It's a Lovely Day in Cannes And Life Is Rotten

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Evil is where you find it: in America and Asia, in fictional and factual films. Two of the strongest Cannes pictures this year were documentaries. Rithy Panh's long, harrowing S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine shows some of the Cambodian perpetrators of genocide in the '70s confronted by their victims or the victims' survivors. Errol Morris' The Fog of War lets Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara make his nuanced, self-critical apologia for his decisions in a war that killed 56,000 Americans and 60 times as many Vietnamese. It's a must-see, especially for Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.

The shroud of international evildoing covers two excellent films set in Afghanistan. Sedigh Barmak's Osama takes place in the early days of Taliban rule: to earn money for her family, a desperate woman disguises her 11-year-old daughter as a boy. It is a reckless ruse, one with humiliating consequences, which Barmak directs with poignant simplicity.

Samira Makhmalbaf's At Five in the Afternoon is set just after the Taliban's fall, when young women have earned the right to go to school but not the respect of their conservative fathers. The film shimmers and shudders with hopeful and horrifying vignettes. Girls declare themselves ready to be doctors, teachers, even the President of Afghanistan. Amid the optimism, anarchy rules. There is no water to drink, no place to stay. People find shelter in the hull of an abandoned plane, in the ruins of a palace. After 20 years of brutal occupation, Afghanistan is rich in ruins.

The film never raises its voice, but the 23-year-old Makhmalbaf did — on closing night, when At Five in the Afternoon won the Jury Prize (third place). "My movie is about a woman who dreams to become a president," she declared. "But I personally don't have such a dream ... because we are living in a world in which Mr. George W. Bush is the most famous President."

Wait a minute, you say. Didn't Cannes use to be the place to see elegant, middle-brow European films and buxom topless starlets? Wait no more: Ludivine Sagnier to the rescue. Voluptuous and pouty, Sagnier has her limitations as an actress — she doesn't radiate so much as glower — but just now she's everywhere in French movies, including two in the Cannes competition. In La Petite Lili, Claude Miller's summery adaptation of Chekhov's The Seagull, she disrupts the egos and libidos of all she meets. In François Ozon's Swimming Pool, she antagonizes and arouses older novelist Charlotte Rampling by sunbathing in the nude and bringing louts home to stay over. Neither film is a masterpiece, but both address the envy of old souls contemplating young flesh.

Amid the cinematic dross, a jewel emerged: Sylvain Chomet's Les Triplettes de Belleville (Belleville Rendez-Vous). This animated feature, about an old woman who battles the French Mafia to retrieve her kidnapped godson, possessed what other Cannes entries lacked: a vivid visual imagination, a generous wit, an understanding of the human impulse not just to survive but to save others. Dogville may have had the big buzz at Cannes, but Belleville was the great news.

Von Trier disappointed his fans by getting shut out at award time. But another Danish auteur did have reason to be there and be pleased: Christoffer Boe, director of Reconstruction, which won the Camera d'Or for best first feature. As he accepted his prize, Boe made this plea into the ether: "Vincent Gallo, don't give up! We need to fight conventional filmmaking."

Someone needs to make, and fight for, better films. Maybe next year: Cannes 2004 has already been dubbed the Atonement Festival. But if there's a lesson from Cannes 2003, it's that bad films are more fun to talk about than great ones. They're almost as good as rumors.