What in tarnation?

“Tarnation,” an official selection of the 2004 Cannes Director’s Fortnight, a sidebar of sorts to the Cannes film festival, is Jonathan Caouette’s documentary self-portrait chronicling his chaotic upbringing in a dysfunctional Texas family and the unexpected relationship that develops with his mentally ill mother, Renee. “Tarnation” was screened at the Sundance Film Festival this year, where it inspired a great deal of buzz and, eventually, a distribution deal for the 31-year-old filmmaker. This is a diary of Caouette’s Cannes experience.

Wednesday/Thursday,

May 12-13

I’ve got a long-standing, deep-seated fear of flying that I’m trying very hard to get over, and now I know the cure: Ativan. Two pills later I sleep through the whole flight. Suddenly it’s Thursday, and we are in Cannes. After settling into our apartment (it looks like Linda Blair’s pad in “Exorcist II: The Heretic”), we find a lovely seafood restaurant on the seaside boardwalk, the Croisette.

The “Tarnation” nation is reunited in full force: my boyfriend, David Sanin; producer Stephen Winter; manager Bobbi Thompson; my New York friends Jason Banker, Jessica Bajaros and Michael Sillery; publicist Mickey Cottrell; and of course, executive producer John Cameron Mitchell. This is the first time we’ve all been together since Sundance, when we had no distributor and no money and no one in the world knew about “Tarnation.” Now Wellspring Media is distributing worldwide, amazing professionals are supervising the film and we are in Cannes ... I just can’t believe it.

We drank delicious summer wine served by friendly French waiters. We laughed uproariously and told ribald stories all night long. I feel so blessed.

Friday, May 14

We are awakened early by the groovy cats from Wellspring who bring the trades with full-page “Tarnation” ads (and a rave review from the publication Screen International). This is so unreal! Everyone at Wellspring seems pleased; they’ve already sold some foreign territories.

After lunch we stroll over to the Xanadu-like (circa 1980) Noga Hilton Theater for a tech test of the French-subtitled print, where the premiere will be tomorrow. I wonder what the people of France will think of my little iMovie-edited film while Brad Pitt is beating his chest in “Troy” just down the street. Before I can think about that too long I get steered into a battery of foreign press and I get to meet French film legend Fanny Ardant. She is incredibly gracious and looks unbelievably gorgeous as French legends are wont to do. Later we check out La Pizza, a restaurant Roger Ebert recommended to us at his Overlooked Film Festival in Champaign, Ill., three weeks ago. Roger is passionate about film and he’s really given us wonderful support.

Bobbi has gotten wind of a flashy party thrown by Alicia Keys and Budweiser on their yacht, so JCM and I are definitely gonna check that out but we won’t stay out too late. Tomorrow is the premiere.

Saturday, May 15

At 6 in the morning I wake up vomiting. I had one little oyster on the yacht and it’s turned my innards inside out. Stephen runs out for some anti-nausea medicine and Wellspring fetches a docteur who confirms it’s food poisoning.

Mickey brings us wonderful news -- the first press screening was a success. A thousand-plus journalists at 9 in the morning. The response was excellent; key Camera d’Or jury member wept, or so they told me. I’m still feeling sick, but the show must go on. Back-to-back interviews all day. The European press ask such fascinating questions, but it is exhausting.

Celeb sightings for today: the whole crew from “The Woodsman” -- director Nicole Kassell, Kyra Sedgwick, Benjamin Bratt and Kevin Bacon, whom I served as a cater-waiter the night before I left for Cannes. Olivier Pere, artistic director of the Director’s Fortnight, popped up to see how we were doing.

I can’t over-express how ridiculously surreal it is to have a film in Cannes when six months ago I was a doorman at a jewelry store!

Then we are whisked off by our French publicist, another Olivier, to a director’s panel moderated by Ebert, which features me, Jonathan Nossiter, Xan Cassavetes (daughter of my idols John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands) -- and ... I don’t believe it ... Michael Moore. He is a god to me.

Michael seemed very tired and angry about how “Fahrenheit 9/11” was being denied distribution by Disney because of the way it socks it to Bush.

I barely eke out some sentences for the panel before it’s time to go to the premiere. For some reason, I’m not nervous. Just very, very excited.

The big night

Wow. Whoa. Oh ... my ... God! The credits roll, a spotlight appears and I am so stunned that JCM has to push me into it. It is a 10-minute standing ovation. The audience is made up of regular French folks not in the habit of standing unless they are leaving.

It goes on so long that I feel as if I need to find new ways to bow. I open with a few short, stiff ones, followed by a deep Japanese one, a Provence curtsy, a two-handed Evita, and finally a humbled, exhausted head-hang. David sits to my left and Stephen on my right, both applauding and weeping. I feel like Diana Ross in “Mahogany.” I feel the world will turn slow motion and my face will freeze frame. Zoom. Credits. Cue music.

Instead, the house lights come up and David and I try to slip out the back way. Before we reach the door, a tearful middle-aged French woman in a pixy haircut stops us. In broken English, she stammers, “We respond this way ... not only because we love your film ... but because you are a hero, you survived so well. You are alive.”

I go home and call my mom.