Writing in her Cannes journal, NY Times critic Manohla compares the festival to high school:

True but embarrassing: Cannes is, in some major respects, a replay of high school. So many of the same issues and agonies apply here. Just as in high school, a lot of people sit together at the screenings in cliques. There are posses of Austrian and British critics here, and of course various Americans, many of whom either sit right next to one another or in close proximity. (I have repeated my old high school habit of floating clique to clique, though last year I also started intentionally sitting apart from everyone I know, mostly because I don't want to listen to my friends sigh and whisper their way through films that I like.)