At Cannes, the Boats Take a Bow

And the Festival Flicks Are Borne Back Ceaselessly Into the Past

CANNES, France, May 21 -- After dark, the swells go to parties aboard the superyachts, whose wide sterns, like oversize rumps, wiggle against the stone quay of the port, jostling for attention. Intimate dinners with just friends up in the hills above town? Not this crowd, mon cher. Invisibility is not the point.

So the other night guests aboard billionaire investor and four-time married man Ronald Perelman's 187-foot megayacht, the Ultima III, were wandering around his third story, the "Sun Deck," admiring the hot tub, feeling pretty good about things, like the bottomless gnocchi, the crates of champagne and Barry Diller, who arrived wearing a navy blue caftany thing -- and pulled it off. Then they notice. Ahoy there? The boat berthed right alongside. It is bigger and has a hot tub and a swimming pool. It cannot be denied. That one is just more mega. And suddenly, a palpable longing, to be aboard the Ultima IV. (Build her, and we will come.)

And so goes the Cannes Film Festival, where this year a round of polite applause greets a slate composed mostly of very okay movies. There are no unmitigated disasters (yet), but no films that have people jabbering like zoo monkeys at feeding time. It's like a classroom filled with B+ students, who study too hard. There's just something . . . missing.

Perhaps it is the Riviera, where it has been drizzling. Perhaps it is seeing Indiana Jones fleeing a mushroom cloud. That is disconcerting. Perhaps is it the weak dollar, which is getting sand kicked in its face by the bully euro. But it's not like the price of gas is getting the Canners down. Some of the film financing people here from the Emirates own smallish nations that sell oil.

During the daylight hours, Clint Eastwood appears at a news conference in the Palais, with just-about-to-pop Angelina Jolie by his side, here for the release of "The Exchange" or "Changeling" (they can't decide). His new film relates a true tale of a missing child, snatched from the mean streets of Los Angeles in 1928, when City Hall and the police force (surprise) were a sewer of wretched corruption. After months with no leads, a child is returned to Mother Jolie -- case solved! -- but you see it is not her real son. The police suggest she keep the kid on "a trial basis." So Jolie suffers. Jolie rallies. The police lock her up in the nuthouse.

Some critics are calling it the best performance of her career.

Clint squints into the bright lights of the cameras, and when Eastwood squints -- do you feel lucky, punk? -- thoughts turn to yesteryear. A reporter asks are the rumors true, will he return as Dirty Harry?

"That rumor is incorrect," Eastwood says.

Then Jolie says, "I am!"

Eastwood: "As Dirty Harriet."

(Everyone goes heheheheh. But on the dais you could almost sense producer Brian Grazer thinking: That could work.)

"Certain things you have to be realistic about," Eastwood continues. "Dirty Harry would not be on the police department at my age." Eastwood turns 78 next week.