Each year the Cannes Film Festival brings another heavyweight lineup, accompanied by the usual fanfare, and the ritual grumbling. The competition has too many familiar faces, or not enough. The stars are out in force, restoring the glamour of cinema, or the media hubbub distracts from the art at hand. It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times.
But this year in particular the festival has a throwback feel, as it continues to be dominated by well-known, world-class filmmakers who have appeared before, in fresh permutations. Even its opening-night screening, “Grace of Monaco,” seems to look back with its evocation of the glamour of the past which still lives on in the pedigree of the festival. At a glance, this year’s lineup of names might have come from a few years ago, even as the death of one Cannes regular, Alain Resnais, in March certainly marked the passing of an era.
Among those returning to the festival, which runs through May 25, cinematic giants include Olivier Assayas, with his “Clouds of Sils Maria,” which in its way represents the constant tensions of Cannes. Mr. Assayas marshals Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart and Chloë Grace Moretz for his Swiss-set, internationally produced drama about a veteran actress who feels threatened by a rising young thespian. David Cronenberg’s “Maps to the Stars” promises to take more direct aim at celebrity and entertainment, with its story weaving together characters including a chauffeur and aspiring actor (Robert Pattinson), an actress (Julianne Moore), and a creepy child star and his burn-victim sister (Mia Wasikowska).
One of the most highly anticipated titles, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Winter Sleep,” also centers on an actor, albeit a retired one. Mr. Ceylan’s three-hour-plus film (which is already picked up for release in France this August) concerns an embattled man who now runs a remote hotel with his wife and freshly divorced sister. Part of the perennial attraction of this Turkish director (“Once Upon a Time in Anatolia”) is the craft of his imagery, and the same goes for that godfather of modernist cinema, Jean-Luc Godard, also returning this year. Mr. Godard’s 3-D feature, titled with characteristic modesty “Goodbye to Language,” promises to expand upon the gorgeous experimentation of his entry in last year’s omnibus film “3x3D.”
Also returning are Mike Leigh, once again casting the British actor Timothy Spall, this time as the Romantic 18th-century painter of “Mr. Turner”; Michel Hazanavicius, a Cannes Palme nominee and Oscar-winner, with the Chechnya-set “The Search”; and, with engaging ensembles, Tommy Lee Jones with “The Homesman” and Bennett Miller with “Foxcatcher.” Two more French filmmakers look to get some measure of attention: Bertrand Bonello, with his deliciously cast “Saint Laurent,” and outspoken Xavier Dolan, back with a vengeance with “Mommy.” That’s not to overlook the Cannes fixtures Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, whose “Two Days, One Night” was teased by the artistic director Thierry Frémaux as a “Belgian Western” at the Cannes opening press conference.
All too evident from this initial survey is that this edition of the competition barely pokes its head outside Europe. One notable exception is the Mauritanian-born director Abderrahmane Sissako, here this year with the torn-from-the-headlines religious-law drama “Timbuktu,” his latest feature since the similarly toponymic “Bamako” (2006).
Yet for all its blind spots, the competition is also not the only game in a very crowded town: the other programs — Un Certain Regard, Directors’ Fortnight, and Critics Week — are all, in different ways, key to the Cannes panorama with their ready supply of both established cinematic adventurers and rising filmmakers, in a mix that doesn’t bear the burden of being the centerpiece.
This year, it is perhaps Un Certain Regard that most holds up the mantle of audacious artistic experiment to which the festival has traditionally played host. For regulars on the circuit, the arrival of a new film by the Argentine “slow cinema” minimalist maestro Lisandro Alonso, his first since “Liverpool” (2008) qualifies as an event. Mr. Alonso, who usually sticks to observational studies of nonprofessionals, has cast Viggo Mortensen in the lead, making “Jauja” an irresistibly curious hybrid of art cinema and star power.
Un Certain Regard also features a trio of female filmmakers who — together with newcomer Alice Rohrwacher in the competition — offer a potent rebuttal to the rising chorus of gender-based criticism directed at the festival. So has the presence of a past Palme d’Or winner, Jane Campion, as president of the competition jury, a jury that also includes Sofia Coppola, Leila Hatami, and Carole Bouquet.
But, just as important, the Un Certain Regard selection is a chance to catch these directors at prime stages of their careers. Pascale Ferran follows her sensual D.H. Lawrence adaptation “Lady Chatterley” with the enigmatic diptych “Bird People,” while Keren Yedaya of Israel, who won the Camera d’Or in 2004 with “Or (My Treasure),” brings forth the incest-themed “Away from His Absence.” And “Amour Fou” marks the latest from Jessica Hausner, the Austrian director of the stringent pilgrimage parable “Lourdes.”
Céline Sciamma’s “Girlhood” holds the spotlight of opening night for Directors’ Fortnight. The 33-year-old director of “Tomboy” and “Waterlilies” turns her trenchant feel for social pressures toward a story of a girl joining a gang. Ms. Sciamma is joined in the section by this year’s Sundance re-broadcasts, the wildly acclaimed “Whiplash” and “Cold in July”; two likely swan songs, veteran John Boorman’s passion project “Queen and Country” and the Japanime wizard Isao Takahata’s “Tale of Princess Kaguya” (already released in Japan); and “National Gallery,” a chronicle of an art institution by the institution artist Frederick Wiseman.
Curiously, one potentially high-profile film is to be found in a Midnight Screening slot: “The Rover,” a morbid postapocalyptic thriller starring Guy Pearce and Mr. Pattinson. The placement might suggest a white-gloved caution toward a genre item, but in fact Mr. Pearce’s crucial performance functions neatly as an argument against the frequent director-auteur bias of the festival. The actor can guide the show, too. Of course, that can also literally be the case, as shown by the number of actor-directed films this year: Ryan Gosling’s “Lost River”: Mathieu Amalric’s “Blue Room”; Mélanie Laurent’s “Breathe” (in Critics Week); Asia Argento’s “Misunderstood”; Ronit Elkabetz’s “Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsallem”; and Mr. Jones’s film.
All of these anticipatory checklists still leave many more offerings to explore at Cannes, awaiting only a patient eye and a copious supply of caffeine. Mysteries remain to be discovered, from the raft of intimate dramas promised in Critics Week, to the prospect of a comedic cop miniseries (“P’tit Quinquin”) by Bruno Dumont. The ultimate outcome of the festival can be measured in many ways — acquisitions and exposure, criticism and controversy, boos, buzz and head-scratching. But for all the hype, the sheer range of choice offers a full cornucopia of cinema to which any serious filmgoer has to pay attention.
An earlier version of this article misstated the name of David Cronenberg’s film, which is in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. It is “Maps to the Stars,” not “Map to the Stars.”
An earlier version of this article misstated the nationality of the filmmaker Xavier Dolan. He is Canadian, not French.