2021 Cannes International Film Festival

Style is forever, fashion innovates. We get some cool differences at Cannes.

What a year this was! A rich crop with some of the best filmmakers came to the Croisette: Antonioni (L'avventura), Fellini (La Dolce Vita), Carlos Saura (Los golfos), Minelli (Home From the Hill), Jules Dassin (Never on Sunday), Buñuel (The Young One), Bergman (The Virgin Spring), Roberto Farias (A cidade ameaçada) - and Peter Brook, with Seven Days.

Subdued hues flourished on the carpet but it was anything but boring. Chiffon continues to rule the day, while The French Dispatch crowd elevated the carpet.

Actor-director Sean Penn, a multiple Golden Globe nominee and winner (Mystic River), returns to the Cannes Film Festival this year with his latest directorial effort, Flag Day, starring his daughter, Dylan Penn, and Josh Brolin, among others. The movie played in the Main Competition, where several of Penn's previous films had appeared, including The Pledge in 2001 and The Last Face in 2016.

How to stand out amongst the beautiful and talented - you can be daring like Bella Hadid - or you can be so impeccable that eyes land and linger because style always puts you center stage. .

Paul Verhoeven, the octogenarian (he’s 82) Dutch-born director, remains one of world cinema’s most controversial filmmakers, a status reconfirmed by his latest feature, Benedetta, the most audacious movie to be seen at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. As an auteur, he is known for blending ultra-graphic violence and bold sexual contents, laced with a darkly humorous social satire.

The first weekend of Cannes is the midpoint in the marathon that will crown this year's filmmakers and actors, their work, and their ideas. There's also an established Cannes lore that says that films shown on this particular weekend are lucky and/or blessed with the jurors' full attention.

The Cannes carpet went muted - but for a smattering of blue and one bright yellow, the gowns regal and subdued. .

Oliver Stone’s latest project JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, is a documentary which explores the factual side of the events he dramatized in JFK (1991), which earned him a Golden Globe exactly 30 years ago. JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, narrated by Donald Sutherland and Whoopi Goldberg, premieres at the Cannes Film Festival on July 11, while JFK will be screened on the giant Plage screen.

Considering the frisson that Paul Verhoeven created with his 2021 Cannes entry, the erotic/religious drama Benedetta, it would be appropriate to recall another shock by the Dutch enfant terrible - Basic Instinct, in competition in 1992. The film had already stirred controversy in the US - it had opened in March -, with critics panning the picture -according to Roger Ebert, "just a worthless scrap with the spaces filled in"- and gay activists loudly protesting the movie with signs saying "Hollywood Promotes Anti-Gay Violence".