Everywhere I went in Cannes, she was there, wearing something black and minimal, exuding mystery, her famous falcon eyes hidden by dark glasses. One night she deliberately sat in front of me at a screening; I could tell by the self-conscious way she moved her head. On my way to the bathroom the morning before the first film of the day, there she was again in the lobby of the Lumière with the same faint, complicit smile. I couldn’t get rid of Charlotte Rampling.
Eric says it’s happening more often now—stars stalking ordinary people. Especially in Cannes, where celebrities still wield an unironic glamour. Here they remain facts, like the stars in the sky.
My first time at the festival I came on my own as a journalist, freelancing for the Star. I did what you do when you are one of the four thousand media who descend on Cannes every spring—I raced from screening to screening, wept over my faulty Internet connections, underslept, and binged on films until my eyes felt like melting wheels of full-fat cheese.
But this time I was there with Eric, whose first feature, ᐱᒃᑲ (Inuktitut for “that place above”), had been accepted in the festival’s sidebar program, Un Certain Regard. It’s a drama set in the high Arctic about an oil-seeking American geologist (played by Rob Lowe) and the Inuit who try to thwart him. Very little dialogue. One of the Inuit actors, Aipalovik, has come with us to Cannes for the premiere. His name means both “evil god of the sea” and “entertainer,” he explained with his lopsided smile.
Aipalovik has been to Sundance (where he was cast as an indigenous zombie in the horror movie Inukshuk) but never to the south of France. He is thirty-four, placid and handsome, with a sparse black chin-beard that seems to be especially attractive to the women here. He wears only cargo shorts with Teva sandals and finds everything interesting, which makes him an excellent traveling companion. Aipo used to work as a driver on one of those polar-bear-viewing buses for tourists, and before that he hunted caribou. So the empty white spaces of travel are familiar to him.
This time I wasn’t in Cannes on assignment, which means I could take advantage of a quaint French tradition—the Spousal Pass, or as it is diplomatically known (to cover mistresses too), an “Accompaniatrice” pass. Technically it’s only for the media who want to bring their partners, but we managed to wangle one. And I didn’t mind playing the wife card this time around; I was secretly pleased, in fact.
My laminated white Spousal Pass, worn around the neck, allowed me to file past the lineups of sweating critics with lowlier accreditation. Aipalovik had a limited-access blue pass, for instance, which was embarrassing. Eric tried to get him upgraded, but the French officials wouldn’t budge. (They still call the Inuit Eskimos here.) Aipalovik just shrugged and took it in good humor. He spent his time in lineups flirting with the women around him anyway.
In the first week, Charlotte Rampling’s taste in films uncannily mirrored mine. She sat two rows away from me in Godard’s Maudite Langue, and we both stood to applaud, while some booed. We were in aisle seats opposite each other in Sheep Stealer, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s four-hour pastoral epic. Also, we both made a point of staying for all of the closing credits. The theater is often deserted by the time they stop rolling. Then I let her leave first. Her small smile on the way out acknowledges our ritual.
Charlotte was in Cannes for a special retrospective of films by the Italian director Liliana Cavani. Most notorious among these is The Night Porter, in which the actress plays a Holocaust survivor who, years later, runs into her captor (played by the epicene Dirk Bogarde) in a Viennese hotel. They embark on a sadomasochistic affair complete with full frontal nudity and Nazi trimmings. Roger Ebert called it “as nasty as it is lubricious,” but the film acquired a cult status, and it was a typically brave choice by Rampling. Odd pairings seem to appeal to her. The last movie I saw her in was Max, Mon Amour by the esteemed Japanese director Nagisa Oshimi. She plays the wife of an English diplomat and embarks on a very credible affair with a chimpanzee. Rampling’s performance was note-perfect, as usual. Subversive seduction is her forte.
As the press conference for Liliana Cavani wrapped up, Aipalovik and I joined the crowd out in the hall waiting for Charlotte and her costars to emerge from the salon. I threaded my way to the front, worried that she might be scanning the crowds for my face.
The doors swung open and Charlotte appeared with her little retinue. Although she looks tall and regal on-screen, in real life she is rather small with delicate facial features. No puffy duck lips for her. She wore a modest black dress with no jewelry, and seemed as composed amid the frenzy of Cannes as she is on-screen.
“Charlotte! Over here!” the photographers called out, as their devices clicked and whirred. Some carry stools so they can shoot over the heads of the crowd. “Charlotte—Presse Internationale!” yelled one man as the actress walked away. She turned and paused, offering a wry smile as if to say, yes, all right, if it’s international.
I must admit I got quite caught up in the moment. I felt like crying out, “Charlotte! Over here—Spousal Pass!” I think that might have amused her.
In the evening, after Aipalovik left us to join a bevy of publicists having drinks on the lawn of the Grand, Eric and I strolled back to our hotel. The owners were a charming young couple with impeccable manners, who sang out “Bonjour!” or “Bonsoir!” at our every encounter, in that formal French soprano. Back in our tiny room we drew the drapes against the noise of the Petit Majestic, a café where festival-goers spill out into the streets, drinking and talking until dawn. All night long the noise of the crowd sounded like heavy surf, almost soothing. The sea was only a few blocks away, but it is an orderly body of water. Like the teacup-sized dogs carried in their handbags by the Cannoise women, it is not really “nature” anymore.
Eric and I developed a nightly ritual in Cannes. First I would call Ryan and Ceri; my mother was staying with them and they needed to complain about her cooking. Then I would set out our earplugs on either side of the bed, tenderly place our two mobile phones in their charging cradles, and drape a T-shirt over Eric’s new laptop, whose green lights pulsed like something small, alive, and breathing. The TV and the air conditioner also had little red eyes. This constellation shone over us as we slept.
One morning I skipped the 8:30 a.m. screening to go to the market and buy some food. You cannot snack in Cannes; you must sit down at a table in a restaurant and spend a proper hour or two, so I try to keep our mini-fridge in the hotel stocked, mostly with fruit. The strawberries here are small but potent as a drug.
In fact, my favorite Cannes moments were when Eric and I sat on our balcony at dusk, poured two glasses of rosé, and ate fresh strawberries with Brie. Sometimes oysters too. The air is especially soft at that time of day, and the palm trees in the garden throw their jagged shadows on the ochre of the hotel façade. We toasted each other, our hard-earned life together (his first wife was a handful), and felt lucky to be there.
The Cannes market sells everything, not just food. I was standing at the stall that sells only bikinis—there is no cut-off age for bikini-wearing in the south of France—when I saw Charlotte across from me, sniffing a melon. Her sunglasses were enormous. She wore a trench coat with the collar turned up and the same black ballet flats as the day before.
Casually, I drifted down the aisle to the strawberry stall and paid for two boxes. She just as casually left the melons behind and began to inspect some dried lavender opposite me. I crossed the street and ducked into the doorway of a patisserie. Bonjour, madame! cried the woman behind the counter, snaring me, so I bought two Opera cakes. Through the window I could still see Charlotte looking around for me, perplexed. The lavender seller was waiting for her to pay when she abruptly abandoned the bouquet and walked away. There was a sad slump to her shoulders, or so I imagined. She carried an umbrella.
I dashed out of the store with my cakes and decided to follow her for a few blocks. I felt a little bad for having eluded her like that. And what was the harm, really, if she had some compelling interest in me? She was an actor, and actors study other people. The streets were thronged and the crowds swam around Charlotte without a second glance; her singularity, her charisma, only flared on-screen. I had to jog to keep up with her. Then, when I turned down rue Mace I spotted Aipalovik admiring the ball gowns in the windows of a couturier’s shop.
“Ten thousand dollars for a dress,” he said when I joined him. “But it’s finely crafted, isn’t it? The little crystal drops on the bodice.” He looked a bit worse for wear. Eric said that when he had left the bar at the Grand the night before, a big-boned American girl was touching Aipalovik on the arm and laughing whenever he spoke. His years as a hunter had made him attentive and highly observant, which the women here are not accustomed to.
I explained to Aipo that the French actress Charlotte Rampling had been following me for several days.
“Why would she follow you?”
“I don’t know, but I was just at the market and there she was again.”
“Perhaps she was buying food.”
“No, no. She was looking at lavender. No Frenchwoman would buy lavender, it’s for the tourists. She’s obsessed with me for some reason.”
Aipalovik pondered this. “You know, when I’m hunting, I keeping thinking I see caribou in the distance. But it’s usually not the case.”
“This is different. Come with me.”
I led him to the Majestic, where the minor celebrities stayed (the A-listers stayed out of town, at the absurdly deluxe Hotel du Cap). A white Rolls with tinted windows had pulled up and was disgorging new guests. It was always a kick just to walk through the lobby to view the haggard and wealthy in their finery. The orange-skinned men with the $15,000 chronometers on their wrists, and the women of full artifice, looking embalmed.
“The rich often seem unhappy,” Aipalovik observed as we threaded through the lobby. And there she was, standing near the bar, checking her watch with the tiniest of frowns. I plucked at Aipalovik’s arm.
“Over by the floral arrangement, three o’clock.”
Charlotte had several small shopping bags at her feet. I was irritated for her sake by the late arrival of her Accompaniatrice.
“Her beauty is subtle,” said Aipalovik, “but powerful.” We watched as she drew one bare foot out of her shoe, like a deer.
“And she has a wound,” he said, his brow clouding a bit. “Look at her right foot.” He has a big nurturing side, Aipo.
It was true; I could see a blister on her heel that had been rubbed raw. It was bleeding a little. Cannes is very hard on the feet, with all the walking and the cobbled streets. That’s why I always carry Band-Aids in my purse. I put a flesh-colored Band-Aid in Aipo’s palm and he glided across the room. Charlotte turned a wary eye to this new, unusual person, dressed like a river guide. But after listening to him for a minute or two her face softened. She smiled. That guy, he had the touch. Swiftly he peeled the wrapper off, picked up Charlotte’s foot as one would a horse’s hoof for shoeing, and smoothed the adhesive strip over the curve of her blistered heel. The deed was done almost before she could register what was happening.
But Charlotte wasn’t fazed. She slipped her foot back into its black flat and opened her handbag, ready to pay him, whereupon he looked horrified and backed away. Just then a flustered young man in jeans and a silvery shirt came to her side, scowling at Aipalovik. She kissed the man and put a calming hand on his arm. She shook Aipo’s hand. The couple went and sat at the bar as he made his way back to me.
“She smells like heaven. And those eyes. I understand now.”
“Let’s slip out while she’s distracted.”
“Being in the same vicinity as you does not amount to predation,” Aipo pointed out, but I let it go.
The next night was Eric’s screening. He was trying to be offhand about it, but he was terribly nervous, fidgeting so much in the morning films that I had to leave and slip into another one. But his anxiety was understandable. The day after the premiere, reviews would appear in all the industry papers and Cannes can make or break a film. Not to mention the fact that movies set in frigid landscapes have a bad track record at the box office. So we split up for the day. I was coming out of David Lynch’s Wild at Heart when I all but collided with Charlotte.
Again with the all-black wardrobe, the almost mousy hair, the basilisk gaze. A face that teetered provocatively on the fulcrum between youth and age. The Band-Aid was still visible on one heel.
I lingered in the lobby, brandishing my presence, then went out into the sunlight and headed along the boardwalk of the Croisette, walking slowly. The sunbathers were out in force and the noon light dazzled on the sea. I stopped beside the golden Cannes carousel, where the ticket seller was a Jayne Mansfield lookalike, except that her one arm had been amputated below the elbow. The arm was neatly rounded at the end like a sausage. She could still swing a smart handbag from it though. I watched the carousel turn, empty except for two teenage girls. I could feel Charlotte close behind me. We were tethered.
That night Eric’s screening seemed to go over well, but it’s impossible to judge reactions at Cannes, where the audiences are either jaded or overly partisan. Rob Lowe was fantastic as the slick American colonizer, and people leaped up to clap at the end. That might have been as much for Aipalovik as anything else—he was irresistible on-screen. Eric sat rigidly beside me. His nerves made it impossible for me to fall under the spell of the story, but the images of the polar seas and pewter skies were still ravishing. The more the world behaves like a blockbuster action movie, the more I long for silence and space on the screen. Watching the film also told me something new about Eric, his passion for this subtle landscape. It’s always a surprising act of intimacy to see things through his eyes.
Afterward Eric’s distributor hosted a reception in the Cannes apartment he rents during the festival. The Canadians all came out to support Eric and Aipalovik, some young French filmmakers crashed the party, a few critics floated by scarfing up the appetizers, and at midnight everyone went out onto the balcony to wait for the fireworks to begin. The nightly display is always artful and protracted, like dinner in a Cannes restaurant.
When I went back in to fetch Eric there she was, talking to him. She must have slipped into the screening unnoticed. But why would she want to see a little Canadian film about the high Arctic?
This time her black dress exposed the tops of her shoulders and had a single row of jet beads. A DJ was playing loud disco, so she was bending in close to listen to him. Her hand rested on his upper arm. I stood back and watched Eric, who was flushed, animated, eager to please. I should have gone up to them but a curious passivity overcame me. Finally they gave each other European double-cheek kisses and they parted.
I crossed the room to my husband.
“Wasn’t that Charlotte Rampling?”
“Yes,” he said, still rosy-faced. “And she loved the film! She adored it. She called it a master class in stillness.”
“Well, it’s certainly a far cry from The Night Porter.”
“She said she’d love to work with me sometime. Her agent’s going to send me a screenplay she’s been working on, with the guy who wrote the biopic about Rodin’s mistress, what’s her name…”
“Camille Claudel.”
“They’ve got their investors all lined up, and now they’re looking for a director. Someone under the radar, she said. Can you believe it? Charlotte Rampling!” His face shone like a child’s.
My reaction was intensely physical. The blood roared into my head until the music seemed to come from some room far away. I drained my glass.
“I’m sorry, but working with her is out of the question,” I heard myself say in a firm unspousal voice. Outside, the fireworks had begun, pillowy explosions.
“What are you talking about?” Eric said, taking the glass out of my hand as a waiter swam by with a fresh bottle. “Why not?”
“It’s just—I’ve been watching her operate. She’s trouble, Eric. You’ve never been good with trouble.”
“Really? I ran into the director of that chimpanzee movie she was in, and he had nothing but good things to say.”
He looked at me then with an expression of confusion and concern but my words were already there between us, irredeemable. Aipo will back me up, I thought. Aipo gets it.
Then our host came over with an American producer who wanted to congratulate Eric. I left them and joined the others on the balcony. Charlotte stood at the rail with her young man, watching the lights burst against the blackness of the sky, outshining the stars. Pink, silver, blue, then blinding flashbulb bursts of white, with gunshot sounds. A paparazzi dazzle. The display seemed to go on forever, then escalated into a final thunderous salvo as the people around me exclaimed and applauded. It really was a spectacular show.
I clapped too. But inside my head it was absolutely quiet and still, like her.