Day One - September 1
Deauville, We Have Lift-off!

For the 26th time in a row, the quaint Normandy resort town of Deauville has been transformed into a temporary landing strip for aliens from another planet: Hollywood. As in any good sci-fi endeavor, the locals are trusting, even enthusiastic. "Take our women and children. Inculcate them with an appreciation for American movies. Show us Major Stars that we might worship them. And show us movies ahead of their Official Release granting us bragging rights over our friends. Amen."

Truth be told, Deauville is not so much an alien invasion as a welcome truce in the sniping that's been known to emanate from France (the home of film as a revered art form and cornerstone of culture) toward the U.S. (the home of forget Art and make Money).

Deauville is also a flat-out delightful setting for a fest that's both glamorous and low key. The Opening Night premiere of Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man welcomes the director as well as star Kevin Bacon. Verhoeven, one of the most influential Dutchman since Rembrandt and makes movies whose subversive streak is cleverly cloaked in the gloss of mass entertainment. Even today, few films are more freewheeling or outrageous than 1973's Turkish Delight, more wrenching than 1977's Soldier of Orange or more brash than Spetters (1980), to cite just some of Verhoeven's work in his native Holland.

Here and now, working in English for the global market, the underlying objective is to make sure this twist on the Invisible Man doesn't risk invisibility at the box office. Fear not -- Verhoeven holds forth on his interests and intentions with the vigor of a man half his age and the versatile Bacon makes light of having had to perform certain scenes in his birthday suit, the better to achieve an extremely convincing invisible manhood onscreen.

In films such as Basic Instinct and Showgirls Verhoeven has aimed for a certain level of tumescence. It's a sign of the level of excitement here that everyone seems to have a Clint-on. Citizens of a nation where next door neighbors address each other as "Monsieur" and "Madame" for decades and may not even KNOW the adjacent tenant's first name, have taken to talking about "Clint." Not Monsieur Eastwood, or Eastwood, but Clint.

Clint, fresh from first class honors in Venice, is in Deauville for the September 2nd French premiere of his rollicking Space Cowboys. (Our spies overheard Eastwood inviting Verhoeven to dinner after Saturday's gala showing.) Director/star Eastwood is on hand with his fellow over-the-hill but fit-as-a-fiddle astronauts, Tommy Lee Jones, James Garner and Donald Sutherland.

In France, Eastwood's wide-ranging oeuvre is held in roughly the same regard as are the accomplishments of Marie Curie or Louis Pasteur. He's seen as both an icon and a visionary, a popular entertainer and an auteur. If you're reading this and thinking "Give me a break," I suggest you seek out the sweet Bronco Billy. Eastwood's performance in Don Siegel's downright perverse civil war story The Beguiled or the heartfelt and carefully shaded contours of The Outlaw Josey Wales and Bird.

Verhoeven and Eastwood are fine examples of decades of experience and craft put to excellent use in the service of entertainment. You could do far far worse than to buy a ticket for Space Cowboys.

Wilma Radar