It is a scene that could probably only happen in this city at this time of year--a small midnight flock of bon vivants, half naval aviators from the carrier Truman, half an elite cross-section of pointy-headed (but ever so likable, mind you) film critics, clinking steins of beer and deciding what their favorite films of all time were. And if Animal House got more love from both camps than La Regle du Jeu, chalk it up to the sailors' more authoritative costumes and their more-than-slight lead in beer consumption.

Before the flyboys arrived, near the end of a multimonth deployment in the Gulf and with a plan to stay up till dawn, the critics had been debating James Gray's just-screened Two Lovers. (Our interview with the thoughtful and chatty Gray will be seen on this site in tomorrow's column, but suffice it to say the common opinion was that the French have embraced his work in a way America perhaps never will.)

But that topic quickly yielded, as often happens in the critical bullpen that seems to assemble nightly in one particular bar that's just steps across the Croisette from the main screening venues, to lengthy if well-justified yawping about just how impossible it is to do one's work efficiently at the festival.

The point was enforced by an especially messy scenario outside the twin screenings for Two Lovers, a tableau fraught with delays, fervent vocal outbursts, confusion, and an obvious miscount of heads that left a fair few prized seats empty when it finally unspooled. "Maddening," is how the director described this dumpster fire of a preview when he got the news. Who needs a bunch of critics who were already angry when the lights went down?

I know. You're thinking, Oh, go to hell, you're at Cannes gulping sancerre and langoustines as Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow walk past you 10 feet away. And the answer is, I already went to hell. They have a free press shuttle that goes there in just minutes from the Nice airport.

Is it the crowds of tourists, you ask, as they shuffle unconsciously five abreast down the narrow sidewalks as you're steeplechasing to a screening? Is it the growling moto that ran over your foot and belched blue smoke in your face when you made a break along the gutter, or one of multiple varieties of policemen and the red-faced, white-haired owners of giants Mercedes screaming in each others' faces?

Is it the inconvenient downpours that have made this a record year for dashiki-clad vendors of flimsy umbrellas who lean over your curbside table every two minutes? Is it the closet overlooking a construction site (work starts early) that's been anointed as a hotel room worth three bills a night? Or maybe the cab driver who wrestled you for your knapsack so it doesn't muss up his shampooed BMW's floor?

Well, one could go on, but the real deal is the press passes. If yours is white, you're all right, and have probably spent half the festival on a yacht with the big shots. Rose, which is to say pink, is fairly powerful, especially with a small yellow pastille dot. But a field of yellow is pretty bad news, with its implications of jaune journalism and a firm lodging in the cellar of badge status.

But bleu, blue is just a snare and delusion, a mark of arriviste, wanna-be, semi-elevation that means you might turn up early to stand in a line...Oh, hang on. Did I say line? Here I have to simply quote a Brit friend of mine, who explained concisely, "Oh, the French can't queue. It's a DNA thing."

Meaning those 15 people who simply sidled in ahead of you while you stood breathing their Gauloise plume and staring back at the hawklike security gents? The guards will sometimes will give you a slight smile that contains no shred of pity, even as the rose pass holders are waltzing in ahead of you to watch Vicky and Cristina in summer dresses (so one imagines), and you, you're not.

Well, I feel better now, just as I did when I had a couple more beers with the Navy guys and left them in a piano bar, slow-dancing in a grippy way with three local women they'd met just minutes before. One really does hate to complain. (Especially because it could mean next year turning jaune-dissed, or simply being declared a total non-starter.)

In truth, there are some magical moments here, as when you take a flyer on a screening of Terence Davies' Of Time and the City and just give in to his gravel-voiced, witty and touching narration for 70 minutes as he revisits the now architecturally despoiled Liverpool of his youth. Sheer magic. Or come out of Desplechin's droll and touching family history Un Conte de Noel, surely a Palme d'Or candidate.