When film critics watch football: ‘Cannes hasn’t shrieked so much since the lesbian nun film’

Look, if it’s any consolation, the Italian film in competition at Cannes last night was terrible. Yesterday evening at 9.15pm central European summer time, the audience for the world premiere of Nanni Moretti’s Three Floors was disgorged upon the seafront, during that blissful hour and a bit in which England were one goal ahead.

Moretti’s film – a drama of intersecting lives set in an apartment block in Rome – is the feeblest by far yet to have screened in competition at this year’s festival, and for the Brits in town, it felt like an omen.

The Italians in the crowd quickly scattered to the various bars and street cafés that were showing the Euro 2020 final: all-night drinking holes like Morrisons, Ma Nolans and the Petit Majestic, and down on the Rue Félix Faure, the Byron, which had become an impromptu Italian base of operations during Tuesday’s semi-final against Spain.

On the Rue Hoche, the Restaurant l’Express drew a hearty crowd, just a few doors down from the bistro L’Epicurieux on the Rue des Frères, where a group of English supporters had gathered. On the red carpet, Carla Bruni flashed an Italian-flag manicure, accessorised with a ruby, diamond and emerald ring by Chopard. A “high-profile Italian delegation”, including a major director from that country, were rumoured to have made reservations at a local pizzeria.

Naturally, the evening’s screenings were deserted. The 20th-anniversary restoration of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, the public showing of Sean Penn’s Flag Day, the short film competition over in the Critics’ Week sidebar at l’Espace Miramar: why bother when you could see history being made? Spike Lee was spotted watching alone, transfixed, at the Kering Women in Motion dinner, having drawn his chair up to the big screen, the black-tie event going on behind him forgotten.

The Euro 2020 final was the hottest ticket in town since Benedetta, Paul Verhoeven’s satirical lesbian nun film, which had premiered to much appreciative shrieking 24 hours beforehand. At bars all over town, party-goers in evening dress and holiday gear were glued to OLED television screens, waiting to see who’d lift the Palme du Foot.

Culture types did their best to sound knowledgeable, and scrabbled to get in touch with their sporty sides. Some ordered extra wine at “the interval”. Others wondered if, in the case of an England victory, crème fraiche and lipstick might be able to serve as patriotic face paint.

There was much discussion over the fact that some names just sound better in French: Jacques Gréliche, Ari Quain. When Luke Shaw scored in minute two, there was even a tentative chorus of Three Lions, though when Leonardo Bonucci equalised in minute 67, it was the Italians’ turn to roar.

After penalties at midnight, it suddenly became pressingly important for British attendees to get to bed in order to catch the first screening of Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch at 8.30am. Tabs were settled and conciliatory hugs given, while up and down the Rue d’Antibes, car horns blared. “How was it?” a Swede in evening dress who’d been partying elsewhere asked a crestfallen Brit. “It had its moments,” he replied. “But I preferred Bergman Island.”