‘I’m so grateful you haven’t gotten sick of my face,’ says Meryl Streep as Cannes opens with an honorary Palme d’Or

A 10-day stream of stars will soon begin flowing down Cannes’ famous red carpet, beginning with the opening-night film, The Second Act, a French comedy starring Lea Seydoux, Vincent Lindon, Louis Garrel and Raphael Quenard.

The festival’s first lengthy standing ovation went to Streep. After Juliette Binoche introduced her, Streep alternatively shook her head, fanned herself and danced while the crowd thunderously cheered.

“I’m just so grateful that you haven’t gotten sick of my face and you haven’t gotten off of the train,” said Streep.

“My mother, who is usually right about everything, said to me: ’Meryl, my darling, you’ll see. It all goes so fast. So fast,” added Streep. “And it has, and it does. Except for my speech, which is too long.”

The reception was nearly as rapturous for Gerwig, the first American female filmmaker to serve as president of the Cannes jury that will decide the festival’s top award, the Palme d’Or.

Thierry Fremaux, Cannes’ artistic director, on Monday praised her as “the ideal director” for Cannes, given her work across arthouse and studio film and her interest in cinema history. And, Fremaux said, “We very much liked Barbie.” In the days to come, Cannes will premiere George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Francis Ford Coppola’s ­self-financed Megalopolis and anticipated new movies from Paolo Sorrentino, Yorgos Lanthimos, Andrea Arnold and Kevin Costner.

But much of the drama surrounding this year’s Cannes has been off screen.

After French actor Judith Godreche earlier this year accused two film directors of rape and sexual abuse when she was a teenager, the French film industry has been dealing with arguably its defining #MeToo moment. Today, Godreche will premiere her short Moi Aussi.

Asked about #MeToo expanding in France, Gerwig told reporters in Cannes yesterday that it is progress.

“I think people in the community of movies telling us stories and trying to change things for the better is only good,” Gerwig said. “I have seen substantive change in the American film community, and I think it’s important that we continue to expand that conversation. So I think it’s only moving everything in the correct direction. Keep those lines of communication open.”

Joining Gerwig on the jury is Lily Gladstone, star of Killers of the Flower Moon; French actor Eva Green; Spanish film-maker JA Bayona; French actor Omar Sy; Lebanese actor and director Nadine Labaki; Japanese film-maker Hirokazu Kore-eda; Turkish screenwriter Ebru Ceylan; and Italian actor Pierfrancesco Favino.

“I thought I just got over my imposter syndrome last year,” said the Oscar-­nominated Gladstone. “But I’ll start all over again.”

The jurors were asked how the many real-world concerns outside the festival might affect their deliberations

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“I truly believe that one of the tools to really change something in the situation we all live in right now, which is a situation I think is not that great, is really through art and through cinema,” Labaki said. “

It may propose a more tolerant way of seeing things and seeing each other as human beings.”