The last action hero? Harrison Ford at the Indiana Jones premiere on May 18. Photograph: Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Images
"So, what happened in the last 20 minutes?" I said to my colleague Xan Brooks, when we met up after the first screening of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on Sunday. "Guess," he said facetiously, and I did, pretty much.
A peculiar aspect of my experience of Cannes is that, as an arts correspondent, I am frequently obliged to leave the cinema slightly early, in order to secure a place at the press conference that often takes place right afterwards. And, for popular press conferences with big stars present, unless you arrive really early - 30 to 45 minutes in advance, say - you're not going to get a seat. In grumpy moments I have even speculated that the festival organisers delight in the mild chaos that accompanies the fact that their press conference room is actually pretty small compared with the number of journalists who want to get in. It creates a slightly feverish atmosphere that I think they might enjoy.
So, I didn't see the last 20 minutes of the Indiana Jones film and, frankly, I doubt I ever will - I don't think I could bring myself to watch the other hour and 50 minutes again, since, after an arresting first half hour, I found the rest of the story a bit of a snore. And there are a bunch of other movies to which this applies, too. I never saw the end of the last Star Wars film, Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. I actually have no idea how it finishes (and I'd be quite curious to find out, if anyone fancies letting me know).
Then, in 2004, I had to sneak out of Troy, to get a seat in the firing line of Brad Pitt's steel-blue gaze at the press conference. Didn't they "do" the sack of Troy and the wooden horse and all that? Again, I'd be quite interested to know, but not quite enough to sit through the rest of the film again. I had to leave The Motorcycle Diaries early - that's a case where I'm rather glad, as I heard that many people were disappointed by Walter Salles' introduction of real footage of Che Guevara in an otherwise enjoyable film. I left the cinema well before the end of the first ever screening of The Da Vinci Code - though in this case, frankly, there were other factors involved: it was interminable and I needed to eat something before I fell over.
Looking back on five Cannes festivals, I realise there are some films whose endings I might have seen - but I genuinely can't remember one way or another. My Blueberry Nights, for instance. Did I or didn't I watch the closing scenes of Wong Kar-Wei's rather disappointing English-language film? Mercifully this lack of closure usually affects films I'm not too bothered about - though not invariably. I didn't see the end of Almodovar's Bad Education, and still haven't got round to watching it again - which I must fix. So do me a favour, don't give away the end of that one.
