Cannes Film Festival: the logistics of a red-carpet arrival
“The red carpet lasts ninety seconds. Everything before it is a matter of minutes, queues and organised patience.”
I
Twelve days under siege
Every May, Cannes changes nature. The Croisette closes in sections, the palace hotels raise their barriers, and four thousand accredited vehicles share a town that comfortably absorbs half that number. Between the Martinez and the Palais des Festivals, eight hundred metres can take forty minutes on the evening of an official screening.
The Festival keeps its own hours: the seven o'clock and ten o'clock climbs, the beach luncheons, the evenings of the Cap d'Antibes. Those who know these tides move; those who ignore them wait.
II
The drop-off at the Palais: clockwork
The climbing of the steps obeys a precise protocol: approach files imposed by the Préfecture, allocated drop-off slots, black vehicles required, glass and coachwork immaculate — the red carpet is the only avenue in the world where the car is photographed before its passenger.
The chauffeur's role there is exact: arrive within the allocated window, neither before nor after, open the door at the agreed point, disappear. Then rejoin the file, wait out the screening, and reappear at the second of the exit. Two hours of waiting for two visible minutes: that is the proportion of the craft.
III
Palaces, villas and the peninsula
The Festival does not lodge only on the Croisette. It inhabits the villas of La Californie and Super Cannes, the hotels of the Cap d'Antibes, the yachts of the Vieux-Port and Port Canto. On a single evening, one passenger may chain a screening at the Palais, a dinner at Eden-Roc and a party on the Albert-Édouard pier — three worlds, three traffic regimes, one car.
This is where hire by the hour finds its meaning: a motorcar and its chauffeur attached to one guest for the duration of the Festival, learning their hours and absorbing their contingencies.
IV
The manner of the Maison
Maison Vehira serves the Festival as it serves the rest of the year: black motorcars, chauffeurs in dark suits, and that discretion which is the true elegance of the steps. The VTC of circumstance improvises; the Grande Remise chauffeur rehearses — the routes, the slots, the names of the concierges and the traffic marshals.
Climbing the steps is a moment of cinema. Arriving there serenely is backstage work — and backstage is our address.