As at the Berlin and Venice festivals, the smart kids of cinema generally show up for Cannes, as they have religiously made the pilgrimage this year, beginning on May 12. But unlike in Berlin in the dead of winter and on the Venetian lagoon’s rather fabulous Lido at the far end of the Med’s back-to-school moment, the Cannes festival usually brings with it a kind of spring-fresh breeze. Of course, it’s also the South of France, so the setting is naturally more hopeful than anywhere else. Except for this year, as the bellicose zeitgeist thunderheads crashing about in the world immediately outside the festival — Hormuz/Gaza/Beirut/Tehran/Tel Aviv/Doha/Abu Dhabi/Dubai, to name just a few missile destinations, not to mention the overarching intra-European Russia-Ukraine conflict just up the road a piece from the Croisette.

Question is, what’s the dress for this conflagration-rich moment? What are the many festival costumiers and their more-and-less-famous mannequins to do? What picture should they “give.” The breezy, rite-of-spring dance down Cannes’ many red carpets for these past few days and for the next week torques to the prevailing war-everywhere-all-the-time moment if it’s muted, perhaps even a bit austere.

Setting the tone right at the top of the doings, black is the one go-to colorway, glamorous, and yes, stripped back and down in silhouette. Pictured top, Maura Higgins, the Ballymahon, Ireland, lass who’s graced serial television shows in Britain, Ireland and the States seems to have gotten it about right, despite, or maybe because of, the giant train.

Pictured above at the opening ceremony’s red carpet, Britain’s official grandest of grand dames, Dame Joan Collins, nails it for the voracious gaggle of Cannes paparazzi in Hollywood white, with some rather splendid Cruella DeVille elbow length opera gloves in, you guessed it, combat-ready black. Dead perfect gear, because it makes you think.

Perhaps we could send Dame Joan, dressed exactly like this, dripping with exactly these long tons of ice in a necklace set, to negotiate with Putin about that big intra-Slav game he’s got going to restore the Romanov empire by inhaling Ukraine? It’s a gamble, is the point, but it seems likely that he just wouldn’t know what to do with the fearsome Dame Joan, who is every inch the calculating iron fist within the lace glove, so the proto-neo-Soviet-ex-KGB major might just give a little. Memo to Sir Kier Starmer, or to whichever of his many in-house opponents wins the current ferocious fight for the seat at 10 Downing Street: You would all be well advised to ring up Dame Joan’s people to see if she could find the time for a quick trip to Moscow or St. Pete. Whatever she talked about with the Russian strongman would only help.

Who needs a tie when you have a shawl collar like that and a dead-black heavy-drop-point-collared shirt like Alton Mason? Pictured above, the actor/dancer/model shows how it’s done at the festival’s May 12 screening of Pierre Salvadori’s La Vénus Electrique, after which the honorary Palm d’Or for achievement in cinema was presented to none other than the J.R.R. Tolkien-cycle auteur Peter Jackson.

Above, Jane Fonda, 88, who is no slouch at doing a black sheath, did the ultimate black sheath, of course. Sequins, just a hint of a train kept in check, but plenty of her trademark lithe dancer’s movement she has. Are you old enough to remember her “workout tapes” back when there were actual videotapes? See, back in the Pleistocene there was an actual machine that played back tapes, and you had to hook that up to your TV with coaxial cable...never mind. Point is, Jane Fonda’s kept at that whole limbering/slimming project, which is saying something for the octogenarian set.

Winning the opening night award for jaunty male, director Jacques Audiard performs an excellently balletic foundational placement — the beginnings of a properly turned-out position three — to enable his gracious salute by removing his straw topper with just a hint of a wisp of a bow to the crowd. In short, not just elegant, although it is also that. Having written thirty and directed seventeen films, including 2024’s Emilia Perez, on this red carpet, in his industry’s metier and firmly rooted his own terroir, Audiard is giving an understated masterclass in why the French are sometimes more gracious and graceful at public moments than many other denizens of the orb.

Yes, it’s Cannes, yes, it’s spring, and actress Frederique Bel — who has been directed by a who’s-who of French film and television directors in some 70-plus productions over the course of the last quarter century, three of which were directed by Luc Besson — has received the memo that some skin is required to establish that it is a human in there. But she’s also clearly marching out armed to the teeth with gravitas in the tight, barely-there black dress. Geometrically cosmic as the design is, left unclear is how the lower ring-of-Saturn at the hips actually allows Madame Bel to settle into those somewhat skinny seats at the May 12 opening ceremony. Does it fold up neatly or spill out over the armrests on her neighbors?

We’re not entirely sure that the Fast/Furious series is can actually be called “film” any more — although the projects do require much care, and players, and lots and lots of really cool cars that sometimes get raced or blown up with great creativity and daring by Hollywood’s very best stunt people. Narratively, the Fast/Furious products aren’t really a “cycle,” either, although some of the players re-occur from vehicle to vehicle, pun intended.

For now, let’s just say that any Fast/Furious thing is a thing that gets somewhat mysteriously renewed year-to-year, depending on the calendar, and then the players have to show up and re-introduce themselves, as here in Cannes on May 13, when the latest Fast/Furious thing dropped, right? It’s supposed to be the “last” one, and it’s entitled Fast Forever, but we shall see about that.

From left, stalwart Fast/Furious gun molls Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez, who know their way around all sorts of fancy cars, not to mention firearms, breezily support central good/bad dude Vin Diesel, who’s doing his best imitation of a professional bowler for the paparazzi. Did he score a strike? Maybe he’s an Olympic speed skater, sort of in his mind? Either way, it’s impossible to know why or what Diesel chose to communicate with the mime at that exact moment, but no matter, sometimes people just need to throw a shape. We don’t know about Jordana Brewster, but you get the sense that, blindfolded as an academy police cadet, Michelle Rodriguez could probably break down a Glock 21 in a passable training time.