CANNES, France -- Only God Forgives: unforgettable? More like unforgivable. Back in 2011, Nicolas Winding Refn’s first outing with Hollywood hunk Ryan Gosling resulted in the suave, rapturous crime thriller Drive, which premiered here in Cannes and nabbed the Danish filmmaker the prize for Best Director. So expectations were not unreasonably high for this year’s hotly awaited competition entry Only God Forgives, their latest team effort about a revenge killing in the seedy Thai underworld, which played this morning to a breathless 8:30 a.m. audience. The result? Sensory shock and awe, followed by a narrative stupor, then capped with a heavy chorus of boos.

Kristin Scott Thomas. (Getty Images)

Those expecting another smoldering Steve McQueen impression from Mr. Gosling won’t recognize the inscrutable tabula rasa he plays here named Julian, a near-catatonic scion from a drug matriarchy headed by blood-thirsty drug trafficking villainess Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas, the film’s only shining light in a gleefully profane black widow role). The whisper of a plot concerns Mr. Gosling’s older brother Billy (Tom Burke), who is murdered after raping and killing a 16-year-old. (“I’m sure he had his reasons,” sighs Crystal.) Mommy wants retribution (ideally someone’s head on a plate), and Mr. Gosling does his bloody but emasculated best to oblige. The only hitch is having to face down demonic (or is he deific?) retired police chief Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm), an angel of death who acts as judge, jury and executioner to all the city’s scum and revels in sword-swinging mayhem before serenading the local cops with a round of karaoke.

The eccentricities would be endearing—even profound—if the film didn’t work so hard to make its characters so opaque. Cliff Martinez’s ominous drones accompany lovingly composed tableaux vivants of the actors, frozen in stately repose or glaring with smoldering intensity while bathed in crimson light and framed against opulent wallpaper designs. But cool poses do not a movie make. (Although it could be the basis of a fantastic coffee table book.) On paper, the film is a cunning inversion of the hero/villain trope, where justice prevails even though one’s sympathies may veer towards the crooks. But Mr. Refn wants to eschew genre and meditate on the metaphysical. Problem is, those moments of contemplation are empty vessels without a developed sense of emotional conflict.

Mr. Gosling, tellingly, was nowhere in sight. Cannes topper Thierry Fremaux made a rare appearance at the press conference to hand-deliver a message of regret from the heartthrob, who hailed Mr. Refn and insisted on his pride in the film. “He was unable to catch a plane yesterday,” said Mr. Fremaux. Indeed.

No matter, anyway: the film’s greatest thrill is Ms. Thomas, whose monstrous mother is a deliciously welcome addition to her formidable gallery of sophisticated roles. “This kind of film is really not my thing,” said Ms. Thomas at the film’s press conference. “But what appealed to me was working with Nicolas.”

Mr. Refn laughed at his star’s ability to embody such rough stuff. “She had no problem turning on the bitch switch,” he said. And one of the film’s highlights is watching her call someone a “cum-dumpster” (a pejorative suggested, remarkably enough, by Mr. Gosling). “It took me about eight takes to pronounce that word,” said Ms. Thomas. “Can you do it now?” ribbed Mr. Refn. “No,” she replied, with an icy smile.

Robert Redford. (Getty Images)

Ms. Thomas has good thespian company here in Cannes: Robert Redford also offered up a brave, admirably physical performance today in the single-person adventure drama All Is Lost, the latest from J.C. Candor (Margin Call), which features the Sundance founder as lone voyager on a leaky yacht stuck 1700 miles away from civilization who must fight the elements as they slowly erode his hope of survival. With no other actors in sight, the septuagenarian actor is in almost every single frame; and while the man-against-nature spectacle doesn’t completely maintain its intensity, Mr. Redford himself is never less than engaging, endearing and frankly just plain engrossing. The Oscars just got put on notice.

CANNES, France -- Diamonds, schmiamonds—all it takes to dazzle the luxe black-tie Cannes crowd are simple harmonies, acoustic guitars and a wayward tabby cat. Greenwich Village rocked the Riviera over the weekend, as Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1961-set folk drama Inside Llewyn Davis charmed festgoers with a beguilingly buoyant tale of a talented musician brilliantly versed in self-sabotage.

A vibrant Oscar Isaac stars as the put-upon titular troubadour, a former member of a defunct folk duo whose new solo album is making bupkis while he couch-surfs and plays small-potatoes gigs at the downtown Gaslight Café. And Carey Mulligan and Justin Timberlake play pleasantly toothless white-bread act Jean and Jim who give him shelter and even a chance to play on a sure-hit novelty tune (although Jean’s red-hot disgust for Llewyn belies a more complex emotional entanglement). From one encounter to the next, Llewyn keeps getting in his own way, trapped in an elliptical purgatory of bad luck, poor timing and just plain ill-fated decisions.

Oscar Isaac, left, and Justin Timberlake star in Joel and Ethan Coen's latest flick, Inside Llewyn Davis. (Getty Images)

Inside Llewyn Davis is infused with the filmmakers’ caustic sense of absurdist ennui, but what makes the movie really soar are the songs, folk classics and obscurities (plus one hokey original) supervised by longtime Coen collaborator T-Bone Burnett and performed live on film by the actors. Despite all the on-screen talent, though, Mr. Isaac is the real revelation, an actor with limited musical training whose heart-wrenching vocal prowess more than holds its own against pros like Mr. Timberlake. “We were screwed until we met Oscar,” admitted Ethan Coen during the press conference the day after its evening press screening. And Mr. Isaac clearly relished the role. “It’s a melancholic film,” he said. “But in between takes, I was smiling ear-to-ear.” Cannes now has a clear frontrunner for the Best Actor prize.

Journalists from all over the world greeted the cast and crew with open arms, as well as the obligatory questions about the film’s wayward feline star, a cat belonging to a sympathetic Columbia professor who escapes from Llewyn’s care. The pet is the film’s one contrivance, a somewhat forced conceit and easy laugh that adds a slight false note to all the otherwise tight thematic chords. “The movie doesn’t really have a plot,” conceded Joel Coen. “That actually concerned us at a certain point, which is why we threw the cat in.”

The international reporters at Cannes are famous for some left-of-center questions, and, as always, they did not disappoint—especially one whom the Coens themselves couldn’t have scripted any better. “We Germans are not known for our sense of humor,” said a Teutonic TV correspondent. “Somehow the humor left with the war and the Holocaust. What do you think? Jewish humor, does it exist? If so what does it consist of?” Nervous laughter followed, along with a long pause interrupted by Mr. Timberlake warning the room, “I smell a trap!”

But Joel Coen took it in stride, and volleyed with a typically droll response. “There’s nothing like a Holocaust to put a stake in a certain type of humor,” he replied.

CANNES, France -- Who needs movies? Within a 24-hour period, street gunfire and a hotel heist have kept the masses entertained here in Cannes. In the early hours of Friday morning, $1.4 million in Chopard jewelry was stolen from a Suite Novotel when company reps from the U.S. had their room safe ripped out of the wall and swiftly spirited away. And Friday afternoon, at a live beachside taping of French entertainment show Le Grand Journal guest-starring Tarantino muse (and double Oscar-winner) Christoph Waltz, a lunatic shot off two loud blanks and caused a panicked audience to stampede off the stage before the 42-year-old perp was wrestled to the ground by local police. (The French newspaper Nice-Matin later reported that the man was carrying a starter’s pistol, a switchblade and a plastic grenade.)

Bling Ring star Emma Watson denied involvement in the jewel heist. (Getty Images)

Luxury robberies are nothing new to the Côte d’Azur. Hitchcock immortalized the act in 1955’s To Catch a Thief; and as recently as 2009, crooks absconded with more than $21 million in jewels from the Cartier store here in town. Cannes has always been a magnet for petty crimes, too, with humble festivalgoers occasionally getting mugged or having their accommodations raided. A few years ago, a group of Danish reporters had their computers taken; and even the late great Roger Ebert got his laptop swiped one year. The timing for the Chopard incident couldn’t have been more uncanny, though, since the world premiere of Sofia Coppola’s luxe robber flick The Bling Ring happened just hours before the crime. “I’m innocent! I promise I had nothing to do with it!” laughed Emma Watson, the film’s star, when on Saturday the Hollywood Reporter cheekily asked if she was wearing some of the stolen rocks.

Violence is no stranger to Cannes, either. One angry attendee set off a bomb in the Palais in the 1970s; and ever since 9/11, the festival has enforced a strict code of examining bags and using metal-detector wands on every person entering the main venue, an enormous concrete convention center (affectionately known as “the Bunker”) which hosts scores of daily screenings scattered throughout dozens of theaters large and small. One vigilant bag-checker was so lugubriously thorough at the first 8:30 a.m. screening on the very first day that it caused a backlog of hundreds of audience members—and eventually forced the guards to throw up their arms and let in the uninspected crowd en masse.

Bulgari better watch their back: on Tuesday night, they are joining Twentieth Century Fox in presenting a 50^th anniversary screening of the Elizabeth Taylor blockbuster Cleopatra, with Jessica Chastain reportedly hosting the evening and wearing four different choice pieces from the storied jeweler. The reception that follows at the Bulgari rooftop will feature some of Taylor’s original jewels, as well. Let’s hope the film’s 192-minute running time will keep any sticky-fingered party crashers at bay.

CANNES, France -- Gloomy skies may be hanging over the south of France, but psychedelic philosophizing is lighting up the screens indoors. Ari Folman’s The Congress opened up the Director’s Fortnight section of Cannes last night with a loopy dose of future shock featuring Robin Wright as a washed-up variation of herself who sells her scanned body, plus a gallery of emotional expressions and all performance rights, to Tinseltown composite Miramount Studios. No need to suffer the scandal-prone peccadillos, erratic temperaments or drug-fueled habits of stars; after turning them into digital avatars, the studio can dictate movie roles, shape career decisions and exploit promotional duties without any pushback. The forever-young and totally automated celebrity will do its duty impeccably and in perpetuity. (TMZ should fear for its life.)

Director Ari Folman, second from left, poses with the cast of The Congress. (Getty Images)

The digital Faustian bargain (pitched by Ms. Wright’s aging agent, touchingly played by Harvey Keitel) becomes midnight-movie manna when, 20 years later, Ms. Wright goes to a studio-run resort where people snort a gas that turns everything they perceive into a drug-fueled, candy-coated Looney Tunes cartoon populated by famous figures from pop history. In the future, humans are simply hallucinating shape-shifters who idolize past icons and morph seamlessly from Michael Jackson to Frank Sinatra to Grace Jones. But the next logical step is even more morbid: the studio, which has now merged with a Big Pharma company, wants Ms. Wright to sell her chemical essence so that they can let the public literally digest her.

The stoner-quality pontificating, which gets more baroquely animated and increasingly paranoid as it goes along, offers up dystopic visions that deliver kaleidoscopic science fiction at its most extreme—imagine Betty Boop crossed with The Matrix. The film is loosely adapted from Stanislaw Lem’s communist-era satire The Futurological Congress and its vision of a world dictated by illusions that pacify the public, and its update to 21^st century anxiety about virtual reality is admirable. But there’s a thematic sprawl to the film that finally ends in emotional overreach and narrative obfuscation. You might need to be tripping balls to really feel like the ending has any sort of a satisfying climax.

Celebrated Chinese auteur Jia Zhengke is only slightly more down-to-earth in his ripped-from-the-headlines tabloid omnibus A Touch of Sin, a quartet of lurid stories taken from recent news events in China. A darkly poetic slant on everything from a recent high-speed train crash to the suicides at a Foxconn factory, with a few disgruntled employees that go postal thrown in for good measure, Mr. Jia’s latest takes the usually austere director into unfamiliar pulp territory that includes a shotgun rampage and a defiant pedicurist who gets deadly with a fruit knife after being bitch-slapped with a fistful of renminbi. The overt themes of economic oppression come through loud and clear, although the audience will probably feel pummeled rather than persuaded.

Asghar Farhadi, right, director of The Past. (Getty Images)

Sober-minded literalists who prefer their plots unsullied by sensationalistic extremes will look favorably on divorce drama The Past, from poet of martial discord Asghar Farhadi (whose Oscar-winning film A Separation was a devastating look at an Iranian couple at the end their marriage).  As with his previous film, this delicately calibrated story of husbands, wives and children all shell-shocked by emotional upheaval makes for a compelling study that slowly (if tauntingly) parcels out its plot revelations like grenades that cause irreparable collateral damage. The setting is now France, and the cast includes Oscar nominee Bérénice Bejo (The Artist), but the concerns and emotional conflicts are clearly universal. It’s good to know filmmakers here can show devastated lives without always causing literal devastation.

CANNES, France — It’s official: Steven Spielberg just watched a man set someone’s genitals on fire. The Cannes International Film Festival, which kicked off its 66^th edition Wednesday night with the rain-drenched international premiere of Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, is notorious for art-house auteurs pushing cinema to its extremes. But Amat Escalante’s ham-fisted Mexican competition entry Heli, which grimly (and dimly) depicts corrupt policemen as nihilistic envoys from Dante’s Inferno who crack the necks of puppies, make people roll in their own vomit and, of course, immolate crotches, has set a new record for fastest controversy at the storied event. (If #penisflambé isn’t trending yet on Twitter, it’s only a matter of time.) And as this year’s jury president, the director of E.T. is now obliged to watch every frame. Welcome to France!

Leo DiCaprio at a rain-drenched Cannes premier of The Great Gatsby. (Getty Images)

Cannes is off to a wet and wild start. The soggy opening night extravaganza for Gatsby Le Manifique included Leo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan braving the elements for a black-tie premiere and afterparty that featured the Brian Ferry Orchestra and Florence Welch, not to mention a screw-the-weather fireworks display that lit up the torrential downpour. And this morning’s screening of François Ozon’s Young & Beautiful steamed up the 3,000-seat Grand Théâtre Lumière with the provocative study of a bourgeois 17-year-old Parisienne (lithe newcomer Marine Vacth) who goes from virgin to whore in the span of a year. A nuanced but minor portrait of sexual awakening, budding confidence and emotional immaturity, Mr. Ozon’s lightly erotic and oddly touching ode to youth is alarming, arousing and affecting in equal measure.

More delightfully blunt is the hipper-than-thou kleptomarathon The Bling Ring, Sofia Coppola’s brightly polished ode to 21^st century youth as refracted through TMZ-fueled thieves who invade the homes of tabloid stars. Based on Nancy Jo Sales’ Vanity Fair article “The Suspects Wore Louboutins,” about a real-life group of high schoolers who became Hollywood Hills burglars, Bling Ring shows a culture of unchecked narcissism and serial irresponsibility coddled by Facebook posts and Google searches. There’s no there there, critics may wag, which is entirely the point of this glittery cautionary tale of shallow lives in a shallow town longing for the through-the-looking-glass experience of Reality TV fame. Toplining the cast is former Harry Potter icon Emma Watson, who’s clearly angling for the same good-girl-gone-bad career choice that Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens pulled off earlier this year in Spring Breakers. One highlight: Ms. Watson showing off her best pole-dancing moves in the party room of Paris Hilton’s glam-tastic house. (The celebutard heiress even let Ms. Coppola shoot in her actual home, a fabulously gaudy temple of tacky self-aggrandizement.)

Director Sofia Coppola, second from left, with the cast of The Bling Ring. (Getty Images)

Not a bad way to begin Cannes, a paean to excess and flash that has something for everyone, high and low. Especially low: in the film market, held alongside the festival, people can watch a cannibalistic Maori family frolicking through the black comedy Fresh Meat or the last known fertile woman struggling to survive in an underground tunnel system in the sci-fi horror flick Crawl, Bitch, Crawl. And if you’re Troma, the NYC-based granddaddy of schlock peddlers, you’ll hold a self-proclaimed "secret" screening of your latest, Return to Nuke ‘Em High: Volume One – but not without inundating international journalists with a press release first. What’s the point of a secret if no one knows about it?

Marion Cotillard chatting away.

Just when we were sick and tired of cinema screenings and movie premiere parties (Hello nomination-baiting season!), The Cinema Society alongside Dior and Vanity Fair hosted one of its best shindigs yet, at the legendary Indochine restaurant following a showing of the Rust and Bone, Jacques Audiard’s 2012 French-Belgian film, which stars Marion Cotillard and dizzyingly sexy Matthias Schoenaerts.

“I’m gonna need eight glasses of Champagne to lift myself up from that one!” one power publicist bellowed to The Observer over the roaring crowd.

“But Marion Cotillard was just amazing!”

This writer unfortunately missed the screening in order to support wounded U.S. servicemen and women uptown for Stand Up For Heroes event, which featured performances by John Mayer, Roger Waters and Bruce Springsteen.

We were hoping for a sighting and perhaps to bavarder with the Oscar-winner.

"Marion had to immediately catch an international flight," one social stalwart dutifully informed us. Of course she had plenty of time to pose for the cameras in her Dior couture, flashing her wondrous baby-bump.

Those that did turn out for the Indochine post-bash made the night memorable. Mischievous attendees included Harley Vieira Newton, Jean-Marc Houmard, Katie Lee, Nan Bush and Bruce Weber, Stefano Tonchi, the mouthy Amy Sacco, Isiah Whitlock and Donna D'Cruz, who off-duty on the DJ gig for the evening.

“I think it’s the food!’ suggested a male model, whose name escaped us.

“These mushroom things and the filet mignon!” he raved between bites.

We schmoozed with model Johannes Huebl and admired Ellen von Unwerth dancing skills. An attempt to question Emma Watson about the premise of the film resulted in a chic pout; her smart phone was of more interest.

The film, which takes place in Antibes, we were told, follows a young man who develops a bond with a whale trainer and traces how their relationship intensifies after a tragic accident. It won critical acclaim at Cannes and the BFI Film Festival. So we shall see how it plays with American audiences. It is en Français.

We got a few words with the Belgian star, Matthias Schoenaerts, but most of it was in Flemish… “I am very excited about the film,” was about all our infantile Nederland skills could reward us.

Nonetheless, the night was about celebration and good vibes. Signature Belvedere cocktails like the Rust and Bone mojitos kept conversation lively and bodies loose until well after midnight.

We told the host of evening and The Cinema Society founder, Andrew Saffir that this was our favorite fête of his thus far. He was unfazed and just smiled politely. With that, we were off to Norwood to continue our foolish, but fabulous escapades.

Alec Baldwin and fiancee, at the amFAR party in question (Getty Images)

We might have guessed that eventually, Alec Baldwin and Harvey Weinstein--two of show business's hottest heads--would end up clashing, and indeed, Mr. Baldwin called Mr. Weinstein a "douchebag" this week. It all went down at Cannes, the annual event at which Michael Haneke films coexist sweatily with the continued existence of Paris Hilton; Mr. Baldwin was angry, apparently, about Mr. Weinstein dropping out of funding his documentary, Seduced and Abandoned. Now, The Hollywood Reporter reports, Mr. Baldwin wrote Mr. Weinstein a note at the amFAR gala, leaving a note reading "HW, my apology to you and congratulations on a successful event"--but only after being removed as a co-host of the event. Whew! If nothing else, this is the most press the forthcoming-way-in-the-future film Seduced and Abandoned is likely ever to get. Nice work, gents.

Look at those Cannes.

Cannes has selected Marilyn Monroe as the official "icon" of its upcoming 65th Festival--the bombshell is to be featured in advertising for the fest. In a statement printed on Deadline, the French cinephiles noted: "“Fifty years after her death, Marilyn is still a major figure in world cinema, an eternal icon, whose grace, mystery and power of seduction remain resolutely contemporary."

Well, of course she is contemporary! We can hardly escape her! Before the Oscars at which Michelle Williams was nominated for making her voice all breathy came the Dior ad in which Charlize Theron meets a dazed-looking Norma Jean. Smash is still on (somehow--we thought once we cracked the case on the pilot, it might disappear) and treating its viewers to original songs, weekly, about the life of a tragic icon. Hugh Hefner claimed Lindsay Lohan's cover shoot in Playboy was inspired by the photos of Marilyn Monroe; the continued travails of Lindsay Lohan seem inspired, to magazine editors and to Ms. Lohan herself, by the life of Marilyn Monroe. There's very likely a Marilyn cover package brewing at Vanity Fair, once they make one more cycle through the four living celebrities (Clooney-Roberts-Depp-Jolie) allowed on the cover.

"Iconic" is an easy word; perhaps Marilyn Monroe remains popular because the big, bold things she signifies (sex, death, unresolved questions about feminine mystique and female vulnerability, power, powerlessness) do not need any elaboration in order to convey a false sense of authority. They give an unearned authority to the banal or the minor, rather as though this blog post tried to steal Raymond Carver's symbolic authority by calling itself "What We Talk About When We Talk About Marilyn," even though it's been years since there's been anything to say.

The Observer wrote about Ms. Dunst's reinvention as a hip New Yorker in August 2008, a reinvention before her current reinvention as serious artist. This winter, the consummate New York actress told us she was collecting mason plates. Hope there's room on the shelf for the sizable Cannes trophy. 

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn may have just given Gosling the best role of his career in Drive, a steely, sexy, menacing pulp thriller that turns the former mouseketeer and Notebook heartthrob into a 21st century Steve McQueen. As a Hollywood stuntman and part-time mechanic who moonlights by driving getaway cars for petty thieves, Gosling barely utters a word, strutting through life like a clenched fist and sporting a silver silk jacket embroidered with a huge yellow scorpion on its back. Respect his space, and he's cool, composed and impossible to fluster. Cross him, and the depths of violence he will unleash is deep and devastating.

Refn, who not only directed but also wrote the screenplay, has a track record of making movies with near-psychotic antiheros prone to fits of extreme violence, and tailored his vision to fit Gosling like a glove. It's a bravura performance that will stun and thrill audiences when the movie opens in the U.S. this September.

Then again, Paolo Sorrentino's This Must Be The Place might actually earn the dubious distinction of being a two-time Oscar winner star vehicle so strange, ridiculous and downright loopy that it doesn't even get a U.S. release. In it, Penn, eerily aping Robert Smith from the Cure but adding the somnambulistic shuffle of Ozzy Osbourne, plays an aging '80s pop star living in Ireland who returns to America when his father gets fatally ill. Once there, he decides to honor his Auschwitz-surviving father by tracking down the Nazi who tortured him-and apparently is still alive in the Southwest. Wait, what? That's right: aging goth rocker turns Nazi hunter.

Sorrentino is a dazzling stylist with a penchant for eccentric, sometimes grotesque characters finding their way through a quirky narrative landscape. But even the basic premise is far too wacked out to bear, and using it as a framework for a road trip movie through the heart of America is a wild misfire. Besides, the oddball attempts to portray the open plains, kitschy diners and broad personalities of the United States come off as strained and silly. Still, it's oddly exhilarating to see Penn jump headlong into such a bold folly. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.