In Cannes, standing ovations stretch on and on — but they’re designed to

The Cannes Film Festival is on, which means stopwatches are out. Nowhere are the length of standing ovations at high-wattage premieres more carefully recorded and parsed than in Cannes. Did a movie garner a triumphant eight-minute standing ovation? Or did the audience stand for a mere four or five minutes?

How has such an unlikely metric come to reverberate around the world within minutes of a premiere? And why is everyone standing for so long? Doesn’t anyone’s hands get tired?

Such effusive displays of enthusiasm have come to be a hallmark of Cannes and, sometimes, a bit of marketing gimmick for films looking to resonate far from the Croisette. If Cannes, the world’s largest and glitziest film festival, stands for cinematic excess, its thunderous standing ovations can seem like its greatest overindulgence. No one needs a bathroom break?

Less widely understood, though, is how the pageantry of Cannes shapes and distorts standing