is puerile and the countryside beautiful and lush and Japanese is well Japanese. This movie needs a reediting, touring it in a court metrage about Yuko Nakamura and Japanese Antonio Banderas it will be a feast and a short one. Peter Hermes
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