High passions and hard partying on the Croisette

AS THE prizes were presented at the climax of the 60th Cannes Film Festival on Sunday night, it seemed a shame that there was not an Acting Beyond The Call Of Duty award. I'm not a betting man normally, but I would definitely have staked a few Euros on Asia Argento winning, as nothing I saw at the festival came close to her French kiss with a slobbering rottweiler, in Abel Ferrara's strip-club comedy Go Go Tales, for sheer outré yuckiness.

Ferrara's film was playful, if incoherent, but this year's Cannes was more notable for the often dark and sombre tone of its films. Murder, suicide, abortion and even zoophilia were all on offer.

British film critic Mark Cousins described the mood of the first week's line-up as "funereal", suggesting that Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof and Emir Kusturica's Promise Me This might lighten the tone as the festival unspooled. In the event, we were disappointed: Tarantino's film pleased a few, but left many, including myself, cold, and Kusturica failed to give us anything that we had not already seen him do many times already.

But as the days passed, my problem was less with the films themselves and more with my need for sleep. Whether the movies were good, bad or indifferent, by the middle of the second week I was struggling to stay awake. It was not just the endless trekking up and down the Croisette, or the queuing for up to an hour in the blazing sun to get into some screenings, or even the aggravating control-freakery of some publicists that had worn me down. No, this year I made a tyro's error by succumbing to the temptations of the party scene early in the festival - something I learned not to do years ago - and peaked too soon.

Still, as poorly as I felt, I don't think anyone really noticed - Cannes is a whirligig of a festival where a lot of "the talent" (as the PR people like to call their clients) also party well into the wee small hours. Feeling rough is just part of the experience.

Passions always run high in Cannes and this year was no different. Fireworks flew at a news conference when Roman Polanski stormed out after berating journalists for their "empty" questions. He was appearing on a panel with 30 other major filmmakers who were showing short films in homage to cinema. "Frankly, let's all go and have lunch," he suggested, incensed, before walking out. None of the other directors followed.

Michael Moore also got hot under the collar during an interview about his new documentary Sicko when I joked that where America leads, we follow. We are close allies after all, I said, perhaps a little too sarcastically. "Yeah, well no thanks to you for that," snapped Moore. "Really, there wouldn't be a war in Iraq if it wasn't for Britain, and all the other fine members of the coalition of the willing. George Bush, he doesn't know any better. But Mr Blair does. Mr Blair isn't stupid. And Mr Blair was the enabler of George W Bush, and provided him the cover to the American people."

This is why we want answers about why we went to war, I protested. "Well, you also need to ask yourself why you didn't toss him out," Moore retorted. "You had an election in the middle of all this and you put him back in."

By the penultimate day, I seemed to be developing a knack for accidentally lighting fires under filmmakers. Speaking to James Gray (Little Odessa, The Yards) about his competition entry, We Own the Night, a taut cop thriller starring Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes and Robert Duvall, I innocently told this intense writer/director that I had been confused by the booing and catcalls which had erupted at the end of its first press screening (the second one ended in applause, apparently). Gray looked perplexed: he had not heard about the film's heated reception.

Then he became angry. "I don't really give a s***. F*** 'em," he sneered. "Good, there's something in it for people to boo. But look," he added, wearily, "there's no accounting for people's views. Once the movie is made, anything can happen."

And this year's Cannes has been a festival where seemingly anything can. I still cannot believe the cheers that met Tarantino's Death Proof, and I am still wondering whether perhaps I imagined seeing Jerry Seinfeld slide down a wire from the roof of the Carlton Hotel dressed as a bumble bee, to promote a new animated feature - a stunt that was either desperate or funny, depending on your point of view.

When Cannes finally reached its close, the Palme d'Or - as well as several other awards - was lifted by one of the critics' favourites, the hard-hitting 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a Romanian film, set at the end of the communist era, about the consequences of an illegal abortion. My tip for the top honour, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, earned Julian Schnabel Best Director, while outside the main competition, one of my favourite films of the entire festival, Control, photographer Anton Corbijn's celluloid feature debut about Ian Curtis and Joy Division, won a clutch of awards in the Directors' Fortnight section.

So that's it for another year. Au revoir, Cannes. It has been tough, but you know I love you really.