A hedgehog in a bun, s’il vous plait, and other French weirdness

There's not much worth complaining about here at the Cannes Film Festival. But I'll find something. It's a bit hot. Too much time in the dark triggers an eccentric strain of seasonal affective disorder.

Then there’s the continuing difficulty with getting anybody to put coffee in a takeaway cup. A few years ago a place opened opposite the Palais – more or less exactly where Napoleon landed after fleeing Elba – that has a few disposable cups out the back. But most establishments frown angrily at the suggestion. You may as well ask for a hedgehog in a bun.

I mention this for a reason. This minor inconvenience is typical of the many tiny dilemmas that complicate our attitude to this great nation. On the one hand, the good people of the Riviera are doing very much the right thing. They are resisting the invasion of Starbucks and Costas that has turned so many of the world’s streets into boring facsimiles of each other. They are showing respect for the product. On the other hand, it’s just a paper cup. Nobody is asking them to boil their claret or stop torturing their geese. There are better hills on which to stand and fight the advance of cultural imperialism.

The festival itself has, this year, found itself caught up in another quandary that triggers complex responses in outsiders. Shortly before events kicked off, the organisers announced that, from next year, no film would be considered for the main competition that was not committed to a theatrical release in France. The statement was prompted by the news that two Netflix releases included in this year’s race looked likely to go straight to the streaming service without passing the local Ritzy.

Screening vs streaming

Once again, we applaud the French. They have ensured that this grand old institution remains devoted to cinema as cinema. But hang on. There is, apparently, a regulation stating that no film that receives a wide theatrical release can appear on a French streaming service within three years. Movies appear on telly more quickly these days. “The cinema’s awfully expensive. Sure, you can see it on television for free in a few years,” our Northern Irish parents used to say. You can see where Netflix is coming from.

Here is the point. So much about French culture is simultaneously magnificent and baffling. Many bits of American culture are magnificent. They invented jazz and the western movie. Many bits of American culture are baffling. They also invented root beer and televangelism. But one doesn’t find oneself so often divided about the same bits of the US cultural palette.

The uncertainty stretches to more serious issues. The recent documentary I Am Not Your Negro finds the black author James Baldwin talking about the liberty he felt living in France during the 1950s. In the same years, musicians such as Dexter Gordon and Kenny Clarke also moved there to escape racism. One of Dexter's most famous albums was entitled Our Man in Paris.

Yet the French state's attitude to race and religion remains puzzling. The commitment to secularism is commendable. Our country could learn a little from their determination. On the other hand, the notorious ban on French Muslim girls wearing headscarves at school feels like a worrying restriction on personal freedom. "France no longer just wants integration, it wants assimilation and that's just not acceptable," Malek Chebel, the late Islamic intellectual, told Newsweek in 2015. "I think the British model, which practises tolerance towards all minorities, is wonderful. But we're still a long way from that." And this was before Marine Le Pen gathered 34 per cent of the vote in a presidential election.

Confusion in sophistication

It is not uncommon for human beings to describe something inexplicable as “sophisticated”. The word is often fairly used about France. When most food in the best Irish restaurants was still barely fit for pigs, the ordinary French brasserie could offer you something deliciously balanced for the price of a paperback novel. But we often drag out “sophisticated” to synonymously cover our bafflement.

The French do know something about dressing smartly. But we can’t approve of that fellow who turned away somebody from a Cannes screening for not wearing high heels. French critics reinvented cinema by studying the hitherto undervalued films of the American mainstream. They burnished the reputations of such geniuses as Howard Hawks and Anthony Mann. Then they inexplicably made a hero of Jerry Lewis. How sophisticated.

None of this would seem quite so confusing if France was on the other side of the world. The culture is almost in reach, but our fingers just fall short. That’s why it remains so fascinating. If it all made sense there would be no reason to keep pondering its garlicky intricacies. The French have a word for it. Probably.