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.

Lerman in The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

In a compilation of life’s most painful and punishing experiences, I would put high school at the top of the list. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, adapted by writer-director Stephen Chbosky from his best-selling novel about freshman year at a Pittsburgh high school in 1991, is a structurally messy but emotionally effective coming of age movie that gets a lot of it right. High school is an ordeal only the fittest can survive.

Every inaugural freshman embarking on the first day of this new adventure suffers the same anxiety, frustration and fear of the unknown, but for gawky, 15-year-old misfit Charlie (Logan Lerman), the terror is especially acute. “Only 1,305 days left,” is how he describes his first day at Mill Grove High School, surrounded by hostility. Charlie is a shy, brilliant, introverted loner with a history of mental illness who is still haunted by his best friend’s suicide. Withdrawn and self-effacing, he rarely looks anyone in the eye and never raises his hand in class; he knows all the answers to the questions, but is too self-conscious to answer them. Encouraged by his English teacher (Paul Rudd), Charlie saves his intelligence for extra-credit book reports on The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird. Despite a supportive father (Dylan McDermott), and an understanding shrink (Joan Cusack), his real grounding comes from new friends, a close-knit group of seniors who are older and more experienced, power-driven by an oddball duo of quirky siblings who march to a different drummer: sexually precocious Sam (Emma Watson, paroled at last from her ingenue prison as Hermione in the Harry Potter flicks) and her flamboyantly gay stepbrother Patrick (weirdo Ezra Miller, who played the schizophrenic teenage killer in the dreadful We Need To Talk About Kevin). “Welcome to the island of misfit toys,” says Sam, his first friend, and Charlie falls instantly in love. But Sam likes slushy rock ballads like “Pearly Dewdrops Drop,” and older guys who treat her like dirt. So does her brother, who wears drag in a parody of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (the only movie the students ever seem to watch) and is secretly having a torrid affair with the football team’s closeted star quarterback. Under their guidance, Charlie innocently takes his first baby steps into the world of drugs and loses his virginity to an overweight Buddhist vamp who introduces him to Billie Holiday and foreign films. In the end, Charlie is the one who straightens out their lives.

Well-intentioned but lazy, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is an honest if familiar look at kids that doesn’t cover a lot of fresh ground about teenage angst. Mr. Chbosky’s teenagers discover Jack Kerouac and J. D. Salinger, smoke their first joints and fumble with their zippers just like we did when I was in school. In addition to the same coveted football letter jackets, pot brownies, pop quizzes on F. Scott Fitzgerald and a Top-40 DJ mix at prom, you can now add gay sex, homophobia, cafeteria violence and nervous breakdowns. Unfortunately, Mr. Chbosky’s “techniques” wear thin fast—corny voiceovers, flashbacks and a “secret” from Charlie’s past that arrives so late in the third act it seems purely artificial. The narrative meanders and the soundtrack is so drenched in bubblegum pop that it sounds like an iTunes library. (If I hear one more dated period piece by The Smiths, I’ll scream.) On the plus side, Mr. Chbosky shows genuine affection for his characters, providing them with small, reflective moments as well as big, fervent outbursts, and with his cast, this is as it should be. Emma Watson’s Sam has the same face as her old signature character Hermione, but her chopped-off Edie Sedgwick hair, cleavage and curves leave the moppet warlocks at Hogwarts in the dust. It is the remarkable Logan Lerman who negotiates his journey to Charlie’s self-discovery with so much dignity and vulnerability that he steals every scene and carries the picture. As the young George Hamilton in My One and Only (2009), he dazzled. He’s come a long way as an actor since then, if you don’t count his misguided D’Artagnan in last year’s crummy high-tech remake of The Three Musketeers, and he shows signs of a rock-solid future. He does a Herculean job of tempering the joy and elation of adolescence with the dark confusion of youth in transition that makes The Perks of Being a Wallflower ingratiating, if not memorable.

rreed@observer.com

THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER

Running Time 103 minutes

Written and Directed by Stephen Chbosky

Starring Logan Lerman, Emma Watson and Ezra Miller

2.5/4

James Franco (Getty Images)

While conducting a new Interview chat with Mila Kunis, James Franco indicated that another costar of his is something of a diva:

The movie is a comedy, but it's kind of an outrageous one, and this actress—I won't say who, but she had a smaller role in the film—walked off the movie in the middle of a scene. [...] It's not as if the scene wasn't in the script, though. In any case, I didn't see any of this go down, but I guess she basically went up to the directors, Seth [Rogen] and Evan [Goldberg], and said, "I don't think I can do this." She, by the way, didn't have to do anything crazy in the scene. But what was going on around her was, I guess, too extreme for her. So Seth was like, "Well, what can we do to fix it?" And she said, "There's nothing you can do to fix it. It's just everything."

The actress, per Mr. Franco, walked off the set; for her part, Ms. Kunis says "What?" then indicates she never would have walked off a set. Per IMDb, the movie directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg is The End of the World; the female costars with seemingly prominent parts (which is to say, not playing "Party Goer" or the like) are Emma Watson, Rihanna, and Mindy Kaling. Ms. Kaling has exposed all different parts of her sometimes-raunchy sense of humor in her memoir and the pilot for her upcoming sitcom; Rihanna is certainly a diva, but not one who seems to be frightened of the extreme. And so it is that James Franco let Interview readers know that Emma Watson is difficult to work with.

USER-FRIENDLINESS
Any idiot can use an iPhone—and we know, because we’ve seen it happen. BlackBerry gets a few points for most models’ physical QWERTY keyboards, which are less prone to typos than iPhone’s virtual keys; but Apple controls for this problem with text-correction software, and its completely intuitive touch-screen operation wins the category.
Advantage: iPhone

DURABILITY
iPhones crack when they’re dropped, unless you invest in bulky shells and cases; by contrast, as Wired’s GeekDad blog has pointed out, BlackBerrys still work after being run over by a full-size pickup truck.
Advantage: BlackBerry

BELLS AND WHISTLES
iPhone wins for both built-in features and apps. In addition to the 3GS’s built-in video camera, GPS, Wi-Fi, music and video player, YouTube connectivity and quick Internet browsing, the iTunes App store offers tens of thousands of applications. BlackBerry App World pales in comparison.
Advantage: iPhone

OPTIONS
BlackBerry’s online store currently offers 21 models, with a range of prices and features; iPhone buyers can pick only between 3G and 3GS. BlackBerry is also supported by 45 carriers in the U.S.—iPhone is currently only available on drop-heavy AT&T.
Advantage: BlackBerry

CELEBRITY USERS
As we know all too well, Tiger Woods’ iPhone has gotten him into trouble; but Uma Thurman, Ryan Reynolds, Nicole Kidman, Emma Watson and Michelle Williams have fared better with theirs. There doesn’t seem to be much family loyalty: Miley Cyrus is a devoted BlackBerry user, while brother Trace carries an iPhone; Jake Gyllenhaal uses an iPhone, while Maggie sports the BlackBerry; Beyoncé is a BlackBerry devotee, while sister Solange is an iPhone girl. Many celebs also prefer not to choose: Cameron Diaz, Taylor Swift, Lindsay Lohan, Adriana Lima and Vanessa Hudgens have all been spotted with both devices.
Advantage: Draw (If it seems like everyone in Hollywood, from Amanda Seyfried to Zac Efron, is glued to a BlackBerry, that’s because BlackBerrys are frequently given gratis to celebs; in the past five years, the phone has been on offer in gift bags at the Oscars, the AMAs, the Golden Globes and the Grammys. Apple’s sole spokesmodel is Justin Long.)

Am I the only person over 12 who truly believes the Harry Potter franchise has outlived its shelf life? Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth and worst installment yet, is two and a half hours of paralyzing tedium, featuring another colossal waste of British talent and a plot a real witch couldn’t find with a crystal ball. The kids at Hogwarts no longer have any relevance. They have never heard of iPods, cell phones or the Internet. Yet they keep on coming, like deer ticks.

Don’t ask me what this thing is about. The 10-year-old in the next seat at the press screening told me it was her favorite of all the J. K. Rowling books, but at the end she did not applaud. In fact, this is the first Harry Potter movie I’ve ever seen that faded to black in deafening silence. The über-demon Lord Voldemort, vanquished countless times by the moppet warlocks at Hogwarts, returns from the grave in swirls of tornadolike smoke spiraling from the sky to destroy Millennium Bridge, and nothing is safe until Harry can master the clues to unraveling the secrets in the potions book that once belonged to the nonsensical “Half-Blood Prince.” Harry’s ally against the Death Eaters is Hogwarts potions professor Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent); his adversaries include the malevolent professor Severus Snape, played by snarling, prissy-mouthed Alan Rickman, and nasty Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) and his gothic nightmare aunt Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter). Challenged and thwarted at every turn, the other “regulars,” like Harry’s pals Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) and Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint)—so cute at 11 when the series began—are now 19 and horny as gerbils. With such a bramble of romantic entanglements, they scarcely have time to notice the dragon blood dripping from the ceiling when they’re so busy making out behind the wolfsbane. The flying broomstick competitions (been there, done that) are like outtakes. Whatever suspense there is surrounds the true identity of the “Half-Blood Prince,” and if you don’t guess who that is from his first snarl, you just haven’t been paying attention. (There’s also a dull subplot, about Ron’s near-death experience with a particularly potent love potion, that could easily been cut.) Julie Walters has one line. Maggie Smith does an occasional walk-on to bark, “Go to your houses—no dawdling!” There’s not nearly enough action and entirely too much metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. The deaths of beloved characters are likely to leave the little ones bawling. Even the visual effects are tired. The underground grotto where Harry and Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) take on the zombies of the undead looks like a clip from one of the previous five films. Some fine directors enhanced the earlier Potter epics; David Yates is not one of them. I pray Steve Kloves, the gifted filmmaker who scripted the first four films and now returns for the boring sixth, soon throws in the towel and gets back to his real talent for writing and/or directing original films of his own, like the memorable The Fabulous Baker Boys and Flesh and Bone.

As for Daniel Radcliffe, who has outgrown the role of Harry Potter, it’s not easy to accept him after his full-frontal nude turn on Broadway in Equus. Gee, Harry, we hardly recognized ye with thee clothes on.

rreed@observer.com

Around 6 P.M, the cast began arriving. Before the Harry/Ron/Hermione Big Three made their way to reporters, spiky-haired Lance Bass, Kelsey Grammer, Marcia Gay Harden, Ashanti and Chevy Chase waved across the street to fans who were most definitively not there for them. "You're not allowed to get bored of Harry Potter," said Mark Indelicato of Ugly Betty, one of the few celebrities willing to give interviews. "It’s, like, against the law.”

There had been much pre-premiere hubbub about the newest element of the series: snogging! The underaged stars dressed to remind us that their well-publicized puberties have finally ended: Emma Watson, a.k.a. Hermione, wore a two-tone backless leather Proenza Schouler getup; Bonnie Wright, who plays Harry’s newest love interest, Ginny Weasley, teetered in strappy red velvet heels, also worn by a young woman behind her on the red carpet. “Tut tut,” Ms. Wright joked. “No good!”

Tom Felton, who plays evil Draco Malfoy, was “thrilled” that he did not have a kissing scene of his own, unlike his co-stars. “I heard it was a bit awkward among old friends,” he said, tugging at his un-tied bowtie, and attending to his extraordinarily leggy girlfriend, Jade Olivia, whom he described as “the jewel on my arm.”

“We’re Harry Potter, man, its all above the waist, we’re very chaste,” star Daniel Radcliffe, clad in a shiny blue-silver suit, assured the Transom, referring to the film’s racy bits. Rupert Grint, who had just recovered from a bout of swine flu, remarked that his parents “didn’t really freak out. It was just like a normal flu!” Ms. Watson, last into the theater, is attending college in the States this fall, though she has not yet revealed which (Brown or Columbia, it is thought). Is she nervous about co-ed bathrooms? “Oh God, I didn’t realize …that’s news to me,” she said: “I look forward to that part of the experience.”

After the film, guests were transported to a party at the Museum of Natural History's Powerhouse via red double decker buses. Once deposited, the crowd—equal parts skinny-jean-donning 12-year-olds, haggard publicists and actual adults who looked slightly embarrassed about it all—sloshed through billowing dry ice into the massive space.

Children were greeted by a lavish dessert bar, as well as a station holding the Harry Potter video game and a photo booth with wizard robes where they could pose in front of a Hogwarts backdrop, which inebriated adults seemed to enjoy as well. Bartenders wore witch hats.

Outdoors, between trees affixed with crossed broomsticks, the cast lounged on white couches and admired the Planetarium’s massive orb, onto which Quidditch scenes from the movie were projected.

A man wove his way through the crowd, offering card tricks to innocent bystanders. “That’s weird,” exclaimed one aloof-looking handsome guest after seeing one. “That’s weird.”

French label Cacharel is the latest fashion house to cancel its spring Paris runway show in light of recent economic developments. [WWD]   

Michelle Obama has become a fashion muse for designers who want to market to middle-aged female shoppers. [WSJ]  

On Friday, Nicole Richie flew to Moscow for the opening of 16-year-old socialite's Kira Plastinina's (her father is a mogul of milk and juice!) latest store opening. [WWD]  

Emma Watson, the darling of the last Fashion Week, on her style: "Spending a whole day getting ready is ridiculous. I hate wearing an outfit that looks too put-together and perfect. I choose the things I wear myself because I'm such an OCD control freak." [Vogue UK] 

Mark Lee, the president chief executive officer of Gucci, will step down at the end of the year and Bottega Veneta's CEO Patrizio Di Marco will take over. [WWD]

Eighteen-year-old actress Emma Watson models couture in the pages of Italian Vogue this month. [Vogue UK]

Viktor & Rolf will present their Spring 2009 show online. [Vogue UK] 

Designer Vera Wang would like to begin designing hosiery. [WWD]