[‘If Pedro had said it with a different tone, it depends – but he is
like a brother for me,’ Cruz concludes. ‘That is not the problem. The
problems are somewhere else.’ She throws out her hands in the direction
of the sea. ‘This is a worldwide problem. This is a big thing. And for us
to be commenting, oh, no, in 2019, you cannot say a woman looks
good? Are we f**king crazy?’
Back to Cannes-crazy. Cruz has to return to her hotel to undergo her
fourth costume change since yesterday afternoon. Next up, a blue-and-
white lace Chanel couture gown for the evening gala screening of the
Almódovar film, Pain and Glory. She shakes my hand goodbye and says
she’s found our conversation thought-provoking, more so than she’d
expected. ‘Hormones,’ she chuckles again. ‘You didn’t expect that!’
Two hours later Cruz is turning circles on the red carpet, as cameras
flash and soppy classical music booms from speakers. When the film is
about to begin, she will take her seat in the auditorium and watch in
the dark, noticing the nuances or errors in her performance, taking
in everything, ‘the lights, where the camera is, why that cut,
that jump? I am always studying. Analysing the little moments. Thinkingtoo much! I wish I could stop, sometimes, and just enjoy the story.’
One thing she won’t do is worry too much about what people think.
‘Everything is out of proportion in this job,’ she told me, before we said
goodbye. ‘The size of the cinema screen is out of proportion, and so is
the way that you’re gonna be looked at. To survive in this business, you
have to have a distance from the good things and the bad things.’
As it happens the new film is well received and, come the end of the
screening, the audience stand to give it the sort of sustained, slightly
demented ovation you rarely see outside of pitiless dictatorships. The
next morning, at a final photocall on the harbour, the chatter is all
about possible awards, maybe a foreign-language Oscar.
Cruz has her hair down today and she wears a monochrome wool
dress. Umbrella-carriers keep off the spitting rain. Superyachts bob on
the water. Helicopters pass overhead. And even from half a mile away,
on a hilltop where a medieval castle has been outfitted with an enormous
lit-up ‘Cannes’ sign, you can hear the photographers screech: ‘Penélope!
Penélope! Penélope!’ Very soon she’ll go home to Madrid.(
Pain and Glory is out 23 AugustTatler August 2019 tatler.com08-19COVERSTORY.indd 64 04/06/2019 09:05
64