The Circuit

by John Hopewell
The Cancun Intl. Film Festival is deliciously travel-challenged.

The problem’s not getting to Cancun. It’s just a short 75-minute hop across the Caribbean from Miami. The challenge, once you’re ensconced at the El Dorado Royale Spa resort, the festival’s guest hotel, is getting one’s act together to take the 40-minute shuttle-ride into Cancun.
 
Down south from Cancun on the Riviera Maya, El Dorado’s the sort of hotel which gives you a sudden whim to burn the cell-phone, catching up with old friends, scoring points with in-laws, casually dropping in at the start of the conversation where you’re phoning from. Beyond the palatial hacienda lobby, which is about the size of Texas, is a Casitas bungalo extension, about the size, well, of Latin America. The cottages are Mayan chic: whitewashed walls, wooden staircases, roofs a thick shag of thatch. At night, under the warm lamplight, the thatched roofs look like huge orangy-red Elton John toupés.

Arriving in Cancun on Wednesday, the fest’s opening night, I was picked up from the airport with Thomas Carr, who runs Caribbean Tours & Cruises. Cancun is booming, Thomas explained. It’s accessible from the West and East coasts of the U.S. It boasts postcard turquoise waters and white sand beaches. And a 60-hour hurricane two years ago devastated hotels, closing some for months. That, however, allowed them to renovate, he added.

Also, I’d add, it offers Americans just what they’re looking for when they vacation in Mexico: America in all its comforting upscale brand-glory, plus Mayan touches - some of the hotels have been built like the truncated bottoms of Mayan pyramids - and postcard turquoise waters and white sand beaches.

Cancun’s now making a play for Hollywood and haute fashion. That’s where the 1st Cancun Festival comes in. Its sponsors include El Dorado Spa Resorts & Hotels, its parent company Karisma, which is building new resorts, and another resort builder, Capricho.

Building a fest audience base in a resort is probably more difficult. On the fest’s second day, I caught a latenight screening of Patricia Riggen’s Sundance-hit “La misma luna” (Under the Same Moon). The screening was hardly packed - maybe 50-punters at most - but then “Luna,” which went down well, had opened the fest the night before.

Photo: Cancun Intl Film Fest artistic director Jennifer Stark, Mexico's Claudia Tovar of Riviera Maya Films and PR/Marketing Consultant Bonnie Voland.