By Subhash K Jha

Rightly Abhishek Bachchan and his better-half flew back to Mumbai after attending the opening ceremony of the Cannes film festival because they wanted to be home in time to hear the election results, thereby giving the skip to the big Bollywood party held by the Committee Of Indian Industries hosted by the flamboyant Vijay Mallya on Saturday night for the Bollywood delegates at Cannes.

Says Abhishek, “It’s a crucial election for us. And we wanted to be here when the results came in.”

The rest of Bollywood’s who’s who that attended stayed back.

On Friday night actress Tannishtha Chatterjee(of Brick Lane fame) who is at Cannes to introduce her film Road, Movie directed by Dev Benegal attended the premiere of Cannes’ main feature film this year Bright Star.

And Tannishtha met the director Jane Campion.

“I’m a big fan of all her works specially The Piano. To my delight she had seen my film Brick Lane and liked it. The night before Bright Star I attended the premiere of the other big film Fish Tank which is one of the hottest films this year in the competition section. Coincidentally I had presented the best actor award to the Fish Tank hero Michael Fassbiner at Cannes last year.”

Not much buzz is heard about Anurag Basu’s much-touted Kites at Cannes.

Says a delegate, “Hrithik Roshan hardly came out of his hotel room. And who is Barbara Mori? So much is written about her in the Indian press.At Cannes no one could recognize her.” -Sampurn Media