Cannes: sad, rude, chaotic, love it or leave it.

Hello tristesse. Boss Gilles Jacob illustrated his Cannes Film Festival with an apt drawing of the late actress Giulietta Masina looking in solitude at the sea, as if she were waiting for her husband, the late Federico Fellini.

A triste picture. Just as sad as was the recently concluded 47th annual Cannes event.

On the surface everything was the meme: A big crowd, many parading personalities, the usual battalion of grumbling press people and a large number of film distributors. Some of these moved out of the Palais to camp in several tents scattered around it.

Since the Palais' cold basement had been taken over by the adult film business, others found a spot in the sun a more appropriate location, if only scorching hot. But, the first telltale signs of the poster-inspired tristesse came from the missing banners that in the past, used to flap in the wind on the big hotels' window sills. Reason? No money we were told. Later, one noticed the relative calm inside the hotels' lobbies and corridors where distributors complained of film brochures being snatched only by tourists.

Finally, the bane of every film market: license fees. Complained an American distributor: "It's unreal. They're offering $300,000 for Japan, when we need at least $600,000 to give all rights."

Similarly, Italian buyers were seen shaking their heads in disbelief.: "It's obscene. They're asking $2.5 million for Italy. We can't recoup that kind of money!" Business, though, was reported done. Japanese buyers were paying $700,000 per movie and French distributors were even getting the customary 7 per cent of the films' negative costs for Italy and the same for Japan.

On the Festival front, the organization paid tribute to the French and Italian cinema with a relatively large selection for each of its four concurrent events. The difference, however, was that while French cinema dominated every aspect of the festivities, the Italian industry was barely noticeable. Nevertheless, the few visible Italians were happy for the attention, even if it under scored the sad state of affairs of their cinema.

Few observers agreed on the films creating a "buzz" with Variety citing many new films just to play it safe, and the Hollywood Reporter just betting on the Indian film Bandit Queen. The Americans, of course, weren't ignored. The topic of American cultural imperialism was just as hot as the erotic theme that under lined the whole competition: it's exciting, needed, and nice to look at, but please don't praise it.

Aplethora of seminars and press conferences peppered the II--day event, forcing journalists to come up with multiple appearance tricks.

Finally, one cannot help but mention the customary disorganized chaos and the good job that the Festival did in training its hostesses to be rude and disrespectful. Apparently, it's the French version of what Hollywood to them is supposed to be.(*)