At Cannes, the Boats Take a Bow

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The 61st Cannes Film Festival

A look at the latest from the annual, glitzy film festival on the French Riviera.

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Certain things you have to be realistic about. There you go. The Cannes Film Festival is looking back, sorting it all out, being realistic. This isn't about young, brash, new. This is the year of longing, of the nostalgia trip. Is it just us, or is everyone except Shia LaBeouf in the Indiana Jones movie pushing 70? The zeitgeist: memory lane.

For example, there's the well-liked "Waltz With Bashir" from Israeli director Ari Folman, an animated documentary about his service in the military during the massacres at the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon -- in 1982. Marina Zenovich is here with her HBO documentary about Roman Polanski and his statutory rape case. It's riveting. It also happened 30 years ago. The egomaniacal wildman and Bosnian director Emir Kusturica came to Cannes with his film about Argentine soccer god Diego Maradona, who was huge in the 1986 World Cup (and not dull in retirement, as the anti-globalist, Pepsi-promoting, cocaine-addicted talk show host and Hugo Ch¿vez pal).

A Cannes of third acts, no? James Toback brought Mike Tyson back in his documentary about "the baddest man on the planet." The former undisputed heavyweight champion and convicted felon has put on a couple of quarter pounders. At the premiere, he stood on the stage, a big man in a big bag of a suit, his fists by his sides, like idle hammers. He looked like a dangerous bowling ball.

Tyson, also executive producer, explains his participation in the doc. "I was on my way to a rehab meeting when Jimmy called and told me let's do the movie. I thought it would be a bootleg and probably I'd get a few dollars and I'd be satisfied with that." After the showing, there is a standing O. Tyson appears moved by the embrace. In a soft, lispy voice, he says: "I'm an athlete and not used to anything like this. Never had a response like this. I'm very humbled to be here. I can't believe Jim elicited all of this out of me."

What Toback got from Tyson is a sense of how fear and ferocity battle for Tyson's tormented soul. The fight footage shows a young Tyson destroying his opponents in explosive, fast, deadly accurate fury. On camera, Tyson chokes up about his homicidal rage. "I was shocked to the degree to which fear has played a central role in his life," says Toback later over a plate of buffet lunch. "It's clearly the motivating fact of his life."

Also here for Cannes (pronounced here with lowbrow vowels, like can of beer, not faux-fancy cahhn): Woody Allen, who got on an airplane, a rarity, to be here for his "Vicky Cristina Barcelona." Allen muse Scarlett Johansson, Pen¿lope Cruz and Javier Bardem star in Allen's fluffy puppy of a romantic comedy about this crazy thing called love and why sometimes it just makes sense to have a m¿nage ¿ trois with Pen¿lope Cruz. Asked at a news conference, was a Woody Allen sandwich not the object of the director's rich fantasy life, Allen says, "It is hard enough to get one person in bed."

Later, Allen comes by the Hotel Martinez to chat with a table of reporters on the veranda. He is dressed in his high-water pants and an antique belt, his gray hair askew, but he seems relatively calm. "I always find it very pretty and very hectic and sort of amusing in the rigidity of the ritual here."

He adds, "I started coming when I got married." To Soon-Yi in 1997. "Because my wife likes to travel. You could take her to anything. The volcano, the earthquake in China. She'll go anyplace. She loves to use any opportunity to travel." So he was happy to accept the Cannes invite, bring the children, keep the wife happy. "But I'm a firm believer that me sitting around saying how great the film is or how challenging it was working in Spain doesn't mean anything to anybody, and they don't come and see the film because of that. There's some inexplicable reason why they come or stay away. They make their own preconscious decision."

Well, it helps if the movies are good.

Back aboard the Ultima III, there's a low-key vibe among the invited guests, who tilt toward movie muscle -- producers, backers, buyers -- with a little pixie dust of celebrity, such as Goldie Hawn and Christian Slater, who is everywhere.

Host Perelman, formerly Mr. Ellen Barkin, comes by to check on us. So unlike the rest of Cannes, he's not looking for press. Just the opposite. "So the next time I get in trouble," he says, "you're the one I call to keep it out of the papers."