Cannes gets risque as a troop of US burlesque dancers takes central stage at film fest

Burlesque dancers take central stage at Cannes

CANNES, France — The actresses showed up at their news conference Thursday at the Cannes Film Festival in elbow-high gloves, oversized cubic zirconia hoops, lots of leopard print and even a kitten-eared headband.

The news conference for French actor-director Mathieu Amalric’s new movie “Tournee,” or “On Tour,” about a raucous band of stripteasers, was not your typical news conference. Curtseying and winking at the gathered journalists, the five women — real life burlesque dancers from the U.S. — oozed enthusiasm about being at the world’s premier cinema showcase.

“I feel like Cinderella going to the ball,” gushed Kitten on the Keys, a brunette whose act consists of playing the piano in spangly bra and thong and singing raunchily funny songs rife with double-entendres.

In the movie, Kitten — the one sporting the cat ears — plays one of six members of a New Burlesque troop touring provincial France under the direction of a disaffected former TV producer fallen on hard times, played by Amalric.

The camera follows the troop onstage, as they regale audiences with their bawdy, funny, inventive striptease numbers; backstage as they deck themselves out in fake eyelashes, glitter, pasties and ostrich feathers; and through the camaraderie and loneliness of the tour, as they joke, clash and console one another.

The cast includes curvaceous blondes Mimi le Meaux and Dirty Martini — two of the founding members of the New Burlesque movement, which looked to the glamorous striptease acts of the 1940s and ’50s as a way of expressing female sexuality and of valorizing all sorts of body types.

Dirty Martini, a Woodstown, New Jersey, native, trained as a classical ballet dancer throughout her childhood before turning to striptease.

“There weren’t many spots (in ballet) for a woman of my size and shape,” she told The Associated Press in an interview. “No one was going to pick me up and say ‘hey, you’re a great dancer, let’s see how we can outfit you with your big-ass hips?’ So I had to make a venue for myself.”

Dirty Martini, who like the other dancers goes by her stage name, defended the New Burlesque as a feminist movement.

“We are women who are concerned about how the women in the world are treated and the way that women hate themselves sometimes,” she said. New Burlesque is “a form to educate women in the need for their own sexual expression.”

“On Tour” is one of 19 official selection movies competing for the Palme d’Or, Cannes’ top prize. It’s the fourth film directed by Amalric, a renowned French actor best known abroad for his role as a quadriplegic magazine editor in Julian Schnabel’s 2007 “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.”

Asked whether he had ever felt overwhelmed during the shooting by his cast of exuberant, strong ladies, Amalric demurred.

“No! No, really,” he exclaimed and praised his cast’s acting talent.

“There are only 17 minutes of (striptease) show in the movie. The rest of the time, the girls are actresses, that’s it,” he said. “After, I made a film with actors from the Comedie Francaise. I showed them ‘On Tour’ to show them what real actors are all about. And it worked.”