The Rolling Stones in Cannes...

The Cannes Film Festival starts next week, and while I have been there, done that, I'd love to go this year to see the Rolling Stones, who are coming to promote their new documentary 'Stones in Exile'. The documentary covers the making of their legendary 1972 album 'Exile on Main Street', which is set for re-release next month.

The premier of the documentary is part of an add-on event called Director's Fortnight which runs in conjunction with the main festival. Almost like the Stones will be party crashing, how very fitting..... The album was made on the Riviera while the Stones were on a self-imposed exile from the UK taxman. Can't wait to see the documentary, but bummed I can't see them in Cannes, where rumour has it they may do a little impromptu performance.

Rock and roll on the Riviera with the Rolling Stones. I'll probably be mopping my floors. Oh well, a girl can dream, can't she?

We'll always have Cannes...

As some of you readers may know, Cannes holds a special place in my heart. It's the first place I lived in France (as a student back in 1993), the place where I met and fell in love with the Duke, and the place where I shed so many of my smalltown American ideologies. I may have been a fish out of water with no gold shoes, but Cannes was an amazing eye-opener for me, in so many ways.

With 2000 dollars worth of French francs in my pocket, having just cut off all of my hair (think Jane Mancini in Melrose Place), I was ready to take on the world, starting with France. I wasn't prepared for the yachts, the glitz, or the other European students wearing Gucci and arriving on their private jets.

Oh the naïveté, but it didn't matter, I was in France, people!

Had I really known what Cannes was like before I left, I probably would have chosen Grenoble, which was the other option. Somehow I missed the part in the guidebook that said it was the playground of the rich and famous, and so I set off to study, in my own clueless, Beverly Hillbilly fashion.

Between the beach, the bars, the wine-tastings, and the flirting with the waiters at the Carlton after hours, there wasn't much studying going on. Although I'm sure that the education I got out of the classroom was worth every penny of my hard-earned scholarship.

There are certain memories that stand out in high definition- walking home along the port at 5am and hearing the news from one of the yacht's radios that Kurt Cobain had just died, tasting ravioli so beautiful I thought I would die at a little restaurant called Chez Max, and walking up the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival on the Duke's arm.

One of the 'perks' of studying at the International College de Cannes was that we all got passes to the Film Festival, which allowed us access to as many films as we wanted to see, and the chance to walk up the red carpet. Formal dress required, of course. I die in shame with embarrassement now, thinking about it, but at the time, for just that 5 minutes, I felt the love of my adoring fans....

So, every year around this time, when they release the new film festival poster and are about ready to release the official selection of this year's films (on April 15), I get a little nostalgic. While a year in Cannes was enough for this hick from the sticks, I love remembering how back then, even I felt like a rock star. What more could a girl ask for on her first year abroad?

Ooh, ah! Cantona!

Okay, I'll admit it. I've got a little bit of a crush on Eric Cantona. I've had this crush for some years now. It started around the time I was forced, I mean, when I voluntarily started watching football (soccer)with the Duke about 15 years ago and Cantona played for Manchester United. He was an amazing player and one that made it a little easier on my eyes when watching Match of the Day. Of course I wasn't allowed to actually cheer for him, I mean, he did play for Man United, and in my house, that just isn't a team one cheers for. I'm not allowed to watch football with the Duke anymore because he complains I ask too many questions, but when Cantona played, I was content just to sit back and watch quietly. He had that sort of effect on me.

When he retired at the age of 30, I lost a bit of interest in the sport (fickle, I know, but then, I am a girl.). So imagine my delight when I found out that the French footballing legend had decided to take up acting. I don't really remember much about the films I saw him in or what his acting was like, I was just happy to see him back on the screen.

Well, he's back in action with a new film that is appearing at the Cannes Film Festival this year, directed by Ken Loach and titled Looking for Eric. He plays himself, and the story is about a Manchester postman, also called Eric, who is going through a bit of a rough patch in work, in love, and in life in general. As a devoted Manchester United fan, he seeks out his hero, Eric Cantona, to give him some advice and a little life coaching.

Looking for Eric is competing for the Palme d'Or at the festival this year, and the film is set for general release in June. I'm looking forward to sitting quietly and watching him once again.

Prix Goncourt winner: Syngué Sabou....

The winner of this year's Prix Goncourt was announced yesterday. The Afghan writer, Atiq Rahimi took the prize for his novel Syngué Sabou, or the Pierre de Patience. Apparently the title is derived from the Persian folktale of a stone that absorbs the distress of anyone who confides in it.

The story is about a wife who is caring for her husband who has been left brain damaged by a bullet during the fighting in a country that very much resembles Afghanistan. While she cares for him, she tells him stories of her life, not sure if he can hear her or not. The stories reflect the hardships and sacrifices they have had to make living in their country under an oppressive regime.

Atiq Rahimi was born in Kabul in 1962 but came to Paris in his 20's as an asylum seeker. He studied film making at the Sorbonne and in 2004 of film based on his book Earth and Ashes received acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival. Syngué Sabour is his first book written directly in French.

Entre les Murs...

Okay, so if 'Mamma Mia!' is a film that must be seen in English, I imagine that 'Entre les Murs' (Between the Walls, or The Class) would lose alot of its effect if watched in any other language than French.

The winner of this year's Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival comes out next week in France. Wildly received at Cannes, this film-with-a-documentary-feel shows the reality of classroom life in a junior highschool in the multi-ethnic 20th arrondissement of Paris.

The story covers a year in the life of the class and their teacher, played by real students and Francois Bégaudeau, who wrote the book from which the film is adapted. From struggles with learning French grammar to tension-filled power struggles between teacher and students, the film has been lauded as being one of the best insights into the educational process that has been made in a long time.

Cannes Film Festival.....

It's almost that time of year again, where the Cote d'Azur becomes the French equivalent of the Hollywood Hills and Tinsletown, where wanna-be starlets suddenly find themselves in 2,000 euro a night rooms with dubious middle-aged 'producers' and the Croisette becomes the biggest runway event this side of Milan fashion week.

Imagine bling, and then multiply that by 100. Welcome to the Cannes Film Festival, home of the gold shoe, super yacht, and name dropping centre of the universe.

Flashback to 1993, young, naive American steps off the plane in Nice to start her semester abroad in Cannes(chosen for its proximity to the coast; seriously unaware that Cannes was for girls with clear-skinned smiles, who married young, then retired.... ) but completely unaware of the parallel universe she was about to inhibit. Full of European trust fund babies who could only look askance as this riff-raff group of American scholarship students disembarked.

After a surreal 6 months at the Collége International de Cannes, I came away with a slightly improved level of French and an English husband. I now look back fondly on my time there.

Cannes is as French as Miami is American. But like Las Vegas, something you've got to see to believe.

And what do I have to show for my endeavors there, besides my husband? This photo proving that for just that one Andy Warhol 5 minutes of fame, I too, was a red carpet walker. (But I post this photo in full embarrassment of my ill fitting dress and the Duke's cobbled together tux.) What must the paparazzi have thought of us? Ah, to be young and naive again.....