Over dinner with a movie producer in a bistro called Le Petit Paris, just off the famous Croisette - the strip of swanky hotels, designer boutiques, bars and clubs in Cannes - we watch as guests spill out onto the street from the fourth Indiana Jones movie, screened as part of the 61st annual film festival.
There are beautiful women with tiny bodies and big breasts on the arms of men in dinner jackets. There is a full moon, and you can hear the waves crashing on to the beach a few feet away.
I'm about to go to a party hosted by Boujis nightclub, where, I've been promised, not only Harrison Ford will be holding court, but also Gael Garcia Bernal, Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman.
As I'm sitting watching all these rich, successful, famous, rich (did I already say that?) people waft past, I am thinking: this is probably the most glamorous place in the world to be right now. Scrub that. This is the only place to be.
But what I should have known is that the more lavish the occasion, the more exclusive the invite, the more velvet ropes you have to duck under, the more tall, inscrutable men with walkie-talkies you have to inveigle your way past - the more putrid the reality that lies beneath.
Let me give you an example, courtesy of my movie producer dinner date (who is constantly looking over my shoulder in case someone more interesting hovers into view; a common behavioural tic in Cannes), that illustrates how dissatisfied all this hobnobbing can make you.
'You can't just go to a party on the beach,' he says, drawing on a cigarette (people here don't give much truck to the smoking ban, or to rules about any illegal substances). 'You have to go to a party on a yacht. But it has to be a private party, and it can't be on anything smaller than an 85ft yacht.' ...
But the most important fixture and fitting on a yacht off the coast of Cannes? 'Hot and cold running supermodels,' says my date. 'You cannot, as a man, turn up without a supermodel on your arm. They simply won't let you on.'