Cannes still a festival of misogyny, even in wake of Weinstein

For all the talk about cleaning up its act and empowering women, Cannes still oozes misogyny on and off the red carpet.

Chantel Jeffries and Irina Shayk at the Cannes Film Festival.

On the red carpet the woman nervously tugged at the silver slivers of material barely covering her nipples, readjusting her dress as the paparazzi snapped. “Who is she?” I asked somebody. The reply: “Justin Bieber’s ex.”

In the first week at the Cannes film festival, I saw starlets walk red carpets in various states of undress, obligingly posing for photoshoots to flog films based on their looks. During the day I saw women pose in skimpy outfits on La Croisette, re-emerging at night wearing even less and accompanied by fully dressed men.

I went to after-parties where I watched girls teeter in scraps of fabric, saw perma-tanned septuagenarians grab nubile hostesses and heard delegates swap stories about their sexual conquests. I walked around at night wondering at the variety of obscenities used by leering French men.

I wondered, for all the talk of #TimesUp and #MeToo that has come in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, whether in ­reality Cannes has changed.

The festival has always been synonymous with sex. Since 1953 when a bikini-clad Brigitte Bardot first posed for paparazzi on the beach, scantily clad ingenues have flocked to the Cote d’Azur competing to wear less. It’s a pageant of provocation. Cannes is where Salma Hayek tweeted a picture of herself and Susan Sarandon comparing breasts. It is where you ­usually see Leonardo DiCaprio cavorting with an entourage of models. It’s where producers parade paid-for dates and tiny girls drape themselves over corpulent money men aboard mega-yachts.

The event is so shamelessly misogy­nist that women were once banned from the red carpet for not wearing heels. From 1992 to 2001 it had a porn festival, Hot d’Or, running concurrently.

With its sexually charged atmosphere, Cannes was a festival that Weinstein loved. He took a suite each year at the opulent Hotel du Cap. “He was always in here with one or two young girls,” a bartender at the hotel’s Bellini bar told The Hollywood Reporter. “With Harvey, it’s everything you have read — and worse.”

At previous festivals, I often saw Weinstein at soirees accompanied by his latest female talent. It was at the Hotel du Cap that the Italian actress Asia Argento ­alleges Weinstein raped her in 1997 when she was 21. He is also accused of committing sexual acts at Cannes by the actresses Alice Evans, Annabella Sciorra, Judith Godreche and Zoe Brock.

Weinstein’s fall from grace returned to the front pages last week after his estranged wife, British fashion designer Georgina Chapman, spoke publicly about the ­accusations for the first time. She claimed to have had no suspicions about him, describing herself as “humiliated and so broken”.

Weinstein has denied all ­allegations of non-consensual sex.

It is under this shadow of sleaze and scandal that the 71st Cannes film festival opened this year promising change. Describing the Weinstein scandal as an “earthquake”, the festival’s artistic director, Thierry Fremaux, admitted it “will never be the same again”.

Initially that appeared to be the case. A female-dominated jury took its first photocall power-dressed mostly in suits. Headed by Cate Blanchett, instrumental in launching the #TimesUp campaign, they included the French actress Lea Seydoux, who has accused Weinstein of assault.

Khadja Nin, Ava DuVernay, Cate Blanchett and French director Agnes Varda walk the red carpet. Picture: AFP.

During the opening press conference, Blanchett spoke about wanting to see more female-­directed films in the festival. On the opening night she and fellow juror Kristen Stewart wore modest black on the red carpet. It sent a message of commitment to changing the place of women. Pen­elope Cruz, at the premiere of her film Everybody Knows, joined them in floor-length black. Cruz stood beside her co-star and husband Javier Bardem who, she pointed out later, had been paid the same as her.

Everywhere the talk was of change. At parties, tote bags were distributed with logos that read “Don’t ruin the party. Stop harassment” and flyers were dispersed warning attendees there was “proper behaviour required”. A phone line was established to enable festivalgoers to report incidents of harassment.

Fan Bingbing, Marion Cotillard, Jessica Chastain, Penelope Cruz, Lupita Nyong'o.

L’Oreal launched a Worth It television show to “make this Cannes film festival one for women’s empowerment”, hosting actresses Julianne Moore, Jane Fonda and Helen Mirren. The fashion house Kering ran Women in Motion talks celebrating women in cinema. The director Nina Menkes gave a speech called Sex and Power: The Visual Language of Oppression, exploring links between sexual assault and its depiction in cinema.

Despite such enthusiastic posturing, it was hard to see a shift. (Except that — perhaps nervous of scandal — much of Hollywood stayed away and playboys such as DiCaprio were notably absent.)

It didn’t take long for the initially sober red carpets to hot up. Chantel Jeffries (Bieber’s ex) appeared in a blatantly provocative dress. She was followed by the model Irina Shayk going commando in a Versace number that flapped precariously over her crotch. The model Bella Hadid ­arrived in a minuscule white dress to launch a Magnum ice cream.

In the festival program women did not fare much better. Only three films directed by women have been nominated for the Palme d’Or. Perhaps it’s unsurprising given that in 70 years only one female-directed film has won it: New Zealander Jane Campion for The Piano in 1993.

Meanwhile, despite the festival’s promise to take sexual harassment seriously, it chose this year to lift its seven-year ban on Lars von Trier. The Danish director has been accused of harassment by his Dancer in the Dark star, the singer Bjork (von Trier denies her claims).

He was excluded from Cannes after a 2011 press conference at which he claimed to sympathise with Hitler and joked about writing a hardcore porn film with “a lot of very, very unpleasant sex”.

I saw Jessica Chastain — a driving force behind #TimesUp — launch her all-female spy thriller 355 with Cruz, Lupita Nyong’o, Marion Cotillard and Fan Bingbing. But as Chastain posed, I was reminded of Thandie Newton’s claim that she wasn’t invited to join #TimesUp because she “wasn’t hot enough”.

At the after-party for Carey Mulligan’s latest film, Wildlife, at Nikki Beach, I found myself in the same club where I’d once met Weinstein. Looking at the men holding meetings over cigars and the women in tight dresses with plastic surgery-pinched cheeks, I recalled comments about Cannes by Melissa Silverstein, the activist behind Women and Hollywood and artistic director of the Athena film festival.

“I always have a lot of anxiety when I go there,” she wrote on Twitter last week. “A big part of it is how unwelcome female film makers are there and how women are sexualised and commodified.”

At a press conference the next morning, Mulligan spoke about the discrimination she had faced. “All the conversations are great, but it’s most useful where concrete measures are taken,” she said.

The Sunday Times