Cannes Film Festival 2022: Tom Cruise’s jets, Tyson Fury’s yacht and Take That in summer suits

Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, Idris Elba, Tilda Swinton and, er, three members of Take That have brought star power back to the Cote d’Azur.

Tilda Swinton, Idris Elba, Julianne Moore and Rebecca Hall at Cannes.

Jets. Of course there had to be jets. After a strange, Covid-addled 2021, Cannes felt the need, the need for le speed. Hollywood glamour has returned to the festival and Tom Cruise led the way, bringing the thrilling Top Gun: Maverick and an acrobatic fly-past above the Croisette from the French air force. The planes trailed red, white and blue smoke, so both the locals and the American visitors were happy. They’re the UK’s colours too, of course, but there’s no room for us in this particular love-in.

One of the counterintuitive curiosities of France is how a country that treats cinema with more cerebral rigour than anyone else goes all gooey over anti-intellectual Americans. In the Sixties the chin-strokers at Cahiers du Cinema worshipped at the altar of John Wayne and John Ford; now we have Thierry Fremaux, the head of the festival, introducing the “hommage a Tom Cruise” like a courtier heralding a king.

The acrobatic fly-past above the Croisette from the French air force. Picture: Shutterstock

There were powder-puff questions from the French journalist Didier Allouch and the crowd gave Cruise boisterous ovations for such profound pronouncements as: “All I can do is the best I can do every day.” The most exciting part was the ten-minute hype-reel they showed before he came on, a reminder that he is the most electrifying movie star of his generation. He really does have a lot of best bits: “Show me the money”, “You complete me”, the “You can’t handle the truth” exchange.

Contrast that with the figure who walked on stage, dressed in a dark blue sweater and slacks. Cruise repeated the bullet points with the conviction of a sales director - he really loves cinema and collaboration and he really hates the idea of Top Gun: Maverick premiering on streaming services: “That was never going to happen.” Cue another ovation from the anti-Netflix cinephiles. There was one good anecdote about jumping off the family roof aged four with a homemade parachute made of a bed sheet (he was fine) and one good, albeit conceited, zinger. Why does he do so many stunts, Allouch asked. “No one asked Gene Kelly, ‘Why do you dance?’ ” Cruise replied, modestly.

Allouch wondered why in the more recent Mission: Impossible films it was Cruise’s co-stars rather than he who peeled off the masks. The answer, Cruise insisted, was that Simon Pegg really wanted to have a go. “How do I say no to Simon?” Quite easily, you’d imagine. He’s the guy from Spaced, you’re Tom Cruise.

Tom Cruise and Jennifer Connelly at Cannes film festival. Picture: AP

Still, it felt good to have some serious star wattage at Cannes. All we got last year were saliva tests and Matt Damon in a medical mask. Most signs of the pandemic are gone now - we are still “strongly advised” to wear face coverings in screenings but few do. The parties are back with a vengeance, although rumours of a Top Gun shebang were scuppered when it became clear that Cruise was jetting off (of course) after completing his red-carpet duties.

Plenty of other stars came out to play, though. A hot ticket was a bash on the beach hosted by A24, the hip production company behind Moonlight and Uncut Gems. It felt more of a lukewarm ticket at first: where was everyone? Then we realised they were all watching their new film, When You Finish Saving the World.

Soon enough, in trooped the director of the coming-of-age tale, Jesse Eisenberg, and its stars, Finn Wolfhard and Julianne Moore. Two geeks and a goddess. Your starstruck correspondent eventually plucked up the courage to speak to Moore, who was tiny, exquisite and prodigiously nice. I said how much I had enjoyed her as a disco-dancing divorcee in Gloria Bell. The female factotum by Moore’s side informed her that it’s one of her best-rated films on the Rotten Tomatoes website. “Far out!” Moore cooed, like a Laurel Canyon hippy.

Still to come are Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, and Three Thousand Years of Longing, a fantasy with Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton. Further proof of the festival’s resurgence is the number of non-film celebrities who have turned up. The three remaining members of Take That posed in their summer suits to promote Greatest Days, a forthcoming movie based on the hit stage musical The Band, while the heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury moored in the marina on an pounds 18,000-a-night superyacht. Nicknamed the Gypsy King, Fury danced in the street to - what else - the Gipsy Kings’ Volare.

Take That’s Howard Donald, Gary Barlow and Mark Owen at Cannes.

The real world has to intrude, of course. Cannes “can be a mirror” to what’s going on elsewhere, said Vincent Lindon, the French actor who is heading a jury that includes the British actress-director Rebecca Hall and the Iranian auteur Asghar Farhadi. In a video address, Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, referenced the Charlie Chaplin movie The Great Dictator - who can he have been talking about? The Top Gun movie may be coy about the identity of its eastern antagonists but Ukraine and Russia are everywhere in Cannes, from the trivial - the opening film, Final Cut, changed its name from Z after the letter became a symbol of Russian imperialism - to the essential, with the premiere of Mariupolis 2.

That documentary was directed by Mantas Kvedaravicius, a Lithuanian film-maker who was captured and murdered by the Russian army in Mariupol in April. It was co-directed by Kvedaravicius’s fiancee, Hanna Bilobrova, who was with him at his death and brought back their footage. Showing rotting corpses and citizens sheltering from bombardment, it’s a pulverising, unflinching piece of work.

Tyson Fury in the marina with his £18,000-a-night superyacht. Picture: Splash News

Competing for the Palme d’Or with films including David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future and Claire Denis’s The Stars at Noon is a Russian work, Tchaikovsky’s Wife. Rumours that the Monoprix supermarket was cleaned out of eggs bought by protesters wanting to pelt the makers of the movie were unfounded. That would have been unfair because its director, Kirill Serebrennikov, is a critic of Vladimir Putin who was put under house arrest in 2017 on embezzlement charges that are widely believed to have been fabricated. An exile for now, Serebrennikov is in Cannes - bravo for his bravery.

Some even thought it was the Russians who had made the Cannes ticket-booking website so painfully slow. Talk about three thousand years of longing. The festival said the problems were “very likely due to acts aimed at saturating the site with ticket requests”. A Russian cyberattack? It’s almost impossible to know. What right do we have to moan, anyway? As the British journalist John Bleasdale told the Screen Daily website: “We’re all in the same boat and the better news is the boat is on the Cote d’Azur.”

The Times