Anna Adler Reports from Cannes: THE PERFECT HOST and WALL STREET 2

Bryn Mawr Film Institute is getting reports directly from the Cannes Film Festival, thanks to film student Anna Adler. She'll be checking in regularly from the French riviera, giving you the inside scoop on the festival and its films. Enjoy!

Yesterday (Thursday) I started the day in the "Croisette" with a few of my friends in the program by trying to get into any movie possible, and it seemed hopeless. Our student passes were not really getting us anywhere. As things were looking very poor, we were able somehow to sneak through the back of the "marketplace," where a bunch of independent production companies were screening a number of non-competition films and had little mini studio set-ups where they would be setting up deals with distributors. Once we were in the marketplace, we went up to all of these little mini-studios and were able to get free "invitations" to about twelve screenings throughout the festival. We felt very accomplished. We saw one of these films yesterday afternoon, called The Perfect Host (directed by Nick Tomnay of the Cinema Management Group LCC). While the plot had a number of twists (and was actually somewhat disturbing), I was never bored for one second and the film was very entertaining. The rest of my crew saw a few more movies yesterday, but I had to stay in and rest. Last night, we decided after dinner to go over to the Carlton Hotel and "people-watch," where we saw Josh Brolin, which was very exciting.

This morning, we had a few more of these type of screenings planned, but we decided to try to wait outside the Lumiere Theater with paper signs to see if we could get an invitation to the premiere of Oliver Stone's Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps (see the picture below).

The sign said, "Un invitation pour Wall Street S.V.P." (SVP = s'il vous plait). As we were all laughing with each other about this unlikely attempt to get in, someone walking out of the theater handed me a ticket. As I jumped in excitement and waited in line to get into the premiere, someone asked if they could trade tickets with me (mine was a balcony ticket) so that he could sit with his wife. The ticket he gave me ended up being in the orchestra, and I sat in the fifth row of the premiere this afternoon. The entire experience was so exciting--although I never saw the original Wall Street, I really enjoyed the sequel. I am sure the experience behind viewing this film biased my opinion of this movie, but I thought the plot was great and entertaining.

Check back for more to come from Anna at Cannes!