Meet the Gatsby of Cannes, who ran up £63,000 bar bills partying with the biggest stars on earth

The sun dips behind the Lérins Islands and ominous clouds hover over Cannes, the City of Lights, which glitters like a diamond clutch on the arm of the Baie des Anges. It is May 2019, the last Cannes Film Festival before the world will shift on its axis due to the pandemic, and the 10th anniversary of Charles Finch’s annual Filmmaker’s Dinner.

As Hotel du Cap glows reassuringly in the fading light of Antibes, the motor launches come and go from the mother ships to the hotel pontoon, negotiating the un-seasonal swells. Finch’s own lovely and beloved classic yacht, Gael, also anchored in the bay, is somewhat dwarfed by the vast media moguls’ gin-palaces.

If the abnormally stormy weather is a harbinger of a disruptive new decade to come, when the hotel will close for the first time in its long 150-year-old history for a seismic event unrelated to war, nothing ruffles the haloed stars as they step onto the decks of Eden Roc.

The party, being co-hosted by Michael Kors and British Vogue editor Edward Enninful, seems to hail from another time. The first of the guests, in sky-scraper heels and shimmering metallic Michael Kors dresses, trip down the hotel’s cushiony and iconic Grande Allee that rolls out towards the sea.

This is a literal 179 m long catwalk, where models Isabeli Fontana and Cindy Bruna will emerge any minute from the revolving doors of the hotel lobby, past the flirty palms, to the party terrace of Eden Roc, jutting over the water like the prow of a ship.

Amber Heard arrives, resplendent and Amazonian in a Kors bronze trouser suit, as does Shailene Woodley, in a gold sequined mini-dress and of course, Scottish director Lynne Ramsay, for whom the night is a celebration as she has received the Annual Filmmaker Award.

Rita Ora, like a 1950s ruby-lipped starlet, throws shapes for the clicking cameras on the Grande Allee. Finch, in his signature blue suit, tailored by Elia Caliendo of Naples, white pocket square folded to a neat straight line, is trying to contain his nerves. He downs another martini before the arrival of the guests and, to the consternation of his team, especially his cousin, party organiser Claire Ingle-Finch, plays around with the placement cards.

“My table is always cosy with my friends, I ask whoever I know is in town for the week”, he says, sticking his name card between Heard and Willem Dafoe, a Finch party stalwart and longtime pal.

But what makes an invitation to Finch’s film festival party at the Hotel Du Cap, like his pre-Bafta bash in London or Oscars celebration in LA, so sought after? Is it the live Mariachi bands over which you can hardly hear yourself speak? The unbuttoned vibe which soon has people table-hopping, giggling in huddles and later, starlets dangling their sore sandal-strapped toes in the iconic pool? The secret, Finch would say, is in mixing it up.

Ideally there will always be a beautiful French actress alongside the odd mobster and people from Finch’s often interconnecting interests in the worlds of film, fashion, food, and photography - Julian Schnabel and Jerry Hall deep in conversation about art, my husband, the photographer Don McCullin plotting a trip to Yemen with a similarly adrenaline-addicted Evgeny Lebedev or memorably this year, Rita Ora, leaping out of her chair to gyrate to the Gipsy Kings, who are playing live.

Finch will resist the Gatsbyesque party-giver tag though, preferring to be seen as a polymath: producer of Award-winning films like ‘Spider' with Ralph Fiennes, and ‘Ghost’ with Nick Broomfield but also the brand entrepreneur who first ‘got’ and promoted the power of celebrity endorsement and product placement and the founder of fashion label Chucs.

What he isn’t, is a natural born party-person; as he points out he doesn’t dance, likes to be in bed early, drinks little, except when his is hosting a party when he drinks far too much, and never smokes except again, to calm pre-party nerves at his own events. He never rehearses his after-dinner speeches either, which are often hilarious and a bit naughty. But he has old -school charm in spades and can get away with it.

You can forgive him his intimate comments about your neckline, because between old friends, you know his intentions are harmless and emanate from genuine good will. In essence, these lavish events haven’t really changed from the causal spontaneous get-togethers he used to throw after dinner, in the Du Cap lobby bar, when he once notoriously ratcheted up a bill for £63,000 in a week.

To paraphrase Ralph Fiennes, another Finch party stalwart - the man personifies Old World grace and charm but with the promises of something more risqué. There is no industry event that combines schmooze and booze so elegantly.

So there will always be a Swimming Finch martini with an olive and twist of lemon and an unchanging buffet menu of roasted lamb, Provencal vegetables, penne, an ice cream cart and tarte tatin overseen by du Cap restaurant waiters performing their metier with balletic professionalism, a good enough reason he thinks to continue to give his parties here.

As the consummate connecter, he relishes the hatching, matching and despatching opportunities that each party brings. Who has he despatched lately? He is discreet - all his guests know how to behave, he says. There’s always a certain degree of decorum attached to any invitation to the Hotel du Cap.

What about the incident with Nick Broomfield? There was that time some 25 years ago when Broomfield and Finch - on assignment for Harpers & Queen, of which I was then travel editor - came close to being thrown out themselves for the transgression of Broomfield’s hand-washed, cutoff denim shorts and underwear, being hung out to dry on the ceremonial balcony of the Royal Suite, there for the whole world to see.

The steely M. Irondelle who was at the helm before Philippe Perd was brought in to loosen things up, probably told Broomfield not to treat the place like his home, but for Finch the Du Cap is ‘home’, he has been coming here since his pre-teens, the first time carried up the grand front steps, in the arms of his father the actor Peter Finch, who was promoting his film Far from the Madding Crowd.

Later, it became his summer playground when his actress mother, Yolande Turner, newly divorced and unable to settle in her London house, where Antonia Fraser and Harold Pinter were sitting tenants, moved to nearby Mougins, and charmed the staff into allowing her family to use the cabana and the pool.

For Charles, the Hotel du Cap has always been a safe harbour in an itinerant life that has taken him from Jamaica, Scotland where he was head boy at Prince Philip’s alma mater, Gordonstoun to NYC, Paris, LA and Rome.

Finch, like I, managed to escape to Hotel du Cap, for his annual break last summer with his daughter, between lockdowns. We catch up by the floating pontoon.

“I am always pleased to be back,” he tells me. “You breathe a different oxygen here. It’s the pleasure of the sea and the timeless unchanged details; the starched linen, the twist in the martini and the 1930s simplicity of the wooden cabanas, the Steak Diane flambéed in cognac in front of your table at the Grill - damn them for taking that off the menu this year.”

Walking, talking proof that living well is the best revenge, Finch wanders proprietorially through the kitchen garden in his bespoke Chuc shorts and clunky vintage Rolex Daytona which only comes off for his daily swim, pointing out the ingredients he will have later in his salad lunch in his beach cabana.

A throwback to the golden age of the Riviera when the likes of Orson Welles would settle in for the season, turning his cabana into a head office, throwing his charm and weight around as Charles does now, booming for some more Whispering Angel in immaculate French.

Finch is fond of quoting his mentor Jimmy Goldsmith who said that of course you can apply yourself to your work from the quiet of a city office, but the best deals are conducted wherever there is a beach, a tennis court and a good restaurant.

“These are pleasures I never take for granted. I enjoy them while I can. I am not so stuffed with luxury that I won’t live a life of risk. I’ll continue to enjoy the Du Cap for its disconnect from the rocky century in which we live now, as long as I can afford it."

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