Some like it hot! Cannes' caviar n' champ
CANNES, France (AFP) — The Cannes film festival opens officially to red-carpet glory on Wednesday but already the whining about the steep prices enforced for the yearly global invasion of stars and celluloid has begun.
From the 10,000 bottles of champagne guzzled during the 12-day event at one of the city's grand palaces, the Hotel Carlton, to steep fortnightly rentals of 45,000 euros for a top-end villa, to luxury boutiques and scooter-hire, the cash flows by the bucket -- irritating some of the locals.
Last year's filmfest generated a turnover of a cool 250 million euros (386 million dollars), organisers said, not a bad performance given the festival's mere 20-million-euro budget, half of it public funding.
With the Riviera city's population swollen three-fold to 200,000 during the glitzy 24-hour-a-day orgy of movie promotion, parties and screenings, much of the cash-flow winds up in the hands of the hotels, who ring up 15 percent of their annual earnings in a mere 12 days.
The usually-sleepy palm-lined beachfront city, an out-of-season favourite for the blue-rinsed pensioner set or the very very rich from abroad, boasts 7,500 hotel rooms, 2,300 of them in four-star and palace establishments.
"It is the most beautiful showcase anywhere", said Michel Chevillon, manager of the Grand Hotel Mercure Croisette Beach Hotel and president of the local hotel-owners association.
The last two years, he said, "stood up highly" in economic terms.
Given there are not enough beds to go around, hotels all along the coast as far as Nice cash in on the festival -- as well as real estate agents offering furnished flats.
But the excessively high prices for a post-party good night's sleep are causing a shortfall on the market, said Bruno Draillard, who heads Cannes Accomodation. "A few days before the festival I still have lots of available flats. Cannes has become too expensive," he said.
With prices creeping upwards each year, owners are refusing to rent out flats on anything less than a pot of gold.
His agency is offering one-room studios for between 1,800 and 3,600 euros for the duration of the May 14-25 event, and up to 45,000 for a villa, excluding services.
On the winning front too are the caterers and food-suppliers contracted by hotels, party-organisers and gala events.
The Carlton, for instance, which serves 4,000 meals per day, plans on dishing out a daily ration of 800 kilos of lobster and crayfish.
Over the 12-day period, the hotel will serve 25 kilos of caviar, 10,000 bottles of champagne and 30 tonnes of fruit and veg.
Luxury boutiques -- lined up by the dozen in the sunny city's pedestrian streets -- look forward to the movie extravaganza as festival-goers "go shopping between films, specially the producers, though not so often the stars," said Jean-Jacques Lottermoser, sales and marketing manager for the "Palais des Festivals", the sprawling concrete complex that hosts the event.
Italian fashion house Valentino is among the winners at Cannes, he said, as is jeweller Chopard, maker of the prized Palme d'Or award for best film.
Other great labels, who loan glam gowns and jewels for free to the red-carpet celebs whizzing in and out of town, win free publicity.
But not all of Cannes citizens get their slice of the pie.
"We lose between 10 and 12 percent of our yearly take because the festival is becoming increasingly elitist and less and less of a popular festive event," said Noel Di Giovanni, president of the local restaurant and cafes association. "Our clients are always complaining about the lack of contact with the stars."
But David Lisnard, the head of tourism at the Cannes Town Hall, and the president of the Palais des Festivals, said there had always been whingers trying to spoil the party.
"This myth of the festival's gone-by golden age has always existed," he said. "Cannes is after all the world's biggest festival, and each year the number of people attending goes up."
A total 31,000 movie industry professionals request accreditation each year, the festival said, including 1,000 writers and directors, 4,000 distributors, 5,000 producers and more than 4,000 journalists.
