Riviera Reels
The 2025 Cannes Film Festival officially closed Saturday with the anointing of newly minted Palme d'Or winner 'It Was Just an Accident.' The award thrust Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi into a rarefied group of directors to win top honors at Berlin, Cannes and Venice, the so-called 'Big Three' international film festivals. (The others so honored, Henri-Georges Cluzot, Michelangelo Antonioni and Robert Altman, make for a circle of legendary good company).
The prize ceremony marked the end of two weeks of celebrating the best in world cinema from one of the most gorgeous places on Earth, events most of us could only watch from environs far less glamorous than Cannes' La Croisette. Even the lucky few who did attend have likely disembarked to their more humdrum hometowns.
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Thank heavens, then, for good old movie magic, which can bring the French Riviera home with the click of a remote.
Most silver-screen sojourns to the region begin with Alfred Hitchcock's trés charmant 1955 classic 'To Catch a Thief.' And with good reason. Watching Cary Grant's reformed larcenist John 'The Cat' Robie attempt to clear his name after a spate of new seaside burglaries never grows old. His mission is intensified by a romantic pas-de-deux with American heiress Frances 'Francie' Stevens, played by Grace Kelly in her third, and final, turn as a Hitchcock blonde. Sure, there's a twisty mystery involved, but it mostly serves as an excuse to marvel as Kelly, not yet a princess but every bit screen royalty, glides through the proceedings in a series of Edith Head costumes, including a glorious gold lamé number, bringing flinty élan to an heiress with more mettle than first meets the eye.
But once the credits roll on John and Francie's Côte d'Azur courtship caper, fear not. Turns out, the evergreen appeal of a beautiful natural backdrop has led to a fairly expansive film library. And so, with the 2025 festival now over, those still looking to ogle the scenery can embark upon a cinematic tour of the South of France by watching these movies:
'Two for the Road' (1967): Couples trips. Sometimes they're great. Sometimes they're fraught. Through four pilgrimages to the French Riviera in Stanley Donen's time-hopping melodrama, Audrey Hepburn's Joanna and Albert Finney's Mark meet, fall in love, honeymoon and fall apart. Hepburn's thorny performance veers away from her typical sparkling ingenue presence toward something more brittle (watching Holly Golightly restrain herself from cursing out a precocious, irritating child delights). Shedding her famous onscreen Givenchy armor, Hepburn takes Joanna from Keds-wearing coed to Paco Rabanne-clad woman scorned. Never has a celluloid marriage dissolved in prettier surroundings than in this film, at turns charming, bittersweet and depressing.
'Under the Cherry Moon' (1986): How does the biggest star on the planet follow up the success of his bespoke, box-office smash rock movie musical? Why, with a tale of star-crossed lovers set in the French Riviera, written by a screenwriter with no experience and shot (against the studio's wishes) in black-and-white. His Purple Highness Prince plays soulful expat Christopher Tracy, layabout by day, pianist by night and gigolo by later night. He meets, snipes at and falls in love with Mary Sharon, a spoiled debutante (Saint-Tropez is lousy with them, it seems), played by Kristin Scott Thomas in a role originally intended for Madonna. An unqualified bomb critically and financially, with hindsight, 'Cherry Moon' is less misunderstood masterpiece than a fanciful oddity that makes one long for the days when pop-star side hustles tended toward audacious vanity projects rather than beauty brands.
'La Piscine [Swimming Pool]' (1969): A seminal entry in the canon of 'impossibly gorgeous, chic people are unfathomably miserable in a stunning setting' cinema. In Jacques Deray's sun-drenched psycho-drama, Romy Schneider and Alain Delon play Marianne and Jean-Paul, a couple vacationing at an opulent villa near Saint-Tropez. Their holiday bliss comes across more as holiday existential unease, and that's before the arrival of a pair of interlopers — Marianne's old flame Harry (Maurice Ronet) and his daughter Penelope (a lip-biting Jane Birkin). Old resentments simmer, new transgressions come to light, and the titular swimming pool plays a critical, climactic part. It's all contrasted by one of the best collections of sexy swimwear to ever hit the screen.
'Swimming Pool' (2003): A publisher sends a novelist suffering from writer's block to his country home in the South of France to reset. But is there enough wine in all of Provence to unwind a Brit as icy and buttoned-up as Charlotte Rampling's Sarah Morton in François Ozon's sharp, erotic thriller? Clad in tweeds, Rampling telegraphs the unsettled discomfort of a woman not naturally predisposed to fun in the sun. Her Sarah struggles to finish her latest detective novel, and matters worsen with the arrival of an interloper, the publisher's daughter Julie (played by a wild-eyed Ludivine Sagnier). Julie quickly embraces the local lifestyle of loud, passionate late-night imbroglios. In response, Sarah's emotional state swings between consternation and compulsion as her solitary writer's retreat morphs into a poolside war of wills between stuffy dame and slightly unhinged French gamine.
'Ronin' (1998): Sure, the South of France lures beautiful people eager to indulge in sunning, day drinking and looking divine in a maillot. But it can also attract Russian gangsters, IRA operatives and lots of explosions. John Frankenheimer's gritty heist flick is packed with shifting loyalties, shady motives and not one, but two, figure-skating set pieces. Robert De Niro (who was this year's Cannes Honorary Palme d'Or recipient) plays Sam, an American mercenary member of a multinational crew attempting to swipe a Rimowa-esque suitcase from some heavily armed goons. This occurs at a constant, '90s-thriller, edge-of-your-seat pace. Bonus points, too, for the protagonist's transparent American pragmatism. Asked by a fellow conspirator if he lacks courage, Sam bites back, 'Of course I'm afraid. You think I'm reluctant because I'm happy?'
'La Cage aux Folles' (1978): Life's a drag for Saint-Tropez nightclub owner Renato Baldi (Ugo Tognazzi) and his longtime partner Albin Mougeotte, aka Zaza Napoli (Michel Serrault). But calamity lurks when Laurent, Renato's spoiled-ingrate son, comes home to announce his engagement, and that he has invited his fiancée and her parents for a visit. Un problème: his dearly beloved's father is a standard-bearer of the Tradition, Family and Morality Party, which is not big on men in fishnets, boas and faux lashes. Laurent callously asks Albin to make himself scarce so Laurent's estranged mother can step in for the evening. But when Mommie Dearest gets stuck in traffic, Albin comes to the rescue, donning frumpy drag to pose as the mater familias. Based on the 1973 play of the same name, Édouard Molinaro's loopy farce has had a long afterlife in Harvey Fierstein's oft-restaged 1983 musical and the 1996 American remake, 'The Birdcage.' Which goes to show that comedy is tragedy plus thigh-highs.
'Titane' (2021): Ah, the South of France. Gorgeous. Luxurious. Sunny. Well, most of the time. Through the twisted lens of Julia Ducournau, the typically idyllic locale curdles into something much darker. Set in and around Marseilles, this wild, weird body horror film centers on the seemingly stoic Alexia (Agathe Rousselle). After a childhood auto accident leaves her with a titanium plate in her head, Alexia develops a love affair with cars. Literally. The film is a remarkably auteur-y and artful delivery mechanism for high — and highly creative — shock value. Its ample guts and gore include an ear-canal stabbing that may send some viewers running. Fortunately for Ducournau, Spike Lee's 2021 Cannes jury was made of stronger stuff and awarded 'Titane' the Palme d'Or. Ducournau's follow-up, the AIDS allegory 'Alpha,' premiered at this year's festival to an 11-plus-minute standing ovation and a raft of mixed reviews. These ranged from 'absolute knockout' to 'insufferable misfire,' indicating a thorny, divisive departure from the clearly more obvious appeal of a classic 'girl-does-car' story.
These films each put a distinctive spin on the French Riviera — as does that most obvious, aforementioned classic. 'The Riviera,' ever splendorous. High jewelry, ever tempting. Grace Kelly, ever enchanting. And Cary Grant, ever debonair, even in his character's shameless explanation of his life of crime: 'Why did I take up stealing? To live better, to own things I couldn't afford, to acquire this good taste…which I should be very reluctant to give up.' Ah, the good life, Cannes style.
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