The Cannes Brûlé Palme

The recently concluded 2022 Cannes Film Festival, where Ruben Ostland’s “Triangle of Sadness” just earned the Palme d’Or, was the 75th edition of the hallowed event located along the French Riviera. That means, if we do a little math, the 1994 Cannes Film Festival was the 47th. That was the Cannes of “Pulp Fiction,” of course, though Cameron Diaz also put in an appearance alongside Jim Carrey to hype their forthcoming movie “The Mask.” (Here in 2022 both Diaz and Carrey have left acting. I’m not sure if this is cause for a parenthetical Time Flies or a parenthetical Strange Times.) And because 1994 was smack dab in the middle of the 1990s, though I repeat myself, and one year after Alicia Silverstone jadedly (heroically) tromped all over Aerosmith’s “Cryin’” video in Doc Martens, it only made sense that Diaz showed up on the Mediterranean coast sporting combat boots herself. That was so long ago – 28 years to be exact – that it’s come back around, as I can attest, seeing young women who probably weren’t alive when “The Mask” was in theaters tromping all around Chicago in combat boots, not to mention floral ankle length dresses and mom jeans, inadvertently making President Obama’s woeful 2009 All Star Game look retroactively prescient. And that’s why it’s no surprise that Kristen Stewart arrived at Cannes wearing combat boots. KStew is hip to the trends. 

Marion Cotillard, however, in the south of France to promote her upcoming “Brother And Sister (Frere Et Soeur),” did Stewart one better and wore combat boots…on the red carpet. And that’s why even if Cotillard also showed up on the red carpet wearing “some Chanel nonsense” per Go Fug Yourself (not linking because pfffffft), we here at Cinema Romantico have seen fit to confer for the second consecutive year on Cotillard our less-than-distinguished Brûlé Palme, a variation on the prestigious Palme d’Or, awarded each year to this blog’s favorite Cannes Film Festival attendee, for flouting the stick-in-the-mud film festival’s heels on the red carpet code. Get a calendar, Cannes; it’s the 90s (again). 

From one Gen Xer to another, Marion, respect.