In recent years, Cannes’ increasingly standardized custom of drawn-out standing ovations — subject of sneers as well as sympathy — has received much attention: explained as sociology, critiqued as pathology. But as the 78th annual film festival gets underway, and the trend shows no sign of abatement, it’s worth considering the signal behind all the noise. The unrelenting, excessive applause isn’t just joyous. Underneath, it’s desperate, and a revealing indicator of the decline of what’s ostensibly being celebrated.
Which is to say, the ovations aren’t mere vexation. They’re damnation.
This extended cheering, reminiscent of rallies in authoritarian regimes, has been normalized and fanned by a couple of key institutional factors. First, at the conclusion of each premiere, the festival’s in-house production crew projects the faces of the director and their actors on the Palais’
big screen. The camera effect encourages everyone in the theatre to perform mania. Second, the Cannes-covering press — including, yes, The Hollywood Reporter — has legitimized and promoted the displays by timing their length.
Occasionally, as with Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 entrant Pan’s Labyrinth, in-the-moment hosannas (a 22-minute eruption) correspond with larger and lasting acclaim. More often, these roars of approval are simply a bizarre admixture of manners and madness.
Bong Joon Ho has been the rare, perhaps singular, director to wrap up his own hailing early, after eight minutes in 2019. “Thank you, let’s all go home,” he told Parasite’s audience, later explaining that he and his creative team “were very hungry” by that point in the evening — a common sentiment among premiere attendees.
For his part, Cannes boss Thierry Frémaux has endorsed the practice, explaining in 2022 that encouraging ovations is part of his job: “I pay attention to the screening, how long to keep the room in the dark, whether to cut the credits or not, the best moment to turn on the light, et cetera. Every screening is a celebration, and the participation of the audience makes that celebration much better. People want to participate!”
Cannes’ chief rival, Venice, has likewise gotten ever more into the protracted act. Especially to salute the kinds of films boasting big stars — Gravity, A Star is Born, Birdman, The Whale — which have turned the Lido into a pipeline for the American awards season. The Rubicon will have been crossed if Berlin ever forgoes its own long-honed sense of critical reserve.
Overly inflated ovations, some with runtimes comparable to a short film, used to be rare on the Croisette. Think of Sergio Leone’s reported 15-minute reception to Once Upon a Time in America in 1984. Yet now they’re the baseline, with most competition titles at the 2024 festival receiving some form of seemingly interminable vertical accolade. Only a mere six or seven minutes of ecstatic clapping like a trained seal from more than 2,000 audience members in formal wear? Yikes.
Meanwhile, Cannes’ inverse tradition of passionate disavowal by booing has evaporated in the past decade. Jeers, fair or not, once meant viewers were being transparent in how they felt about Vincent Gallo’s The Brown Bunny (2003), Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales (2006), Gus Van Sant’s The Sea of Trees (2015) and whatever was in competition from Nicolas Winding Refn or Lars von Trier. Now, public mockery is all but muzzled. Self-censorship is in style in the seats at the Lumière Theatre.
The problem with all of this is that the excessive rah-rah is a mask for diminishment. A healthy, vital, dynamic art form — one that’s confident in its place at the center of culture — doesn’t overcompensate. But once-dominant modes of expression that have become marginalized can’t help but develop cringeworthy coping mechanisms.
Think of the automatic on-your-feet laurels at stage-play curtain calls, the rote multiple encores at opera performances, the over-the-top reviews of just about any new ballet production and the mindless blurbing of literary novels. The common theme: As popular relevance wanes, hype must be contrived in the hope of forestalling death.
Well-meaning Cannes audiences may believe they’re rousing themselves and each other in support of a creative community that benefits from mass rapture. Yet all those bravos only drown out a reality that might better be greeted — at least at the less-than-transcendent premiere showcases — with more measured restraint. Or even just some reflective silence.
