Xavier Dolan‘s Mommy is, for me, the third levitational flick of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, the other two being Damian Szifron‘s Wild Tales and David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars. That said, the first 50 minutes of Mommy is punishment — assaultive, infuriating, occasionally amusing but more often lemme-outta-here. But I could tell toward the end of my session with this boxy-is-beautiful psychodrama (which I was only able to watch for 75 minutes due to an appointment I was honor-bound to keep) that Dolan had gotten hold of something that was not only focused and working but was slowly building into something more. I didn’t “like” watching much of it, but Mommy is an eye-opener — a movie like no other I’ve seen during this festival. No apologies, full throttle, very few shadings…exclamation!

Mommy costars Anne Dorval, Antoine-Olivier Pilon.

I’m still no Dolan fan (Heartbeats, his second film which I saw here four years ago, sounded the first warning) and his general off-screen rep is that he’s a bit of a histrionic handful. But when I read a line from a review by Hollywood Reporter critic Stephen Dalton that “The Ego has landed,” I knew I had to submit myself.

British director Ken Loach said during a Cannes press conference this morning that he’s not necessarily retiring, which is good to hear. I don’t know what to say about Jimmy’s Hall, his latest film which screened early this morning. It’s a Loach thing through and through, of course — mid-tempo, working-class, earnest, low-key, authentic, political. But it’s a bit of a shrugger. It’s just a no-frills, true-life drama about Irish rabble-rouser Jimmy Gralton upon returning to his native home after more than 20 years spent in the U.S., his conflicts with conservative forces who feared the possible igniting of a leftist movement, and Gralton’s subsequent deportation back to the U.S. There are vague echoes, of course, of today’s 1% vs. 99% equation, and a refrain of the old rule about dissidents always dealing with struggle and adversity. The painterly textures and atmosphere are what moved me the most. I miss the visual splendors of rural, old-time Ireland (the small-village architecture, the browns and greens, the candle-glow lighting) that Loach has often captured in his films, and which are exquisitely presented here. He shot it on that dying technological format known as celluloid.

I’m starting to disengage on this, the ninth day of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. Every longish festival (10 or 11 days) starts to run out of gas after the sixth or seventh day, and after that you think more and more about getting the hell out of Dodge. Ken Loach‘s Jimmy’s Hall (modest expectations) screens an hour from now at 8:30 am, followed by Rolf de Heer‘s Charlie’s Country (starring famed Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil, known for his performances in Walkabout, Crocodile Dundee, Rabbit Proof Fence and Australia) at 11 am. The annual outdoor lunch at the top of Le Suquet (i.e, Old Town) runs from 1:30 to 3 pm, and then the 7pm showing of Leviathan followed by Asia Argento‘s Incompresa, an Un Certain Regard selection, at 10 pm. Friday seems like an even weaker day with Sils Maria, the Olivier Assayas drama costarring Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart and Chloe Moretz, screening at 8:30 am.

A somewhat vested professional woman told me the night before last that Leviathan, the latest film from Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, is quite essential. She claimed this endorsement was relatively unaffected by her business interests. It screens this evening at the Salle Debussy and Salle Bazin at 7 pm and 9:30 pm, respectively. The Wiki page says it’s “about a man who struggles against a corrupt mayor,” and is “a modern reworking of the Book of Job…a story of love and tragedy experienced by ordinary people.” Something in me flinches when I hear that term, “ordinary people.”

Michel Hazanavicius‘s The Search is basically an attempt to wring emotion out of the civilian agonies suffered during the second Chechen War of ’99. The problem with the film, which got booed a little bit this morning, is a determination on the director-writer’s part to deliver uplift moments, come hell or high water. The second problem is the director-writer’s insistence on spelling everything out with blunt expositional dialogue plus an occasional angry rant or two. As usual I could tell this film was a goner within five or ten minutes. I could hear the granules of sand leaking out of the hourglass and scattering on the floor. Too explicit, too on-the-nose, too much of an effort to elicit emotional reactions, too much “acting”…its just not a grade-A effort. From the very beginning it feels like a movie made by a guy who’s trying his utmost but doesn’t quite get how to make the movie that should have come out of this material.

I’ve been a Berenice Bejo cheerleader since succumbing to her performance in Asghar Farhadi‘s The Past, which she should have been Oscar-nominated for. It was a little deflating to watch her perform as best she could in her husband Michel Hazanavicius‘s underwhelming The Search, which screened this morning at 8:30 am. But I wanted a few snaps anyway so I attended the 11:30 am press conference. The serious pros and particularly the Cannes veterans always make eye contact with this and that photographer while everyone is snapping away before the session begins. I didn’t realize while I was shooting that Bejo was giving me this courtesy.

Berenice Bejo, star of Michel Hazanavicious’s The Search, at the start of this morning’s Cannes Film Festival press conference.

Being without an iPhone for the last three days has actually been a kind of open-door experience, spiritually-speaking. Not constantly checking texts and emails and doing HE edits let some air into my soul. I realized the night before last that I hadn’t felt this way in a long while. It sounds like a cliche but it’s true — in a left-field sense being without the phone created a kind of Buddhist-retreat feeling. Maybe that’s putting it too strongly but I definitely felt a bit calmer without it. Still the waters, smell the cappucino. Back to the salt mines: The new iPhone arrives today. (Headline & copy from TheWrap‘s Jeff Sneider.)