The Cannes Concierge Who Can Get You Anything (Within Reason)
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When it comes to being a concierge at one of the world’s great hotels, Wes Anderson and The Grand Budapest Hotel got it (mostly) right.
“Of course, it’s a movie, so not everything is true,” says Maxime Nerkowski, chief concierge at the Carlton Cannes, a Regent Hotel, about Anderson’s 2014 Oscar winner in which Ralph Fiennes plays Monsieur Gustave H., concierge extraordinaire of a fictional Eastern European resort. “But the work, a lot of it, is like that. Doing whatever you can to fulfill your guests’ requests, however strange or unusual.”
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The scene from the film where Gustave calls in a favor from the “society of the crossed keys,” a secret association of the best-of-the-best concierges from around the world, has its own real-life precedent. It’s called Les Clefs d’Or (The Golden Keys), and you can spot them by their lapel pins featuring, of course, a pair of gold keys. Maxime — “it is always just Maxime,” he says brightly — is a member.
“That scene where [Gustave] calls one of his concierge friends in another country and they call another in another country, it really works exactly like that,” he says, recalling a similar scene a few years back when a French actor staying at the Carlton Cannes asked him whether he could send fresh flowers to a friend in Greece. A quick call to the Clefs d’Or in Athens, and the deed was done. “Now we use WhatsApp, so it’s quicker, but it’s the same thing.”
Over the years, he’s had his share of strange requests. One Arab businessman asked to ship about 45 pounds of ice cream from his favorite shop in Saint-Tropez. “He didn’t remember the name, so we had to go to all of them, sending photos of the different flavors,” he recalls. An American requested that a box of sand be sent home from a beach on the Côte d’Azur. “I had that request twice in one year,” he says. “I always think: ‘You must have sand in the U.S.?’ ”
Not that he’d say that. “The guest comes first” is one of the “core values” of the Clefs d’Or. Others include: “serve through friendship” and “strive for excellence.” Says Maxime: “The only line is: Is it illegal? Then I politely say no. Other than that, I’ll try and find a solution.”
Nerkowski has been a concierge at Cannes’ most iconic luxury hotel, for more than two decades, but he retains the sense of the star-struck awe he felt when he first laid eyes on the Carlton Cannes as a teen while celebrity-spotting at the film festival. “I was passing by [the hotel] and stopped in my tracks and looked up,” he recalls. “The physical building, the architecture, is so amazing. I never imagined it’d be my home.”
Born and raised in the South of France, not far from Cannes, Nerkowski caught the hotelier bug after a summer job as a bellhop in a small resort in the country. His first full-time luxury gig was at the famed Four Seasons George V in Paris. In 2002, after completing training as a concierge, he came to Cannes.
“I remember my first festival very well because I was very, very, very stressed,” he says. “But I also remember after the awards ceremony, the director who won arrived at the hotel. He came right up to me and the other concierges and asked if we wanted to hold [the award]. It was just a few seconds, but I can say I held a Palme d’Or.”
Nerkowski keeps most of his celebrity stories to himself. Discretion is another one of those Clefs d’Or “core values.” But he remembers in 2018 helping a frantic Spike Lee find his cellphone before the red carpet premiere of BlacKkKlansman. “We looked everywhere,” he says. “Finally, I opened the drawer of a desk in the lobby, and there it was. I looked at him like you would a little kid and said, ‘Why did you leave it there?’ It became our little story.”
And then there’s Pierce Brosnan. “He stayed here for the full two weeks of the festival because he was shooting a film here right afterward,” says Nerkowski, who adds that the actor inexplicably addressed him with a stereotypically “French” name. “The whole time he was calling me ‘Louis.’ It was ‘Louis this,’ ‘Louis that.’ Even though my name is right there on the tag. One day I arrived early. He comes up to me in the lobby and says, ‘Maxime, please, I want you to be in my movie.’ ”
That’s how the Clef d’Or of the Carlton Cannes ended up playing himself alongside Brosnan and Emma Thompson in 2013’s The Love Punch. During production, he was professional and discreet, making sure the stars always came first. Gustave would be proud.
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