Cruz a poor imitation

Gina Lollobrigida and I arrived together - though by separate aircraft - for the opening of the 56th Cannes Film Festival last night. She looked well preserved and as if she didn't have a care in the world.

A few hours later, after seeing the re-make of Fanfan la Tulipe, the French 18th century costume comedy of mock heroics in which she starred with Gérard Philipe in 1952, I thought to myself: "Maybe she knew something."

Penelope Cruz, who plays La Lollo's old role of the recruiting sergeant's spitfire daughter, is a dud firecracker by comparison with her. She fizzes, but she never explodes. Even her co-star Vincent Perez, in the title role of the dashing dragoon, who saves ladies' honour and the Kingdom of Louis XV, flaunts his open-necked décolleté with far more panache than Penelope.

Not that anyone has time to give what you would call a performance in a non-stop athletics show that's taken at such a lick that the English sub-titles are sometimes left gasping a few breaths behind the characters' dialogue.

No one comes in through a door if he can crash through a casement window, swing in on a bell rope or even come down the chimney. They must all have rehearsed on trampolines.

It's all Penelope Cruz can do - short of being fired out of a cannon - to keep up with the action.

Cannes has a long history of opening with films like this that no one remembers a week later. By common consent or desperation, the opening night is dedicated to a fashion parade of stars performing for the paparazzi on the red carpet and the midnight supper that follows. In between there's a movie.

Not many quality films want to be the filling in that showbiz sandwich. So probably Fanfan la Tulipe was as good a choice as any.