Looks like my Cannes awards predictions were a bit off, although I did mention that there might be a lot of last-minute love for the eventual Palme d’Or winner, Laurent Cantet’s The Class. Like Rosetta from 1999, it screened on the final day of Competition films, and thus wasn’t accounted for in most of the brilliant speculation that had been building throughout the week. In the Theater Claude Debussy—where journalists abandon all pretense of objectivity and hoot and clap as they watch the ceremony on a live feed—clusters of critics immediately began discussing two noteworthy points: (1) This was the first French film to win since Under Satan’s Sun in 1987, and (2) It was ironic that the film had been added to Competition belatedly (along with Blindness and Two Lovers). The winners:

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It’s almost calm again. Still, with little more than 12 hours to go before the final Competition press screening, Wim Wenders swooped in last night with Palermo Shooting, making a strong bid for the title of Festival’s Worst Film. The movie concerns a debauched, vacant, occasionally philosophical German fashion photographer who journeys to Palermo, Italy, searching for something or other, and who periodically encounters an apparition carrying a bow and arrow (invariably before getting shot at).

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Today the mayor of Cannes hosted a lunch in the old city for festival attendees; journalists who knew to ask in advance were furnished with invitations. A first Cannes Film Festival is essentially a tutorial in learning all the tricks of the Cannes Film Festival. Perhaps the most important lesson I’ve learned here is that one needs to be aggressive about getting into parties. (Note to self: Know someone who knows someone.)  

It’s fitting, then, that this morning’s Competition film should be a movie that argues that living is a process of learning how to live.

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For its unwieldy ambition, sprawling narrative, troubling omissions, possible unfinishedness, bold trust of viewers to grapple with minute details and utter resistance to genre conventions, Steven Soderbergh’s Che seems destined to be the most remembered film of this festival—and its combination of audacity and social interest could well put it over the top with the jury. At any rate, simply by virtue of its size, it’s made a louder bid for the Palme than any Competition film so far—even though, in four and a half hours, it avoids giving a sense of Che Guevara’s life beyond his philosophy and fighting strategy. Benicio del Toro’s performance is powerfully reserved.

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It’s taken 15 years, but Jennifer Lynch has finally put the Boxing Helena pans behind her and made another movie. And lo and behold, Surveillance—premiering tonight as a midnight screening—is just as unwatchable as Boxing Helena, albeit lacking in the gender-warfare pathology that made that film marginally interesting.

Clearly, Lynch watched her father David’s Lost Highway and thought Robert Blake’s Mystery Man was a cool visual idea. Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond star as a pair of FBI agents in the desert investigating a bizarre multiple homicide. They interrogate the witnesses, and as Lynch proceeds to demonstrate in flashbacks, witnesses don’t always tell the truth. You get to see a darkly comic, extended ripoff of Lost Highway’s tailgating scene—albeit involving speeding instead of tailgating—and Pullman, whose character goes increasingly batshit, does his best Dennis Hopper.

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Destined to be overrated, underrated, the recipient of awards and the object of a backlash, Clint Eastwood’s new film is first and foremost just an excellent yarn—a case of a master director flexing his chops and creating a vivid, absorbing portrait of 1928 Los Angeles. As someone who admires Eastwood but has found him overrated as of late (I thought Million Dollar Baby in particular took a shameless, self-serving dive in its second half), I was surprised at the fluidity of Changeling (referred to in one set of press notes as The Exchange), which—like Mystic River—uses kidnapping as a catalyst for a larger moral inquiry. In an ostensibly true story, Angelina Jolie stars as a single mother whose son disappears; the police return a child to her months later, but it’s not her son, and the long-tentacled LAPD would rather discredit her than risk a PR disaster.

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Hey, Spielberg: Next time hold your press conference in a place like this. On the Majestic Beach pier, the breeze is steady, you can sit on a chaise—and hordes of paparazzi would sooner push you into the harbor than have you step in front of them in the fray.

I’m here to see Wong Kar-wai give a waterfront press conference for Ashes of Time Redux (at left), his re-edit of his 1994 martial arts film. Wong appears to be running late, as he has on occasion in the past. (See also: The 2004 Cannes premiere of his 2046. The print arrived so late that screenings had to be rescheduled.) Still, there don’t seem to be a lot of critics here. Finally, half an hour after the event is supposed to have started, I ask someone if he’s there to see Wong, who I’d assumed was arriving by boat. "No," replies the thickly accented journalist. "Judd Low."

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In a display of studio power best described as The Da Vinci Code Maneuver, Paramount commandeered the Cannes Film Festival this afternoon with the world premiere of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull—or as it’s known here, Indiana Jones et le Royaume du Crâne de Cristal. Getting into the screening necessitated rubbing elbows and pit sweat with a mob of fellow critics, and a colleague who was turned away tells me that there were hundreds who didn’t get in.

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Indiana Jones won’t visit the Croisette until tomorrow, but today one sensed that the festival was already in full swing. On Wednesday, you couldn’t get into Sean Penn’s press conference; today you could barely get a spot at one of the televisions showing Woody Allen’s. The reception to his Vicky Cristina Barcelona is all over the map. (Bear in mind that my enthusiasm is based in part on expecting, say, another Cassandra’s Dream.) Given one of the movie’s subplots, it’s natural that someone would ask the Woodman if he was himself was interested in menage a trois. "It’s hard enough to get one person," he replied.

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