Cannes' 'wardrobe malfunction'

Off the red carpets and beyond the yachts crowding the harbour next to the Cannes Film Festival, the following items were seen and heard:

Off the red carpets and beyond the yachts crowding the harbour next to the Cannes Film Festival, the following items were seen and heard:

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OOPS!
French actress Sophie Marceau had her own "wardrobe malfunction" on the Cannes red carpet on Friday. Following in the footsteps of Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl, the beauty was posing for photographers when her dress slipped revealing a breast. She graciously recovered her poise, laughing and joking. The reaction in Europe will probably be a little less frantic than the outrage Jackson sparked in the United States.

PALMS AT THE DOORS

It's expensive in Cannes, where the best film will be honoured with the Palme d'Or, or Golden Palm award.

But on top of the shock at prices printed on menus at restaurants, hotels and taverns that can stun the uninitiated there are other layers of unprinted prices for gaining entry to important or worthwhile places or events.

"Cannes is less about 'Palme d'Ors' than palms at the doors," was how one Variety correspondent wryly described the $300 to $400 each day that film executives and Cannes veterans spend "to lubricate their way past doormen, maitre d's, chauffeurs, errand boys and the rest of the fest's discreet phalanx of open hands".

PARIS QUESTIONS

A-list celebrity and hotel heiress Paris Hilton has often been accused of being an air-head party animal. But the level of questions at her press conference in Cannes on Friday cast journalists in a less flattering light. Questions included which designer Hilton's dog Tinkerbell preferred, and which Star Wars character the 24-year-old liked most.

HANEKE'S STYLE

Juliette Binoche, who won an Academy Award for best supporting actress for The English Patient, admitted she was left feeling a bit uncertain by the style of Austrian director Michael Haneke in their film Cache (Hidden).

"I was a little bit perplexed because he didn't say anything to me in the beginning," Binoche told a news conference. "I started asking myself 'Am I so good that he doesn't need to tell me anything?' or 'Doesn't he care about my part?'"

Binoche, who is brilliant as a wife worried about her husband's problems with a mysterious stalker, said she decided to have a talk with the bearded director.

"So after about a month I asked him 'Look Michael, are you not interested in my part, or am I playing it so well that you have nothing to say?'"

Binoche said she regretted asking Haneke because after that he never stopped talking to her.

PITT LIKES MUMBLING

Michael Pitt, who plays a character "inspired by" grunge rocker Kurt Cobain, said he was actually happy that he has so few intelligible lines in the movie and isn't bothered that most of the dialogue in the film is reduced to his mumbling.

"There were less lines to learn," Pitt said. "I think it fit the role. I think also too there's a lot of talking that happens in films, a lot of dialogue that doesn't really need to be there."

Pitt counts himself a big fan of Cobain, who killed himself in 1994, and said he was at first intimidated by the part. He hopes Cobain's wife Courtney Love will like the film.

"I don't know her," he said. "I think and I hope she would like it. I'm sure it's pretty sad for her, hard for her, or anyone who really knew him."