The occasion was called Highlight Australian Talents; the location was the Nespresso​ restaurant and bar on the beach; the patrons were largely the 240 passengers from a boat touring the Mediterranean to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the National Associated Retail Traders of Australia.

There are plenty of unlikely characters in Cannes, admittedly. For example, there is the woman (possibly a man) who rides up and down the Croisette all day dressed as Mrs Doubtfire. There was a man heading for the Grand Theatre's phalanx of security guards tonight dressed in LBD, high heels and a dinner jacket; we didn't like his chances.

Still, Peter Costello and 240 Australian retailers passing round coffee samples was worth seeing, especially as Nespresso's​ head of coffee, Karsten Ranitzsch​, gave them a good half-hour's dissertation on how best to grow, transport, store, grind, make and drink coffee. (Without milk, since you ask. And sipped with a silver spoon. "Sometimes they want to take my spoon at the airport, but I always manage to persuade them I have to keep it," said Ranitzch​.)

Costello had joined the retailers, who spend half the day on seminars and half on fun stuff on shore, to lecture them on the global economy in Cannes. The party thrown by Nespresso​ was the fun bit. "We believe education, lifestyle, business and health can be combined all in one," said Kay Spencer, the executive chairman of NARTA​. They started in Rome and will finish up in Barcelona in the course of one week. "We do one of these trips every three to four years. There are a lot of learnings in terms of lifestyle."

The point of stopping in Rome, she said, was to expose guests to "the other side of business … young talent coming up". Shane Danielsen, director of Australian short-film competition entry The Guests, entertained the retailers with the claim that he was actually Nespresso advocate George Clooney. Student film-maker Qiu Yang followed him. Cannes was crazy, he confirmed, although up to that point he may well have found it fairly reasonable. "I thought this was an event about Australian film," he said as the coffee samples circulated. "Why am I here?"

That is the central Cannes question, groaned thousands of times a day by people in hour-long queues for films they are already 90-per-cent sure will be terrible, or steering around tourists thronging the Croisette with double prams or supporting relatives on crutches – how can one town have so many injured? – en route to the next 10-minute appointment at the other end of town. Nobody knows the answer. Still, we are not quite half-way through the festival. There are lot of learnings still to come.