I stepped in a pile of it outside my Cannes lodgings three days ago and endured a double dose of it this morning: poop. How is it possible that Philippe Garrel, whose Regular Lovers made my top-ten list last year and whose recently revived I Can No Longer Hear the Guitar also stunned me, made the inept romantic hooey La Frontière de l’aube (right)? Press members clapped when the screen went black in between scenes; others simply nodded out. When the ghost of a dead woman played by Laura Smet started spooking Louis Garrel, most of us just chuckled. A Toronto-based critic with whom I stood in the Che line for 90 minutes yesterday was absolutely confident that his countryman Atom Egoyan’s Adoration would win the Palme d’Or this year. Clearly, Maple Leaf pride has clouded his judgment; Egoyan’s latest banality (he hasn’t made a good film since 1997’s The Sweet Hereafter) takes on its topics—terrorism, religious intolerance, cyberspace, victimhoood—ten years too late. But passing through the Market level of the Palais this morning, I saw a poster for something called Sunshine Barry and the Disco Worms (left)—sold to more than 25 territories! When art cinema is this bad, there’s always hope for Danish 3-D animated family features.