Hollywood Elsewhere is cool with not attending the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. Okay, I can’t afford it this year but I probably wouldn’t be going anyway if I was flush. Even for fully-vaxed, all-but-bulletproof types like myself the pandemic situation still seems a bit dicey and sketchy. For myself and many others, the only 2021 festival that will really count is Telluride, and I for one can’t wait for that puppy.

Other than Leos Carax‘s Annette, Wes Anderson‘s The French Dispatch, Asghar Farhadi‘s A Hero, Paul Verhoeven‘s Benedetta, Mia Hansen-Løve‘s Bergman Island, Sean Penn‘s Flag Day and Tom McCarthy‘s out-of-competition Stillwater, which will surface stateside before long, the only Cannes title I’m a little bit sorry about missing the debut of is Sean Baker‘s Red Rocket, a Vancouver-set drama about a porn star attempting to reconnect with his estranged family.

Cannes will debut four promising-sound docs — Oliver Stone’s JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, Todd Haynes‘ Velvet Underground, Charlotte Gainsbourg‘s Jane by Birkin and Val, a career-recapping portrait of Val Kilmer. All will pop through soon enough.

I realize this reads like an overly brief assessment, but the Cannes voltage is low this year…face it. The pandemic timetable was stacked against it.