By Dave McCoy
MSN Movies Lead Editor

It hasn't been an easy year for the ladies here at Cannes. I don't mean real women, of course, though I'm sure they've had their share of difficulties, too.

(Quick tangent: A recurring image from Cannes this year is women wearing gowns and high heels running at breakneck speed down the Croisette, toward lavish parties or movie premieres at the Lumiere Theater. Defying gravity and numerous other physical properties, they move with grace and speed, like gazelles, and never, ever slip or fall. It's like watching something on "Animal Planet." Meanwhile, I can't get out of bed without bruising something. Ladies, what is in your DNA!?)

Now back to the women on-screen here at Cannes. A running motif for films this year is women from all over the globe in crisis. The first few days, the festival presented incarcerated mothers ("Lion's Den"), oppressed housewives ("Tokyo Sonata," "Three Monkeys"), cancer victims ("A Christmas Tale"), three ladies romanced by Javier Bardem ("Vicky Cristina Barcelona"), women forced to do unspeakable acts to provide food ("Blindness"), a woman who was stalked and raped ("4 Nights With Anna") and, perhaps most tragically, a wasted comeback by a sorely missed Karen Allen in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

Things haven't gotten easier the last few days. In Amat Escalante's "The Bastards" -- a nihilistic film packed with long, creepy-bordering-on-comic static shots and pending dread and social/human debasement that Michael Haneke ("Funny Games," "Caché") would admire (and therefore, so did I) -- a crack-puffing suburban mom waits in her house to be killed by two Mexican immigrants hired by her ex-lover. In "The Headless Woman," the latest from Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel, an upper-class socialite runs over something on the way home and suffers a concussion as a result. She spends the remainder of the film wandering in a daze, emotionally affected by her action but publicly unscathed because of her status.

And, then there is Angelina Jolie. In Clint Eastwood's period piece, "Changeling" (or maybe "The Exchange" by the time you see it in the fall), Jolie plays a single, working-class mother, Christine Collins, living in Los Angeles in 1928. Her son suddenly vanishes, only to be returned by the cops a month later. The problem? The kid who returns is not her son. (Get ready: "He's not my son! I want my son!" will be this year's Oscar bait equivalent of "Is that my daughter in there!?!" that won an over-the-top Sean Penn the Best Actor Oscar for Eastwood's "Mystic River"... except you hear this refrain about 30 times.) The tale here is true, a side-story to the infamous and grisly Wineville Chicken Murders, and Eastwood uses it as a springboard to shine a bright, glaring light on the corruption of the Los Angeles Police Department and their firm choke hold on the city during the '20s and '30s.

But Eastwood is no James Ellroy. His touch is pure black and white (and humorless) with no moral ambiguity, no gray. Here, people are either evil or good (or in Saint Jolie's case, angels ... it must've been tough for Eastwood to shoot the doe-eyed actress when he had to keep that halo in frame). Although he found a fascinating, infuriating, heartbreaking piece of American history, his heavy-handed approach mutes the movie's humanity. It is crude manipulation, though toned down from recent efforts (the complex "Letters From Iwo Jima" aside; where is that Eastwood?). This is definitely an improvement over the contrived "Mystic River," the putrid, offensive emotional rape of "Million Dollar Baby" or the social sledgehammer "Flags of Our Fathers." If you loved those Eastwood films, you'll most likely hail this as another one of his masterpieces. "Changeling" has divided critics here, with most leaning toward celebration.

For me, though, it's an engaging, strained, occasionally frustrating classic Hollywood genre piece: Eastwood is making a '30s tragic melodrama, mixing in elements of a classic mystery and courtroom drama. On those terms, it's fairly effective, and Jolie, despite her halo, holds the multiple plots firmly together. As an ambitious social commentary on injustice, it's obvious, toothless and hardly as sophisticated as it will be deemed during awards season (look for it in November).

Three-peat?

Belgium's critical darlings, the Dardenne brothers, have won Palme d'Or awards for "Rosetta" in 1999 and "L'Enfant" in 2005. They return this year with "The Silence of Lorna," looking for a record third win. The film doesn't stray far from the gritty, handheld cinematography, and thoroughly humanistic approach that earned the boys their unwavering following.

If you haven't seen one of the Dardenne brothers' films (and you really should), they are beautiful, deliberate, personal sketches of poverty-stricken (or more extreme) streetdwellers. The films require patience, are unsentimental, and are often punctuated by abrupt emotional and/or physical violence. The outcomes of the mini-journeys are rarely hopeful ... Ready to sign up? What escalates these tales is the Dardennes' unabashed love and respect for their characters' strength in the direst of circumstances despite their often foolish actions. Their films drip with humility. Here, it's Lorna (a breathtaking turn by Arta Dobroshi), an Albanian who marries a Belgian junkie, Claudy (Dardennes' favorite Jérémie Renier), to gain citizenship. Under an agreement with a street-level thug, Lorna is to ditch the junkie and marry a Russian so he'll gain citizenship. However, when it is revealed Claudy is to overdose instead of get a divorce (which would raise red flags), coldhearted Lorna grows something akin to a guilty conscience ... perhaps literally.

"The Silence of Lorna" is probably the most accessible of the Dardennes' films, but it also loses its way in a metaphorical third act that doesn't thwap you in the solar plexus like their best work ("The Son"). Still, I connected with it more than "L'Enfant" (and still chewing on why that is). Whether it connects with the jury, we'll see Sunday.

Phoenix Fallen

In my last dispatch, I promised a review of James Gray's latest drama, "Two Lovers," starring Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow. Alas, I was shut out of the screening (for the first time this festival). I admit I didn't care for Gray's first two films ("Little Odessa" and "The Yards") and outright loathed last year's "We Own the Night." So perhaps this was an act of divine intervention ... or something. Sorry, your loss is my gain.

A demain ...

Thursday: Steven Soderbergh's four-hour, two-part epic about Che Guevara, starring Benicio Del Toro.

Dave McCoy is lead editor for MSN Movies. He's filing daily dispatches from Cannes through May 25.

Excited to see the new Clint Eastwood film? Have you liked his last few dramas? Any interest in seeing a Dardenne brothers film? Write us at heymsn@microsoft.com

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