With nearly 150 scores to his name – many of them honored at the Cannes Film Festival – Alexandre Desplat, now 63, could easily lay claim to a lifetime suite in the most exclusive hotels on the Croisette. Two of his original scores − for The Phoenician Scheme, by Wes Anderson, and Eagles of the Republic, by Tarik Saleh – are both in competition this year. The composer also gave a music master class on Sunday, May 18, alongside his friend Guillermo del Toro, under the auspices of Sacem (the Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Éditeurs de Musique, France's professional association that collects payments of artists’ rights). Le Monde caught up with him two days later, just minutes before his return to Paris.

In front of the elevator at the Hotel Martinez, there was a television broadcasting the news. When I left the hotel in the morning, the screen was frozen on the face of Bruno Retailleau. And when I came back in the evening, it still hadn't been fixed: Bruno Retailleau was still there, unchanged.

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