Cinema-going would be so much easier if I possessed the ability to doze off in my seat or storm off in high dudgeon. For some reason I've never been able to sleep during a film, no matter how stultifying it is or how hard I try. And while I have walked out on movies I've done it only rarely and always sheepishly, sneaking out with my head bowed low. It is all so very British.
In Cannes it's different. Over here walk-outs are conducted with pride and panache. Over here the walk-out is a political act. People stride down the aisles with their head up and their arms swinging. In so doing they effectively become part of the experience, players on the stage. You can judge the success or failure of a movie equating the number of walk-outs with the passion of the applause of the punters who elect to remain in their seats.
So far as I could tell, nobody walked out of the Coen brothers' film No Country For Old Men, which must qualify it as an unqualified hit. In stark contrast, about a third of the audience abandoned last night's screening of the new Abel Ferrara drama Go Go Tales. The exodus started at around the half-hour mark and petered out about 20 minutes before the end.
Does this make the Ferrara film a dud? I'm not sure it necessarily does. The director has always polarised audiences and would probably be secretly embarrassed to make a movie that absolutely everyone loved to bits. But I do think that the number of walk-outs were in direct proportion to the applause at the end. The people who remained were Ferrara devotees, die-hards, near-fanatics. Offended by the exits of their milksop enemies they gained revenge at the end by roaring defiant appreciation through the closing credits.
The trouble is that they were only applauding to themselves, and maybe even for themselves. The others had long since gone home.
