What's with those long Cannes' standing ovations?

I’ve been travelling lately and haven’t had the time to watch movies. So don’t have a lot to comment on. However, the Cannes Film Festival, just ended, always brings a smile to my face. That’s because so many films – seemingly good or bad in terms of future critical and popular appeal – end up getting standing ovations by the beau monde attendees. And not just a brief ovation but ones that last for minutes on end. This year, the haut monde beautiful people gave Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis – the “most talked about” firm at the festival – a seven-minute standing. Critically the movie, Coppola’s swan song for which he spilled $120 mil of his own bread and which stars Adam Driver, has been a bomb with some dubbing it Magaflopolis. Not to be outdone is Kevin Costner’s western epic An American Saga – Chapter 1. As a Brit critic sneered, “The Cannes audience gave it a ten-minute standing ovation, but perhaps they were just trying to get their blood circulating again.” What is it about these longstanding Cannes’ ovations that have been going on year after festival year? I posit the seats are too damn hard in the Grand Theatre Lumiere. Said Reuben Baron of Wealth of Geeks, “At most film festivals, any standing ovation stirs excitement. Not so at the Cannes Film Festival, where audiences will stand up and applaud for literally anything — even for films they also booed. To judge the true hype level for films premiering at Cannes, measure the length of a film’s standing ovation. Nowhere else in the world could a three-minute standing ovation mean “people didn’t really care for it,” but when moviegoers at the prestigious French festival love a movie, they’ll stay on their feet for 10 or even 20 minutes! Critics, the general public, and Oscar voters went on to share the love for some of these films. Others, it seems you had to be there to get into the applauding spirit.”

My upcoming festival schedule? There’s the Windsor Jewish Film Festival at the Capitol Theatre next month June 17 – 20 (see earlier posts about its rescheduling and venue change). And then I’ll have to wait until fall. But what an autumn line-up! I usually head to Montreal for the Festival du nouveau cinema (FNC) - the city’s oldest film festival but with often premier and cutting-edge works, October 9 - 20. Then it will be time to return home for the Windsor International Film Festival (WIFF) Oct. 24 – Nov. 3. And for the first time, Windsor’s under-the-radar but internationally well-regarded avant-garde festival, Media City, in its 26th edition, has been rescheduled this year to Nov. 7 – 11, immediately following WIFF. After being in London last fall and just getting the dregs of the famed BFI maybe, with advance notice, I could scoot over for a few days this year. But it also runs Oct. 9 – 20.  Maybe split the diff between Montreal and London?