The juicy premise of the upcoming fourth season of Mike White’s The White Lotus, per Variety, is as follows: “In Cannes, two rival film teams descend upon the Cannes Film Festival with movies in competition and something to prove. One camps out at a flashy, palatial hotel on the Croisette, while the other is ensconced in a luxurious hilltop hideaway.” (These are Cannes’ Hôtel Martinez, renamed The White Lotus Cannes, and the Château de La Messardière in Saint-Tropez, dubbed The White Lotus du Cap, respectively.)
“When we located the show at the Cannes Film Festival specifically, this idea of fame popped up,” David Bernad, one of the producers of the sun-soaked satire, recently said. “Who has the world’s attention, who are the people that can grab the world’s attention, who are the plus-one in a relationship, who’s the person that has that power – and how that shapes a dynamic.” Season four, he confirmed, will show The White Lotus’s new ensemble – Laura Dern, Steve Coogan, Vincent Cassel, Kumail Nanjiani, Rosie Perez, Heather Graham, Chris Messina et al – navigating “the ups and downs of the festival, and the pain of being here, and the love and excitement of being here”.
And trust me, there are plenty of ups and downs. As this year’s festival kicks off, and filming for the show continues in the South of France, here are seven things I hope The White Lotus captures about the glorious, maddening, unforgettable chaos of Cannes.
The red carpet mayhem
The Cannes red carpet is a surreal, other-worldly plain where anything is possible: mere mortals (me on more than one occasion) are turned away for not wearing heels, while the likes of Julia Roberts and Kristen Stewart go barefoot, and Jennifer Lawrence wears flip flops. Selfies are banned, as is naked dressing, though you’re bound to see plenty of both, with security guards pouncing on you or denying you entry depending on your level of fame. And if you, as someone perceived as being not famous enough by the French (Kelly Rowland in 2024), dare to take too long to climb the steps to the Grand Théâtre Lumière? Well, then expect to be rushed along by festival staff or, in some cases, literally tackled to the ground. If you want to know where exactly you fit within the larger Hollywood hierarchy, there’s no faster way to find out – surely making this the perfect backdrop for a classic White Lotus meltdown.
The booing
Booing is a crucial component of European film festivals (I’ve happily participated at Venice, as well), but it’s probably most impassioned at Cannes. If you’ve made a particularly divisive movie (say, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis), then you might find swathes of critics bellowing at the screen as the credits roll, before emerging to give their extremely blunt takes to other journalists on camera. (In the case of Megalopolis, I overheard a number of people describing it as the worst film they’d ever seen.) Will one of the films in competition in this season of The White Lotus end up being horrifically panned, with scathing reviews rolling in which prompt its stars to spiral? For sheer entertainment value, I certainly hope so.
The record-breaking standing ovations
On the other hand, if your film is well received, that can raise other problems: namely, an incredibly long, tiring and awkward standing ovation. They’ve become even more important of late, given the length of ovations (seven minutes is considered very good, 10 exceptional, 20 not unheard of) is widely reported on and can shape a film’s Cannes awards prospects. As a result, it’s in the interest of many people in the room during a premiere – which includes a movie’s wider filmmaking team and producers – to keep the applause going for as long as possible. While this happens, there are cameras which make their way around the auditorium, zooming in on the director or certain cast members, who then appear on the screen and smile/wave/cry, eliciting further cheering. When it happens for a genuinely great movie, it can be heartwarming, but more often than not, it’s simply exhausting – your hands start to hurt from clapping, your cheeks ache from smiling and you just want to go to bed. A prolonged standing ovation is, at least in my book, an essential component for a Cannes-set White Lotus.
The wild parties
The White Lotus loves a hallucinatory performance sequence – think of the traditional dancing in both Maui and Koh Samui – and the production will find plenty of them at Cannes: obscure French musicians performing at glittering soirées, celebrities (sometimes inadvisably) taking the mic to sing, others dancing on tables in the middle of dinner. Said dinners usually run very late indeed – dessert arriving at 1am is considered normal – after which you’re in for a long night of rooftop parties and club-hopping. Head-spinning revelry has been a major part of the show over the last two seasons, and the Croisette provides the perfect playground for it.
The bonkers press conferences
After the heady heights of the premiere, the next morning comes the crash-to-earth reality check of the press conference – when critics get to interrogate A-listers about their movie, political views and basically anything and everything under the sun. This is where Paul Thomas Anderson zoned out while promoting Punch-Drunk Love; where Lars von Trier expressed sympathy for Hitler while his leading lady in Melancholia, Kirsten Dunst, looked intensely uncomfortable (the director later apologised and then retracted that apology); where Vincent Gallo apologised for his film, the critically-maligned The Brown Bunny, and promptly burst into tears. Will journalistic goading prompt a White Lotus character to implode? Will someone make an unforgivable gaffe? It’s definitely possible.
The fraught juries
It’s likely to be outside The White Lotus’s purview, especially if the focus is on the filmmaking teams and talent, but a core part of Cannes lore are the juries, particularly the formidable panels who deliberate and decide on the winners of the Palme d’Or. Their discussions largely remain under wraps, though rumours abound of raging arguments and long-held feuds, walkouts and lingering grudges. Did Wim Wenders really stop Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing from winning, handing the prize to Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies and Videotape instead? Did Xavier Dolan and the Coen brothers fight over giving the award to Dheepan versus Carol? Did James Gray actually call out Isabelle Huppert for behaving dictatorially, as he saw it, when she was jury president? In most cases, we’ll probably never know the full story, but with The White Lotus centred on two films in competition, it would be a delight to see them being argued over by an all-star line-up, however briefly.
The tense awards ceremonies
Then come the awards. On the final day of the festival, actors and directors whose films have scooped prizes return to the red carpet for the closing ceremony – but it’s not yet clear who’s won what. So, a frantic guessing game begins, and then, one by one, the honours are handed out. Sometimes things go wrong – remember Spike Lee announcing Titane as the winner in 2021 at the very start of the ceremony instead of the end? But, even when things go to plan, like the rest of the festival, it’s a frenzied, tense and often supremely emotional occasion for both the Palme d’Or recipient and those who just missed out on the top award, taking the second-place Grand Prix or third-place Jury Prize instead. So, who will triumph in The White Lotus universe? And for the team that doesn’t, how dramatic will their unravelling be? I can’t wait to find out.
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