Easily the best English language movie this year - and perhaps even the best of the lot - is The Yards , a sensationally thrilling, devastatingly tough and sinewy tale of gangland violence and city hall corruption in New York from James Gray, the director who brought us Little Odessa. James Caan is outstanding as Uncle Frank, the industrialist who bribes his way into city contracts, and gives a job to ex-con Leo (Mark Wahlberg), who in turn teams up with his smooth-talking buddy Willie (Joaquin Phoenix).
All the principals are superb, and the film is set to become a modern classic. It is certainly better than the festival's other New York story: Amos Kollek's Fast Food, Fast Women, a derivative and prurient sub-Woody Allen film about caffeine-wired Manhattanites falling in and out of love.
Many English language films are outclassed, however, by the wonderfully intelligent and rich Asian cinema that has dominated the festival. Of this, the best is Edward Yang's sublime Yi Yi , or A One and a Two, about a Chinese family in Taipei: one debt-racked brother makes an unsuitable marriage that puts his elderly mother into a stroke-induced coma, and another brother runs into an old flame, who he jilted 20 years previously. Yang, for whom this film represents a triumphant return to form, handles its structure with a masterly and confident looseness, letting this freewheeling, garrulous story almost tell itself. This film is in pole position for the Palme D'Or.
Also very creditable is Chunhyang , from the South Korean director IM Kwon Taek: a 13th century tale of a young nobleman who falls in love with the daughter of a courtesan, then is forced to leave her when he is summoned away to court. The film is narrated by a traditional singing chorus, and the result is a delicately charming and erotic tale of great sweetness.
Gohatto is Nagisa Oshima's odd film about two gay samurai in late 19th century Kyoto. With its violent martial scenes and vigorous coupling, it does not quite have the watercolour delicacy traditionally associated with period Japanese pictures. Starring Takeshi Kitano as one of the grizzled elders who look on the infatuated youths with tolerant bemusement, this film could become a cult.
From Europe, literary period dramas have been much in evidence, many perhaps inspired by the success of Raul Ruiz's Proust adaptation last year. Olivier Assayas gave us his ample account of Jacques Chardonne's Les Destinées Sentimentales , about a family firm producing fine porcelain. The fastidious connoisseurship associated with this sets a rather cold tone for the film, which nevertheless has some beautiful performances from Charles Berling and Emmanuelle Béart.
Nothing could be more unfashionable than a Merchant Ivory film, and yet James Ivory's adaptation of Henry James's The Golden Bowl is a remarkably substantial, successful rendering of this enigmatic and mysterious text, which goes far beyond the banal theme of infidelity. Despite some pretty clod- hopping captions - "Three years later", and so on - Ivory managed to capture much of this elusive story, and Uma Thurman is excellent as the worldly Charlotte Stant.
Elsewhere, Pavel Lounguine's La Noce , or The Wedding, is the raucous and cacophonous tale of a young Russian miner's nuptials, as he marries his beautiful childhood sweetheart, who has been the mistress of a wealthy mafia hood. This is a little crude, but has moments of comic energy.
Quite the opposite is Amos Gitai, back in competition after last year's wonderful Kadosh with a distinctively long, slow, and mostly wordless film: Kippur , a disconcertingly uncritical and context-less account of four Israeli soldiers' experience in the Yom Kippur war of 1973. Mostly composed in a series of long continuous takes, this confers a weird, glassy serenity on the most frenzied battle scene.
Once again, it is impossible not to be impressed by the range of films in competition, particularly the Far Eastern ones, demanding though these are in terms of critical attention. There was a paucity of comic films this year, and many entries seemed prolix, with three-hour films far from uncommon, and one lasting three hours and 37 minutes. At best, this is self-indulgent. At worst, it is cruel and unusual punishment.
