A last minute instinct guided me to an 11 am Salle Debussy screening of Ida Panahandeh‘s Nahid, a compelling if slow-moving Iranian family drama, instead of Asif Kapadia‘s two-hour Amy, which screened at the same hour at the Salle Bunuel. I don’t know if I made the “right” decision or not, but I figured I’d either catch Amy tonight at 11:30 pm or on a movie-streaming channel before long while the Iranian film might not be available for some time, Asghar Farhadi‘s long-delayed About Elly being one example.

Sareh Bayat, Pejman Bazeghi in Ida Panahandeh’s Nahid.

I was certainly reminded by Nahid of a frustrating reality in both a real-world and dramatic sense, which is that the cards are heavily stacked against divorced Iranian women looking to win permanent custody of their children due to strict nuptial laws that favor fathers, even if the dad in this case is an off-and-on junkie with a gambling problem. The burden is still on the mother to prove she is morally worthy of raising a child.

This plus a decision by Panahandeh and screenwriting partner Arsalan Amir to more or less snail-pace the story and make their titular lead character, movingly portrayed by Sareh Bayat, a prideful if overly secretive and too-stubborn woman, and you have a film that feels right and rooted but at the same time one that taxes your patience. Mine, at least.

I don’t like it when people ask “are you okay?” or “are you all right?” I always say “I’m fine, thanks” but what I really mean inside is “you’re bothering me.” They’re showing concern, of course, but deep down they’re offering a comment about themselves, i.e., “You look like you’ve been through something unsettling, resulting in a somewhat weakened or inebriated or dishevelled appearance that we find vaguely disturbing so…uhm, how’s your equilibirum?” My silent response: “I’m fine, thanks, or I was until you asked.” I prefer to hear, if anything, “So you’re good?” Those three words translate as “you seem well enough and even though you may be a teeny bit off-balance right now you’re strong enough to deal with it, I’m sure, so….you’re cool, right?”

I especially hate hearing “are you all right?,” partly because this is what the characters in those awful middle-class Irwin Allen disaster movies (The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, The Swarm) always asked each other at regular intervals, and so that’s an unwelcome association. But “are you okay?” rankles equally.

I could go crazy today and jam in four films, but I’m not going to. Well, I might. The wild card is Alice Winocour‘s Maryland, which I might catch tonight at 9:30 if my blood is up. Locked in for sure are Asif Kapadia‘s Amy (as in Winehouse), which screens at 11 am and has a somewhat longer length than usual for a portait-of-a-celebrity doc (127 minutes). A 90-minute break for writing and then, at 4 pm, comes Gabriel Clarke‘s Steve McQueen: The Man and The Mans, which is being hoo-hahed as possibly something more than just the sum of its parts.  It concerns the ordeal of making of Le Mans (’71) and how it didn’t quite work at the end (partly due to director John Sturges quitting early on) and which seemed to break McQueen’s spirit to some extent. And then at 7pm the curtain rises on the big one — Todd Haynes‘ Carol, which may emerge as the festival’s latest power-hitter…or not. And then I’ll go somewhere and write a review. More than enough for a Saturday.

The first wave has now seen Mad Max: Fury Road. Any and all reactions, please. The most orgiastic of the four Max films or…? Numerical grades, after-thoughts. Not just about how you felt but how the room seemed to respond. Cannes press viewers erupted in applause at the conclusion of a couple of action sequences during last Thursday morning’s screening — any “whoo-whoo” reactions in U.S. theatres? Max appears to be doing somewhat better than expected (i.e., slightly over $40 million) with Variety‘s Dave McNary expecting something in the vicinity of $50 million by Sunday night.

On top of everything else that looks and feels smashing about the new season of True Detective (HBO, 6.21.15), Vince Vaughn (playing a bad guy) looks reborn in a 24-Hour Fitness sense. I’m sure the meaning of “sometimes your worst self is your best self” will be revealed in due time.

I saw three films today at the Cannes Film Festival, each a resounding bust. Okay, one —Yorgos Lanthimos‘ The Lobster, a dryly amusing Bunuelian parlor piece about societal oppression — felt partially successful, or at least intriguing for the first 45 minutes to an hour, but the second hour disassembled. The truth is that I was bored and hating on it almost from the get-go. I was even thinking about bailing as it went along but I figured “c’mon, be a pro, stick it out.” And I did. I never wanted to quit Woody Allen‘s Irrational Man or Gus Van Sant‘s The Sea of Trees but there was never the slightest doubt that they weren’t cooking or coming together either.

I know when a flick is really laying it down and dealing exceptional cards, which Lászlo Nemes‘ Son of Saul did in spades Thursday night. The all-but-universal consensus is that Saul is the shit, but today’s trio all felt like wipe-outs. To me, at least. There were some Irrational fans and a fair-sized contingent of Lobster lovers, to be fair, but I think they were being kind or talking themselves into their own private lathers or something. For me the absorption just didn’t kick in.

The Van Sant film, which ended around 9 pm tonight, was initially greeted with one or two souls applauding, but this was immediately followed by a chorus of boos, loud and sustained for a good five or six seconds. I wasn’t feeling the hate as much as lethargy and disappointment, which began to manifest fairly early. The symphonic, rotely soothing score by Mason Bates (i.e., the kind of music that tells the audience “you’ll be okay, this is a film about caring and compassion, no rude shocks in store”) told me right away that Trees would be one of Van Sant’s Finding Forrester-like films — an initially solemn, ultimately feel-good drama about “redemption” and rediscovering the joy and necessity of embracing the struggle rather than dying by your own hand blah blah.

Last night’s 10 pm screening of Laszlo Nemes‘ Son of Saul shook me out of my end-of-the-day fatigue. This is an immediate Palme d’Or contender, I told myself. No day at the beach but one of the most searing and penetrating Holocaust films I’ve ever seen, and that’s obviously saying something. Shot entirely in close-ups (and occasional medium close-ups), this is a Hungarian-made, soul-drilling, boxy-framed art film about a guy with a haunted, obliterated expression who works in an Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp as a Sonderkommando (i.e., prisoners who assisted the Germans in exterminating their fellow inmates in order to buy themselves time). His name is Saul Auslander (Geza Rohrig — a slamdunk Best Actor nominee), and the film is basically about this guy foolishly risking his life in order to properly bury a young boy who’s been exterminated — a boy he plainly doesn’t know but whom he claims in his son. I have to catch an 8:30 am Lobster screening but everyone — Variety‘s Justin Chang, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy (with whom I conversed last night by email), Indiewire’s Eric Kohn, TheWrap‘s Steve Pond, Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday, Toronto Star‘s Pete Howell — is flipping out about this film, and you can include me.

The harrowing lead performance by Son Saul‘s Geza Rohrig could conceivably win Best Actor by festival’s end.

Late Thursday afternoon elite press and international distributors viewed the Weinstein Co. preview reel that unspools at the Cannes Film Festival every year. During pre-screening remarks honcho Harvey Weinstein indicated that Todd Haynes‘ Carol, the allegedly Brokeback Mountain-like, early-50s-era lesbian heartbreaker starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, may be the company’s hottest Oscar pony. Maybe. He also made a bold declaration about Southpaw star Jake Gyllenhaal being in line for a vigorous Best Actor campaign while lamenting that Jake should have been nominated last January for Nightcrawler. (Which is true — Jake totally deserved a nomination and had generated lots of heat but was edged out all the same.)

(l. to r.) Cannes Film Festival juror Jake Gyllenhaal, star of forthcoming Weinstein Co. release Southpaw; fellow juror Sienna Miller, costar of Weinstein Co’s Adam Jones; and Alicia Vikander, star of Weinstein Co’s Tulip Fever.

Weinstein stated that Southpaw had been selected for screening at Cannes, but it had to be withdrawn from competition after Gyllenhaal was announced as a jury member. Harvey also mentioned that a Southpaw screening will happen soon in Cannes but for buyers and not journalists

After the clip reel Gyllenhaal, Sienna Miller and Alicia Vikander came on stage and delivered some of the old soft sell. Miller is a costar of John Wells‘ Adam Jones (Weinstein Co., 10.2.15). Vikander is, of course, “Ava” in Ex Machina and the star of Justin Chadwick and Tom Stoppard‘s forthcoming Tulip Fever, which the Weinstein Co. has not decided when to release just yet.

Carol looks like a quality package, all right. This may sound weird coming from me but I admired the dated grainy look of it, due to Ed Lachman‘s having shot it in Super 16mm. Old-fashioned film grain is different than digital grainstorms, which are more specific and emphatic.

Earlier today I attended the Palais press conferences for Matteo Garrone‘s Tale of Tales (11 am) and George Miller‘s Mad Max: Fury Road (1 pm). Then I went home and crashed for an hour before beginning to write and post again. The next event is a Steve McQueen racing doc at 5:30 pm, followed by the annual Weinstein Co. preview gathering at the Majestic, which starts around 5:30 and will run until 7 or so. Then it’s a toss-up between Radu Montean‘s One Floor Below or Laszlo Nemes‘ Son of Saul, both showing at 10 pm.

Mad Max: Fury Road star Tom Hardy at close of today’s 1 pm press conference,or sometime around 1:35 pm.

Tale of Tales costar Selma Hayek at close of press conference.

On 9.28.12 Deadline‘s Mike Fleming reported that Fox Searchlight was “courting” Natalie Portman to play Jackie Kennedy in a film about the former First Lady’s ordeal in the immediate aftermath of JFK’s assassination. The project, Jackie, began life as a 2010 script by Noah Oppenheim, which I read and discussed on 4.15.10. Two and a half years later Fox Searchlight is temporarily out but Portman has finally committed to star in the pic under director Pablo Lorrain (No, The Club) with funding from The Wild Bunch, Variety is reporting.

So Portman is now locked into playing the most celebrated First Lady of the 20th Century along with with Supreme Court Justice Ruder Bader Ginsberg. Depending on the breaks, both performances will probably emerge as Oscar-worthy or certainly Oscar-baity.

Jackie was originally going to be directed by Darren Aronofsky with his then-wife Rachel Weisz as Jackie, but that went south when they broke up. Aronofsky will now produce the Portman version with his Protozoa Pictures partner Scott Franklin along with Chile’s Juan de Dios Larrain. Jackie will roll at the end of this year and probably be released by late ’16. Fox Searchlight will probably get back in the game as a distributor and Portman will be campaigned as a Best Actress contender — all pretty much set in stone.