Villefranche-sur-mer Fall 2026-1 - Invaded by Movie Stars

 Dear Friends,

We have been in Villefranche for most of October.  It has been great, but with nothing in particular to report.  From time to time this year, Villefranche has been one of the sites for filming a prequel to the movie, Ocean's 11.  Yesterday we noticed that the crews had arrived to transform the waterfront.  They took over two restaurants and gave them the façades of a bakery and a fish store.

Complete with fake fish.

Today the filming began.  Fortunately, we could actually see some of the filming from our balcony.  I felt like a real paparazzi with my telephoto lens.  Margot Robbie and Bradley Cooper are the big stars, and Bradley Cooper is the director.  An incredible amount of time and effort goes into preparing for a simple clip in the movie.  There is also an incredible amount of disruption for regular people trying to live their lives.  We, on the other hand could, just enjoy an escape from reality for a while.

Margot Robbie arrived on the scene first and spent a lot of time just sitting on the sea wall while everyone scurried around.  Then she strode casually on the wall,

In my imagination of the story, the handsome man (Bradley Cooper) sees her and is immediately smitten with her so he pursues her having just purchased his baguette at the fake bakery which he is actually walking towards instead of away from.

I should note that it is sunny today as you can see, but it was about 65 degrees when they were filming this scene.  The sweat marks on the back of his shirt must have been put there by a crew member and had to be remoistened from time to time.

As I said, Bradley Cooper is both a star and the director (and all kinds of different producers).  So in addition to whatever his character was doing, he is telling people what to do.  He and Margot had a discussion about the scene.  I could not hear what they were saying, but they both seemed to have opinions.

After a couple of practice runs, there were more discussion and a lot of measuring.  

Bradley was actively involved in all of this as Margot watched on with what I thought was great patience.

Eventually they brought in a camera on a moveable crane that could zoom in and out and move.  The crane blocked our view, and then the filming moved closer to the transformed restaurants and out of our view.  So all that is left for us are the memories and the ongoing disruption of the life of our little village.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal