CANNES, FRANCE - MAY 14: Narah Baptista and Vincent Cassel attend the "Histoires Parallèles (Parallel Tales)" screening during the 79th annual Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals on May 14, 2026 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Gisela Schober/Getty Images)Getty ImagesSurely there’s somebody that can manage to be cooler than Vincent Cassel for at least a couple of minutes, but even if statistically that might seem possible, whoever it could be is mighty thin on the ground at Cannes, historically a joint packed with the global moving-picture cool-oisie this time of year. Pictured top at the premiere of Ashgar Farhadi’s Histoires Parallèles (Parallel Tales) — with his Brazilian partner and the mother of his son Caetano, model Narah Baptista — Cassel is every inch one of the ensemble cast’s leads in Farhadi’s film. Histoires Parallèles, set in the aftermath of the November 2015 Paris terror attacks, isn’t France’s only artistic response to those events, but it’s certainly one of the more thoughtful projections. What onrushing dystopia? We’re already in one, is Farhadi’s and by extension, Cassel’s point. Pictured below moments after his red carpet appearance with Baptista, Cassel offers the gentlemanly arm to accompany the reigning queen of French cinema and his fellow cast member in Histoires Parallèles, Catherine Deneueve, to her seat. How cool is that? Think about it this way: Anybody foolish enough to try nailing a bigger cool-o-meter number than Vincent Cassel at Cannes had better give up that Sisyphean work and go hit a nice seaside boîte for a fine grilled loup de mer accompanied by a few flagons of flinty, well-iced “lip-stinger” Picpoul, which will vastly improve your view of the gulls wheeling out over the baitfish churned up by the tide. We recommend Le Cabanon, over on the Midi, for that. CANNES, FRANCE - MAY 14: Vincent Cassel and Catherine Deneuve attend the "Histoires Parallèles (Parallel Tales)" screening during the 79th annual Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals on May 14, 2026 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Lionel Hahn/Getty Images)Getty ImagesAs for La Deneueve herself, we can only hope that the more seriously stylish ladies will be taking her cue: A simple straightforward low-ish heel under an unassailable long black skirt, minimal make-up, all that. Less is definitely more. CANNES, FRANCE - MAY 17: Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander attend the "Hope" screening during the 79th annual Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals on May 17, 2026 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Kristy Sparow/Getty Images)Getty ImagesRunning a close second on the Cannes cool-o-meter — not that they care or need to try — are cute Swedish/Irish/German couple Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender, pictured above at the May 17 Hope screening, in which both actors play, alongside Hwang Jun-min and Taylor Russell, among others. Talk about a director’s cut: The “epic alien thriller” by director Na Hong-jin ran two hours and forty minutes and received a seven-minute standing ovation, after which the director graciously thanked the audience for sticking with it. CANNES, FRANCE - MAY 16: Cate Blanchett attends the "Paper Tiger" screening during the 79th annual Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals on May 16, 2026 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Lyvans Boolaky/Getty Images)Getty ImagesActor Cate Blanchett, here gracing the May 16 screening of James Gray’s Paper Tiger, definitely got the memo on the merits of the black sheath, and has kept the whole train/no-train/big-dress/little-dress debate begun at last year’s festival down to a dull roar. Which is not to say that the 2018 Cannes feature-film jury president, a known intellectual and take-no-prisoners cultural critic, just let things lie with the black dress. At a staged festival talk-a-thon she kicked up some entertaining dust as she acidly observed that #MeToo was “killed very quickly” in Hollywood, which she termed with a certain hilarious flintiness as “very interesting.” You get the sense, this tough lady ought to know. Of course Hollywood-bashing by its own is a tradition that should be loyally upheld at all awards shows, and not just by the TV-hosts-hired-to-roast, so kudos to Ms. Blanchett for the salvo. Nobody can rock the boat with quite the same deft moves as she. Men In Black: Miles Teller, director James Gray and Adam Driver fly the flag at the May 16 screening of Gray's "Paper Tiger," which stars Teller and Driver as brothers under Russian mob duress. (Photo by Kristy Sparow/Getty Images)Getty ImagesDid we mention that there are some men in Hollywood who make pretty good movies, with men and women in them? On May 16, Armageddon Time director James Gray premiered his new Russian-mob/Gowanus Canal crime drama Paper Tiger, set in 1986 in, you guessed it, Brooklyn. Driver plays the rakish, somewhat-down-on-his-luck ex-cop in need of swift and arguably filthy lucre, while Teller plays the more stable family-man engineer-brother who’s pulled into an increasingly dangerous game of footsie with a gaggle of late-Soviet-era expat-Russian mobsters then busy colonizing Brighton Beach and environs, a neighborhood slowly becoming known as “Little Odessa.” The scam driving the narrative is a live one, featuring the Gowanus Canal, then New York City’s most polluted body of water and ripe for development, a few dozen blocks north of Little Odessa. Missing in Cannes is star Scarlett Johansson, who plays Hester Pearl, Miles Teller’s character’s wife.