At Cannes, Juliette Binoche Says Trump Is ‘Trying to Save His Ass’

The long arm of fascism has stretched all the way to this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where, quite suddenly, nobody is allowed to be naked on the red carpet anymore. Just before the fest started, its organizers announced that both nudity and dresses with long trains or “excessively voluminous” attributes would be banned due to “decency reasons.” What has the world come to when you can’t show elegant nip in France? That was one of the (paraphrased) questions posed to the jury at the opening press conference today, where a journalist asked jury member Halle Berry and jury president Juliette Binoche what they thought of the new rules.

“I had an amazing dress by Gupta that I can’t wear tonight, because it’s too big of a train,” said Berry. “Of course I’m going to follow the rules. But I had to make a pivot.” She added (rather alarmingly, as one of our nation’s foremost wearers of sheer couture and proud purveyors of lube), “The nudity part is also probably a good rule.” Binoche applauded the festival, which has long been criticized for forcing women to wear heels, for mellowing out a little on the shoe front and allowing “elegant shoes and sandals with or without a heel.” “On the heel, it’s a very good idea,” she said. “From experience.”

Berry also answered a question about whether she’d be open to revisiting a previously announced and canceled spinoff for her James Bond character, Jinx, or to playing Bond proper, in the wake of Amazon “shocking the world” by taking control of the franchise earlier this year. “I don’t know if 007 should be a woman,” she said. As for the spinoff, she added, “I doubt there’ll be a spinoff. I would have loved for that to happen, but I think that time has passed.”

Much of the rest of the press conference — attended by jury members Jeremy Strong, Hong Sangsoo, Alba Rohrwacher, Carlos Reygadas, Payal Kapadia, Leila Slimani, and Dieudo Hamadi — was dominated by questions about Trump, Gaza, and the generally terrible state of international affairs. One journalist asked Binoche about Trump’s proposed “movie tariffs,” asking, “What is at stake, with these threats, for the international film community?” “I’m not sure I’m capable to answer that,” Binoche said. “It requires an analysis of the industry of cinema in the world. I understand President Trump is trying to protect his country. But, for us, we have a very strong community of filming on our continent, in Europe, so I don’t know what to say about that.” She paused for a moment, then added, incredibly, “I think we can see that he’s fighting and he’s trying in many different ways to save America. And save his ass.”

Strong, who brought his beloved bucket hat ensemble on the road, thoughtfully answered a question about The Apprentice, his film that debuted at Cannes last year, and the current state of art and politics. “Roy Cohn, I see essentially as the progenitor of fake news and alternative facts,” said Strong. “We’re living in the aftermath of what I think he created. And I think that this time, where truth is under assault, where truth is becoming an increasingly endangered thing, that the role of stories, of cinema, of art is increasingly critical, because it can combat those forces and the entropy of truth.”

Later, another journalist asked Binoche why she hadn’t signed the open letter, published today, condemning both the killing of Palestinian photojournalist Fatma Hassona — the subject of Cannes doc Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk — in an Israeli airstrike, and the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences for its “passivity” and “lack of support” for No Other Land’s Hamdan Ballal, who was recently kidnapped and assaulted by the IDF. “You will maybe understand it a little later,” said Binoche enigmatically. “You’re well-known for speaking out about causes close to your heart. Was there a reason for you not to sign this letter?” asked the journalist. “Yeah,” said Binoche. “You might find out later.” The journalist pressed her further: “Would you share it with us?” Binoche shook her head. “I cannot answer you.”