Cannes Do: With Apologies to Foghorn Leghorn

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I'M JUST GOING to come right out and say this: Gus Van Sant is beginning to freak me out.

"Mala Noche" was a small masterpiece, and it augured good things for the then-young director 22 years ago. But Van Sant, pictured at right, is no longer the age of his gringo hero from that 1985 film, lusting after a careless, cruel Mexican kid. As the director ages, the objects of camera's desire grow ever younger. Even creepier, they are cast to look like angelic hustlers out of some '50s dime novel — helpless, mouth-breathing, inarticulate, dewy, vulnerable, uneducated, abandoned to the fake toughness of the street and the real tenderness of the first helping hand they meet. The fact that he makes arty movies about suchlike teens — "Elephant," "Kids," "My Own Private Idaho," to some extent the torpid "Last Days" — does nothing to disguise the fetishization of these downy dears and their appealing, skin-crawling, inescapable youth.

Critics and fans continue to talk about his movies as mere movies, and there was a good deal of excitement here over the screening of "Paranoid Park" because Gus is beloved for his arty outings and not the mainstream bores he churns out in between. "Paranoid Park" is adapted from a young-adult novel and is about Alex, an aimless skater boi who accidentally kills a man and uses his slacker wiles to get away with it. Van Sant put out a casting call via MySpace (aieee!). And, validating the critics in general and the director's vision specifically, it's pretty great.

The film stars Gabe Nevins and Jake Miller, as the lead and the homoerotic subtext, respectively. It's told in a series of long, lovely fugue states that link hands and sing — in the deeply hurt voices of Tom Waits, Elliott Smith — and each lingering closeup of Evans' moist lips and eyes brings us closer to an understanding of Alex as a character with a conscience and a soul. "Paranoid Park" won't walk away with any big prizes, but it's going home in everyone's luggage, a hoarse, wrecked whisper in your ear you hear long after the crowds go quiet. Still, if it does win anything major, don't expect Van Sant to change his spots anytime soon.

Immediately after the "Paranoid Park" screening I am struck with pangs of guilt for scootching out of the line for "Tehilim" the evening before in favor of a delicious and much-needed pizza. For one thing, we were so high on "The Band's Visit" that the thought of a less-than-fantastic Israeli movie bringing us down was too much to bear. For another — pizza, mmm. So I slope off to a new screening room, the Salle 60eme, which does us the favor showing movies the day after the press screenings, in case we miss something. (And I have missed so many, many things.) I run into trouble with the greige-suited guards, who insist that one must have a photo badge for the photo call. I think wildly, photo call, who is it? Is it Gael Garcia Bernal, because if so, rowr. But what I say is something like "Je voudrais voir le film" and they let me in.

It's a super-cool space, a full and complete 258-seat theater (I was bored; I counted) that is basically inflated for the purpose, with real steps, real lights, real seats and real screen. Alas, the film bores me senseless, and I leave with six minutes to go and meet my Award-Winning Film Critic Companion, who has whiled away his afternoon at the Angelina Jolie star vehicle "A Mighty Heart." Those are the vagaries of Cannes, of free will, blistered feet and chance.

That evening's screening is of "Death Proof," the director's cut of the Quentin Tarantino segment of the two-parter "Grindhouse," whose poor performance at the box office is clearly working Quentin's every last nerve.

The problem with "Grindhouse" is that Tarantino, at left, seems to believe that his and Robert Rodriguez' joint homage to the crummy but exciting pulp exploitation features of the '60s and '70s should have been a Top 10-charting 2007 release. He wants it both ways: scratched film and CGI-powered effects, cell phones and period hairstyles. He wants to make the kind of movies they don't make anymore without taking into account that fast-car exploitation flicks were a time-specific part of the evolution of cinema and no longer relevant to audiences; that is, they don't make them anymore because no one wants to see them. So he's tarted up his hourlong segment into a standalone film that runs for more than two hours, which may not be what the stoned and homeless of 1977 wanted to see, either.

On its own at a punishing length, "Death Proof" alternates between lethargic bad dialogue that may or may not be a tribute to the tone-deaf banter of the scripts it is aping and nail-biting car chases. Kurt Russell is a god among gods as the psycho stunt driver who wishes death on carsfull of cute young girls, and real-life stuntwoman Zoe Bell (Uma Thurman's double in the "Kill Bill" films) is his match and more. Add to that, Rosario Dawson may be the most beautiful woman on earth.

But, but ... it leaves one enervated, not exhilarated, despite all the vrooming and snappy dialogue. There is no sense of glee in the course of two hours, of joy. The slack pacing and over-the-top, incontrovertibly contemporary effects feel either sleek or dutiful, the farthest thing from the quick-and-dirty movies that supposedly inspired the director. It's not enough for me — scratched film, big deal. Tex Avery drew a fake hair into a Screwy Squirrel cartoon 400 years ago and it's still funny. The best part is the closing credits, which pairs the English- and French-language versions of Serge Gainsbourg's "Laisser Tombe Les Filles," one of my favorite ye-ye tunes (April March, the performer Elinor Blake, wrote the English words and sings both), over hilarious yearbook pictures of the girls in the film.

Tomorrow: That Julian Schnabel is an artist; Harmony Korine lightens up; a little shopping.

Photos by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images and Sean Gallup/Getty Images