Abel Ferrara always wanted to be the talk of Cannes. That's why, at first, he was sorry his new movie hadn't made the cut. "Do I feel bad? Yeah, I do. I wish they liked the film better. Am I gonna kill myself? No. That's one less tuxedo I have to rent. One more red carpet I don't have to walk down. They got 35 films they like and mine they didn't. Fine."  So Ferrara did what he's been doing for 40 years, since he stood in for the lead on his first film, 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy – "Imagine paying $300 to a guy to have sex with your girlfriend and then he can't get it up!" – he improvised. He hustled solo. His film might not have made the official selection; that didn't mean it couldn't be shown. "They don't own this city. We go rent a theatre, show the movie, people come. If no one was interested, no one would come."  They came. The Saturday night screening of Welcome to New York – in a tent, on a beach, tarpaulin rattling in the breeze, boombox from the party next door shaking the chairs – became this year's hot ticket. This despite the film not being part of the festival, and it being available online the same day.  The draw of Welcome to New York is obvious: unlike most movies at Cannes, it engages with the real world. More than that – it grabs it by the lapels, gives it a slap and hangs it out to dry. It is, a title card explains at the start, inspired by a real story: that of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who quit as head of the International Monetary Fund in 2011 after being arrested for the alleged sexual assault of a maid in a Manhattan hotel. The charges were eventually dropped and the two parties reached a settlement at the end of 2012.  Ferrara's film stars Gérard Depardieu as an international financier called George Devereaux, who has designs on the French presidency, as well as every woman he sees. The morning he assaults a hotel maid, he's already slept with at least four escorts, all apparently thrilled by the experience.  The film is a shameless, outrageous account of a sociopathic sex addict. It pulses with energy and intent. It's Ferrara's best since his Bad Lieutenant and King of New York. Like them, it's an orgiastic vampire tale about a creature of the night who can't face the mirror. The difference is that this hero isn't even subconsciously looking for redemption. He cares for no one but himself.  At a press conference after the screening, Depardieu, Ferrara and the film's producer were blase about potential legal action. They expected neither threats nor suits, "though if they want to give us publicity, they're welcome". After the press conference came the party: a double bed; "Viagra cocktails"; fake cops; gift bags with handcuffs and a whip. Ferrara was back where he wanted to be: on everyone's lips. He'd slipped under the red rope and straight into the VIP section. Even the reviews were good.  Then, on Sunday, a less friendly writeup, from Anne Sinclair, DSK's former wife, whose alter ego, Simone, is played by Jacqueline Bisset. Welcome to New York was "degrading and defamatory," she wrote on the French Huffington Post, which she now edits. She particularly objected to a line she felt attacked her late grandfather, a Jewish art collector who fled from Paris to the US in 1940. She wouldn't sue, though; she wouldn't deign to. "I am not attacking this filth," she wrote. "I am vomiting on it."  Monday morning, and Strauss-Kahn pitched in. He hadn't seen the film, said his lawyer, but he was of the opinion it was "crap, like a dog's dropping". And, unlike his ex, he would be taking action. Ferrara could expect a suit in short order, for defamation over the "accusations of rape, and insinuations that are in the movie, throughout the movie".  Monday teatime, and Ferrara sits on the terrace of a discreet hotel off the Croisette. He's rubbing his forehead. He grins blurrily. He needs an espresso, he says, voice throttly as a vacuum cleaner in an Italian restaurant. He was pouting, pin-up stuff in his youth, and you can see it still in his lips and cheekbones, though there are ghosts in that face today.  He didn't expect the legal action. But he accepts it's his lot. He's just made a movie about Pasolini, who "ended up dead on a beach in pursuit of personal freedom. I gotta take us where the fucking vision is, man. I gotta take it where it flows."  Plus, he's got responsibilities – a team to represent. "I'm the guy in front. The bullets come; you get hit first. So what? I know the deal. It's coming in the fucking window, you dig? It's in my soul."  So how will he fight it? Well, first off, he rejects Sinclair's claim of antisemitism. She has misinterpreted the film, he thinks. Of course her grandfather had to leave Paris. "The Gestapo's coming to town, you're a Jew, you're gonna get killed. You're out of fucking choices. They killed six million Jews. What is she saying? We denied that? I'm not from Iran! He would have been six million and one."  Plus, he insists, the film is more divorced from its source than even the promotion suggests. "The word 'inspired' at the beginning of this film is a little bit strange. I didn't put that slogan in front of the movie. What the fuck is this 'inspired'? I'm not inspired, I'm assaulted." The DSK case, he says, had even more blanket coverage than the trial of OJ Simpson. "I was attacked [by the story]. I got no choice. I wake up in the morning and I'm having this for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a month. I'm reacting to it, and I'm gonna react the way I want to direct as an artist. I'm not trying to solve this case. I'm reacting to the stimulus and the input."  The main inspiration, anyway, he says, is himself. A key showdown between Devereaux and his wife was, in fact, a transcription of Ferrara's own recent breakup. "Somebody told me just that not long ago: 'Everything you do makes me feel bad.' Thank you! I thought we were in love. Hahahaha! I'm sitting here happy! And she tells me that."  Now he's 62 and single and understands the impulse to sleep with young women to regain his own youth, as Devereaux does in the film. Understands, but no longer indulges – at least not in quite the same way. "I get it, I get it, I get it. I've done shit worse than these guys can imagine. You think some young girl will mean you can possess this knowledge of beauty. It's like smoking crack, man – you think you're getting something, you're not getting anything."  I leave him to the press junket – swearing like a trooper, charming the journalists, sweet-talking the staff. A couple of days pass, but the story doesn't die. It's what delegates talk about. In the absence of an Only God Forgives (Nicolas Winding Refn's bloodbath from last year) or Lars von Trier expressing sympathy with Hitler, Welcome to New York becomes the big story of the festival. I want to find out how he's weathering the storm. I also want to see what he's like outside of the schedule. Colleagues have spoken fondly of a man who fell asleep mid-phone call, and who invited them to a strip club after the interview. If he was on message before, what might he be like off the leash?  Not possible, apologise the film's publicists. Ferrara is no longer with them and they've no means of contact. I try the email on his website. He writes back a couple of hours later – we'll have a drink at his hotel, the same one we met at before. I race over, stopping at the cash point en route. Should I email the office? How much alcohol can I put on expenses? Is there a cap on cocaine?  But when I arrive, he's already got himself a Perrier. He looks positively peachy. The battered black jacket from earlier in the week has been swapped for cheery seersucker. Yes, he's getting sued. But life is still good. A few years ago, he says in the bar, he cleaned up entirely. Now he wonders why people want to poison themselves. "But anyway, I'm not passing judgment. The way I drank and did drugs? You gotta be kidding me." He grins, teeth untroubled by Hollywood dentistry.  Let's head out, he says. He needs to buy some cheaper bottles of water for later. We swap notes on the perennial appeal of Depardieu, and how the French still seem besotted despite his defection to Russia – which Ferrara admires for its "balls". Depardieu claims to have paid ¤145m (£117m) in taxes during his life. Ferraro adds: "The guy figures he's not getting representation for taxation. He's a citizen of the world, this guy." He's pals with Putin, right? Ferraro nods, not giving a lot away. "And Castro."  The man is just irresistible, he thinks. The female actors who played the escorts didn't know who he was, but after half an hour they were in love with him anyway. "He's a charismatic dude. He's a sexual dude. I don't care if he's 500lb; this guy has got what it is for men and women."  What about politics, I ask? Is he disillusioned like Depardieu? Oh no, he says, bouncing along the street. When a politician's a good guy, he's rooting for them. "You have to be holier than thou. You have to be a monk. Because you're representing the fucking people, you dig?"  We find a corner shop and he buys four bottles of San Pellegrino and a couple of cans of something fizzy. He's still in love with Obama, he says. Save for the time "he goes into Osama bin Laden's house, smokes the guy in front of his fucking kids and dumps him in the fucking ocean. That's not exactly presidential behaviour." Does he think Bin Laden should have stood trial? "If you ask me about Osama, they should have brought him back, put him on the Empire State Building, put a blowtorch in his face and said: 'Suck on that or jump,' because that's the fucking choice he gave my friends."  We're back at the hotel. He's enjoying being at the festival; tonight he'll go see a documentary about the Ukraine. It's one of the few movies around which, like his, is really interested in the world. Is there a timidity among film-makers these days? He mumbles; he won't be drawn. How about among the general population? Why don't people get angry about things like the DSK case?  He thinks carefully. "There's a point in the relationship between men and women when no means no," he says. "I ain't talking about anything about this guy. I'm talking about myself." Being a movie director, he says, puts you in "a very powerful position – economically powerful. It's not just that they're looking at me like I'm some kind of guru. They need a gig and I'm offering a gig, and it's so easy to cross that line. And that line has been crossed by me, y'know. In a bad way. Too many times."  He eyeballs the coffee table. Ferrara is friendly, but sporadic with the eye contact. "Hey, he's not the only guy in the world that's been accused of raping somebody. Whether he did it or not is irrelevant to me. The fact that other guys have done it. Where is it in you and me to go there? And maybe I've done it too? And I don't ever want to do it again. As a human being, never mind a father of two daughters. It's a place I don't want to go to. And making films is my personal therapy, my journey towards some sort of fucking understanding. To be somebody better."  Seven years ago, Ferrara, who was raised Catholic, became a Buddhist. Back in the day, the focus was on the purging of past sins; now it's on karma. "Every action, every word, every thought is out there and has a big effect. So you got to be really careful what you say, which I'm not, and with what you do, which I'm not. It's progress, not perfection. I'm trying to do it all better."  And with that he slopes back up to his room. Back to the legal battles and the meditation, the mirrors and the Ukrainian documentary, the stocks of mineral water and cans of pop.
Catherine Shoard: Abel Ferrara has long been one of Hollywood's most provocative directors. This week his new film, Welcome to New York, was the hot ticket at Cannes – especially after ex-IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn decided to sue