Zac Efron says he felt uncomfortable filming his revealing role “The Paperboy” — and that’s the way he wanted it.

The “High School Musical” actor moves into grown-up territory with the film by “Precious” director Lee Daniels, which is screening at the Cannes Film Festival.

It’s a swampy slice of Southern gothic set in the 1960s, with Efron as an aspiring writer helping his journalist brother (Matthew McConaughey) investigate a possible miscarriage of justice, and falling for Nicole Kidman’s sultry femme fatale.

Efron spends much of the film in his underpants, but says he didn’t mind the scrutiny.

He told reporters in Cannes Thursday that his character “is learning the ways of the world, and that can be very uncomfortable. But it’s exciting.”

Brad Pitt is making the movie star thing look darn easy.

Since he last collaborated with Andrew Dominik, he’s starred in the Coen brothers’ “Burn After Reading,” David Fincher’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” and Bennett Miller’s “Moneyball.”

It’s been arguably the best stretch of his career, one vacillating between comedy and drama and defined not by summer blockbusters but by provocative director-oriented fare.

The bookends to the period are Dominik’s “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” and “Killing Them Softly,” which made its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this week.

Things are going great even as Pitt insists that movie-making is not his top priority.

“Right now, I’m just attracted to being a dad,” said Pitt in an interview in a hotel penthouse in Cannes. “Film-wise, we get to do this thing and I feel very fortunate to get to do this. So I want to contribute to the art form. I think the films have to speak to our time and be authentic in their approach.”

“Killing Them Softly” is adapted from George V. Higgins’ 1974 crime novel “Cogan’s Trade.” It’s a stylized, ruthless noir with a host of fine performances — by James Gandolfini, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn and Ray Liotta — in a brutally violent criminal wasteland.

Just as “Jesse James” used the western genre to explore a contemporary idea (celebrity culture), “Killing Them Softly” is really about capitalism. While gangsters and criminals maneuver in a grim world of backstabbing, reputation guarding and the perpetual pursuit of money, the background of the film is filled with speeches and billboards of former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama. Dominik has transplanted the story to 2008, adding the financial crisis as a backdrop for a cynical commentary on American greed.

“I immediately latched on to it because it was precisely the stories we were seeing on the news every day,” says Pitt. “Everyone was talking about restoring market confidence and meanwhile people were losing their homes left and right.”

Dominik, the New Zealand-born filmmaker of considerable visual flare, wrote the script in the midst of the financial crisis. He saw a connection between Wall Street’s power brokers and Higgins’ hoods: both showed “the consequences of blindly chasing a buck.”

“Maybe crime films are about capitalism at its blunt, bottom end,” says the director. “It became a vehicle for some ideas.”

The quality of Pitt’s movies in recent years may not be a coincidence. He’s increasingly produced films through his production company, Plan B. The company was more nascent when it produced “Jesse James,” but has recently had noted success. Plan B helped produce last year’s Palm d’Or winner in Cannes, “The Tree of Life,” and the Oscar-nominated “Moneyball.”

“I don’t expect every year to go that way,” he says. “According to the laws of physics, things will balance out. But we’re clear in our mandate: Pushing stories and helping storytellers get the film to the screen. Ones that are tougher, we feel we can help out.”

Made with a production budget of $30 million, “Jesse James” failed to take in even $4 million at the box office, severely hampering Dominik’s prospects in Hollywood. Pitt says the director “took a hit” after the film.

“The paint is not celluloid, it’s money,” says Dominik, who made “Killing Them Softly” on a smaller budget. “It’s what the filmmaker works with.”

Pitt runs Plan B, which produced “Killing Them Softly,” with Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner, and compares their trio to “a little garage band.”

“I’m focusing more on producing this year than getting in front of the camera,” says Pitt, adding that he’s particularly excited about producing the next film from director Steve McQueen (“Shame”). “Killing Them Softly” will be released this fall.

Higgins’ “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” was made into a film in 1973 starring Robert Mitchum. It, too, was a box office disappointment but has a devoted cult and critical following. It led Dominik to pick up a copy of Higgins’ “Cogan’s Trade.”

“There was an untapped vein,” says Dominik. “It was like after ‘All the Pretty Horses’ they decided, ‘Cormac McCarthy movies, nobody wants to see that.’”

Dominik gave a comedic tone to the story, which is largely centered on a series of Beckett-like conversations between the thieves, punctured by bloody outbursts. On hatching a dubious plan, one says: “We’re not the only smart guys in the world.”

“I wanted it to be very square and straight faced, almost like a comic strip panel,” says Dominik.

Pitt is now 48 and has six children with Angelina Jolie, who didn’t join him in Cannes. The couple, who alternate their movies so neither is in production at the same time, is currently staying outside of London while Jolie shoots a film in the area. The more measured pace suits Pitt.

“It just doesn’t happen back to back to back,” says Pitt. “You need time off to refuel and to be inspired again. There’s no greater inspiration than family.”

Kanye West showed off his short film and his celebrity girlfriend in Cannes.

The rapper walked hand in hand with Kim Kardashian at the launch of “Cruel Summer” on Wednesday night.

The couple didn’t stop to talk to media but some of the cast revealed what it was like to work on the art project.

Described as an “immersive seven-screen experience” – “Cruel Summer” is a love story set in the Middle East, and is inspired by West’s new “G.O.O.D” album.

Lebanese actress Razan Jammal says West is “an amazing person”: “To be honest I was really, really surprised, he’s so professional. A little shy, very calm on set, very hard working – I loved working with him.”

The film installation will now be open to the public for two days.

Charles MacLean is out of his element in Cannes, a town consumed by cinema and celebrity. His element is Scotch whisky — “uisge beatha,” he says, giving it its Gaelic name. The water of life.

MacLean is on a mission: He has brought the world of single malts to the French Riviera through his role as whiskey adviser and actor in Ken Loach’s Cannes competition film, “The Angels’ Share.”

The movie centers on a troubled Glasgow youth who tries to turn a talent for whisky-tasting into a ticket out of his dead-end life. MacLean plays a dramatized version of himself, a member of a select band of whiskey experts known as Masters of the Quaich.

The film is an uncharacteristically sunny comedy from Loach, a director better known for gritty realism. An audience favorite at Cannes, it could do for Scotch what “Strictly Ballroom” did for ballroom dancing: make it cool.

“The awful thing is, a lot more vodka is drunk in Scotland than whiskey, especially amongst younger people,” MacLean said during a beachside interview in Cannes, where he is serving as an unofficial ambassador for Scotch, as well as for the film.

“It does have this sort of pipe and slippers by the fire, male image,” he said.

The film’s young central characters initially turn up their noses when offered a snifter. Yet Scotch is as central to Scotland’s image abroad as shortbread, “Braveheart” and tartans.

MacLean says it is part of Scotland’s heritage — “the blood of one small nation” — and has been distilled in the country since the 14th century.

“When you buy a bottle of whiskey, you buy a hell of a lot more than liquor in a bottle,” said the affable, mustached MacLean, who is passionate on the subject of his favorite beverage. “Whether you like it or not, you’re buying culture, you’re buying history, you’re buying craft, you’re buying tradition.”

MacLean was initially hired as a script consultant on the film — tutoring some of the actors on whiskey appreciation — before being asked to appear on-screen. He said he enjoyed the experience, but doesn’t plan to repeat it.

“I don’t think I have an acting career ahead of me,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t think I could play any other part.”

MacLean is well used to public speaking, but he found it daunting to film a scene in which he had to lead a tasting in front of an audience of extras.

“I started to sweat — it was a very hot day and I sweat very easily,” he said. “The editor told me yesterday that it had cost him 25,000 pounds ($40,000) to take out the sweat marks under my arms, frame by frame.”

As well as doing interviews and attending the film’s red-carpet premiere, MacLean led a whiskey-tasting session in Cannes, teaching film folk to tell their fruity Speysides from their peaty Islays. It slipped down smoothly with the cinema crowd.

Maclean said he would encourage anyone to give Scotch a try — in moderation, of course.

“It is the most complex of all spirits, and so therefore if and when you acquire the taste it is hugely rewarding,” he said. “But because of its complexity, it is not an easy drink. I have much sympathy with people who can’t stand it. My wife can’t stand it.”

And if “The Angels’ Share” — a full-bodied film with a tart edge and a sweet finish — were a whiskey, what type would it be?

“Bittersweet. Not as elemental as a smoky Islay whisky,” MacLean said, mulling it over before settling on: “Talisker.”

“It’s got a sort of chili pepper in the finish, which is the bitter part, the rough part,” he explained. “It’s a virile whisky, and yet the overall flavor profile is sweet but elemental.”

'Chernobyl Diaries' opens Friday.

The film: Chernobyl Diaries, opening Friday, in which six young tourists visit Pripyat, the town abandoned by those who once worked at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. They think they’re alone, but of course, they aren’t, bwahaha!

The food: Only the bravest palates should venture near a basket of Duffy’s jumbo wings drenched in Atomic sauce, and then only if armed with a cold beer or the chain’s Home Run ’Rita, a margarita made with Cuervo Gold.

Duffy’s Sports Grill has multiple South Florida locations.

Holy cow. The most rapturous audience reception at the Cannes Film Festival has gone to “Holy Motors,” a disorienting, whirling dream of a movie by French director Leos Carax.

The film stars Denis Lavant as a man who adopts multiple personas, and includes surrealist scenes, tender moments, a song by pop star Kylie Minogue and the unexpected appearance of bonobo monkeys.

The movie drew whoops and cheers at the end of its first press screening.

“This is what we have all come to Cannes for,” said The Guardian newspaper. Screen International was less impressed, judging it “a self-conscious upmarket weird-out.”

Just don’t ask Carax what he wants the public to take away from the film. The director said Wednesday that “I don’t make public films, I make private films.”

Fifty-five years after its publication, Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” finally burned on the big screen, making its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

Walter Salles’ adaptation is the first film production of the classic 1957 novel, which everyone from Marlon Brando to Jean-Luc Godard has circled over the last six decades. The film premiered Wednesday on the French Riviera, far away from the American roads crisscrossed by the book’s Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty.

“You have to reread it to make it live again,” said Viggo Mortensen, who plays the William S. Burroughs character in the film.

Salles said he covered nearly 100,000 kilometers (more than 62,000 miles) making the film, which he preceded by spending five years researching an as-yet-unreleased documentary.

Vampires, Transformers, singing high-schoolers: They can all be tough to outrun.

But at the 65th annual Cannes Film Festival, a number of young Hollywood stars are attempting to do just that. By striking out on their own, they hope to move their careers beyond mega franchises and toward more mature roles in bolder films.

Robert Pattinson (“Twilight”), Kristen Stewart (also “Twilight”), Shia LaBeouf (“Transformers,” ”Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”) and Zac Efron (“High School Musical”) all have films in competition at the French Riviera festival.

In David Cronenberg’s Don DeLillo adaptation “Cosmopolis,” which is to premiere at Cannes on Friday, Pattinson stars as a Manhattan billionaire on a crosstown odyssey.

“It’s changed the way I see myself,” Pattinson said in an interview ahead of his festival arrival.

“I’m kind of getting older,” the 26-year-old actor says. “People aren’t thinking of me as a kid anymore, so I’ve got to stop behaving like one.”

With the next “Twilight” installment, part two of “Breaking Dawn,” due out this November, Pattinson has also lined up parts in David Michod’s “The Rover” (a role he says he fought harder for than any in years) and the military thriller “Mission: Black List.” Like “Cosmopolis,” they’re films without the surrounding hoopla of blockbusters.

“When you do a big franchise movie, there’s a ton of pressure on you that’s really nothing to do with the job at all,” says Pattinson. “You have to adapt to an entirely different world, rather than just try to get better at acting and do better within your movies. As soon as you become famous, your movies and your life become one and the same in the eyes of the public in a lot of ways.”

Certainly, most actors would eagerly jump at the chance to star in well-paying, hugely promoted movies. But iconic roles begun as teenagers can choke promising acting careers. Stewart, Pattinson’s 22-year-old “Twilight” co-star, is also expanding into new territory at Cannes with Walter Salles’ anticipated adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.” It was to premiere Wednesday.

Earlier in the festival was LaBeouf’s “Lawless,” a Prohibition-era gangster film. LaBeouf says he’s gratified to have been a part of the film from start to finish, rather than, he says, “just piggybacking” on the success of a massive blockbuster. LaBeouf, who also stars in Robert Redford’s next film, “The Company You Keep,” hopes “Lawless” is the start of a new phase for him.

“I’m taking risks more,” says LaBeouf, who play the youngest in a trio of Virginia bootleggers in “Lawless.” ”I was really risk-adverse for a while because I had a big nugget to protect, not only for myself but for the people who were behind me. I think I’ve become less corporate.”

“Lawless” director John Hillcoat says LaBeouf, 25, “has been a prisoner of the franchise films for a while.”

“He was so hungry for a real character, a real part,” says Hillcoat.

On Thursday, Lee Daniels will bring his “The Paperboy” to the festival, the director’s first film since the hit “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire.” Efron, 24, co-stars as the younger brother of a reporter (Matthew McConaughey) who’s investigating an inmate on death row (John Cusack).

Daniels says that having suffered relentless viewings of the “High School Musical” movies by his children, he thought he’d never put Efron in one of his movies. “And I can’t tell you how wrong I was,” he says.

The Efron of “The Paperboy,” Daniels says, is one unfamiliar to his fans.

“He’s a grown-up Zac and a tortured Zac,” says Daniels. “Someone we haven’t seen before — a different Zac.”

Efron, Stewart, LaBeouf and Pattinson will get no better launching pad for their new roles than Cannes, where daring is prized above all other attributes.

“There’s no point in being scared of just trying,” says Pattinson. “The worst that can happen is just failure, right?”

Brad Pitt has arrived in Cannes with a hardboiled crime film featuring heavy doses of President Barack Obama and a backdrop of the economic crisis.

Pitt stars in and produced “Killing Them Softly,” which screened at the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday. It’s a stylized adaptation of a George V. Higgins novel that director Andrew Dominik has filled with speeches of Obama and former President George W. Bush to give the film a broader financial commentary on top of a story of violent, back-stabbing criminals.

Pitt said the movie was conceived “at the apex of the mortgage loan debacle,” which he called “criminal.”

Pitt also fended questions about his planned wedding to Angelina Jolie. He said no date has been set and Jolie was not with him in Cannes.

By JAKE COYLE

The first half of the 65th annual Cannes Film Festival has completed a life cycle in films that range from the motivating spark of child birth to the despair of slow death in old age.

The latter came by way of Michael Haneke’s “Amour,” which is by wide consensus the favorite thus far for the festival’s top honor, the Palme d’Or. Such an outcome would make the Austrian filmmaker, who won three years ago for his previous film, “The White Ribbon,” the seventh director to win two Palmes.

Cannes audiences sit down for a movie with expectations of nothing less than a masterpiece, and “Amour” has been the only film generally considered worthy of that label. Masterly austere, it’s a simple and direct story of a French couple in their 80s, played by Emmanuelle Riva as Anne, and Jean-Louis Trintignant as Georges — both French acting greats in thrillingly good late performances.

Early in the film, they return home from a concert to find signs of an attempted break in. No one has entered the apartment, but something worse, something more destructive seems to have been let in. The next morning during breakfast, Anne freezes, staring vacantly. It’s the first sign of an irrevocable decline, to be followed by doctor visits, a dementia-inducing stroke, and the mounting indignities of dying while Georges cares for her.

For Haneke, a provocateur of mysterious terrors, it’s a film of exceptional intimacy, where death slowly disassembles love.

Though “Amour” — solemn and deadly — is the kind of serious stuff Cannes most celebrates, the festival also loves a crowd-pleaser, even if it doesn’t confer quite the same respect on them. (Descriptions of “slight” are a death knell on the Croisette.) “The Artist” premiered at Cannes last year, when Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life” took the Palme.

In the first six days of the festival, nothing was as purely pleasurable as Ken Loach’s whiskey-heist comedy “The Angel’s Share.” It played for critics Monday night ahead of its Tuesday premiere, and was warmly welcomed as a genial reprieve after two days of dismal rain along the French Riviera.

It’s a rare comedy from Loach, whose social realism has made him a staple in Cannes (a record 11 times in competition) and a Palme d’Or winner for 2006′s “The Wind That Shakes the Barley.” ”The Angel’s Share” stars first-time actor Paul Brannigan as Robbie, a young troublemaker in Glasgow, Scotland, who narrowly escapes a jail sentence. A father to be, he’s trying to make something of himself while old rivalries continue to tempt him to violence.

A community service sponsor (John Henshaw) leads Robbie to an interest in whiskey, which figures into an unlikely liquor heist. It’s a snappy blue-collar comedy (the Scottish dialogue was judged so thick that English subtitles were played with the film) with a wry commentary on the narrow opportunities for young people trying to start a family in a bleak economy.

There have, of course, been many other festival highlights, including Jacques Audiard’s “Rust and Bone,” a tale of love and animal instinct that has drawn raves for Marion Cotillard. Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom,” opened the festival with a meticulous and melancholy ode to young love. The Danish drama “The Hunt” by Thomas Vinterberg (“Festen”) impressed many in its story of runaway gossip.

Cannes finishes Sunday with the Palme d’Or selection from the jury headed by Nanni Moretti. Still to come: David Cronenberg’s “Cosmopolis,” Walter Salles’ “On the Road,” Lee Daniels’ “The Paperboy,” Jeff Nichols’ “Mud” and Carlos Reygadas’ “Post Tenebras Lux.” On Tuesday, Andrew Dominick’s thriller “Killing Them Softly,” starring Brad Pitt, was to premiere.

It’s taken an animated trilogy about a gang of zoo animals to bring Ben Stiller and Chris Rock together.

Two of the most influential comedians over the last two decades, they have seemingly always orbited in the same world — both New York performers about the same age — but have hardly ever collaborated.

“We cross paths,” Rock says of their roles in “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted.” “We’re cowboys. We see each other at the saloon.”

Speaking from Cannes, where the two New Yorkers are promoting the latest installment in the popular DreamWorks Animation franchise, Stiller says: “We’ve each been doing our own things, but after a while, you have that sort of shared history, which you really value.”

On leaving school, Rock pursued stand-up, while Stiller started in sketches and directing.

Rock, 47, and Stiller, 46, both married around the same time and have kids about the same age. They each had a stint on “Saturday Night Live,” tried Broadway last year and now live in the suburbs of New York.

They nearly collaborated in the early 1990s, when Stiller was briefly attached to direct “CB4,” a 1993 rap group parody that Rock starred in and co-wrote.

“It was a long time ago,” says Stiller.

In “Madagascar 3,” which opens June 8, the two return to voice their now familiar characters — Stiller as Alex the lion, Rock as Marty the zebra — each Central Park Zoo performers who travel from Africa to Europe and join a traveling circus.

Earlier this year, Rock said at the Oscars’ ceremony that voiceover work is comically easy: “UPS is hard work. Stripping wood is hard work,” he said, grinning broadly. Whereas voiceover acting, he continued, is saying few lines in a sound booth, “And then they give me a million dollars!”

“You must have known you were going to have the press for ‘Madagascar 3′ after that,” Stiller asks his co-star.

“I don’t think that far ahead!” Rock replies. “There’s a task at hand: Get some laughs at the Oscars.”

Rock certainly accomplished that, in what was generally considered one of the best moments of the ceremony. But he was also criticized by some in the industry and has seen his comments frequently brought up in animated movie releases.

“Jeffrey did call me up and say, ‘Are we paying you too much?’” says Rock, referring to DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg.

“Madagascar” has now been around for 7 years, which has led to the characters becoming “pretty well defined now,” says Stiller. “That makes it easy to find the humor within the situations because Marty is who he is and is who he is. It makes the possibility for it to be funny in a way that’s character-oriented as opposed to just jokes.”

Rock, whose stand-up has never lacked for profanity, likes to stretch PG boundaries. Somewhere, the filmmakers have a very funny R-rated reel, he says. He approaches his final takes by asking: “How far can I go in a kids’ movie? How close can I get to saying f— in this scene?”

Both have taken time out of their schedules to come to Cannes: Rock from promoting films “2 Days in New York” with Julie Delpy, and “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” while Stiller is fresh from shooting “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” a comedy he’s starring in and directing based on a James Thurber short story.

Jackie Chan says he is landing his last punch.

The Hong Kong actor told the AP on Friday that his latest film “Chinese Zodiac” will be his last action movie.

Chan, launching the film in Cannes with co-stars Kwone Sang Woo, Yao Xingtong and Liao Fan, said that people never believe him when he says he is going to retire.

“They say ‘no, you’re still young, you can still do it,’ but I have to stop one day.”

The 58-year-old says he is bowing out with “Chinese Zodiac” because it’s one of the “most important” films in his career.

Chan wrote, produced, directed and coordinated fights scenes for the film — in which his character searches for the 12 bronze heads of the Chinese zodiac.

Chan promised that he’ll continue to make films, but with more acting than action, citing Robert DeNiro and Clint Eastwood his role models.

Austrian director Ulrich Seidl’s film depicts middle-aged European women at a Kenyan holiday resort seeking romance with young local men.

Margarethe Tiesel plays a 50-year-old Austrian whose search for love turns increasingly predatory. But the actress says she does not judge her character’s behavior. She says the movie is about female loneliness and how “people who are exploited at home travel abroad and become exploiters in turn.”

Seidl says the film is the first one in a “Paradise Trilogy” about modern tourism.

“Paradise: Love” had its premiere Friday in Cannes, where it is one of 22 films competing for the coveted Palme d’Or prize.

But Arena won’t be walking the red carpet at the Italian movie’s gala premiere Friday. He’ll be where he’s been for two decades — in prison.

Arena was riveting in the film by “Gomorrah” director Matteo Garrone, and many viewers were astonished to learn he works with a prison theater company but had never appeared in a movie. Garrone said a judge let Arena out of jail during the day to shoot “Reality” but wouldn’t let him travel to Cannes, which is in neighboring France.

Garrone said Arena was happy about the movie’s success anyway.

In Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom,” the famously meticulous director takes his fastidiously fashioned world and flings it into the woods.

Even a relatively loose Anderson film is more ornately composed than most dollhouses, so no one should expect cinema verite in his latest fable. But there is — gasp! — actual handheld camera work in “Moonrise Kingdom,” a story of pre-adolescent love on a rustic New England island.

For Anderson, whose previous film was the animated “The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” it’s a welcome return to the vagaries of live-action filmmaking.

“It was nice to have the sort of lack of control that you get on the set,” Anderson said in a seaside interview in Cannes, where “Moonrise” opened the prestigious film festival before releasing in theaters May 25. “It’s nice to go on location with a group. That’s something I kind of missed.”

“Your year takes a certain shape when you’re making a movie,” he added. “I like that.”

Making “Moonrise Kingdom” was essentially sleep-away camp for Anderson’s usual troupe of actors (Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman), as well as a few new inductees (Bruce Willis, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand).

Shot on an island in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, the film is about a 12-year-old orphan (Jared Gilman) who runs away from his scout troupe — the Boy Scout-like Khaki Scouts, whose leader is played by Norton — with his young love (Kara Hayward), the melancholy daughter of a local family (Murray, McDormand). Set in 1965, it’s a more innocent, quaint America.

While Anderson’s movies — “Rushmore,” ”The Royal Tenenbaums” — have often had a childlike sense of whimsy, “Moonlight Kingdom” is almost entirely from the perspective of the children. It started for Anderson with his own memory of first love, a mysterious new feeling he didn’t act on, unlike his young protagonist.

“It’s a memory of an emotion, but kind of a memory of a fantasy as well,” says Anderson. “Everything that happens in the story is what didn’t happen to me.”

But there are many elements of Anderson’s own experience in the film, too. Like Hayward’s character, he found a parental guide to “troubled” children atop his refrigerator, terrified and ashamed to know it applied to him.

Anderson has, naturally, stocked the film full of carefully chosen accoutrements, like faux children’s books with covers specifically designed by various contributors. But when the two kids set off into the wilderness, a more natural environment fills the screen.

Roman Coppola co-wrote the script with Anderson, helped tease out the story from a long-gesticulating concept of Anderson’s, which had amounted to just 15 pages of material and some fragments. Coppola, who also co-wrote Anderson’s India-set “The Darjeeling Limited,” believes the director is increasingly looking for chaotic environments for drama.

“If you look at his desk, everything will be lined up in perfect rows, so there’s something in his personality that’s drawn to that sense of symmetry and order — it’s somewhat who he is,” says Coppola. “But I think recently, when I worked with him on ‘Darjeeling’ and this film, that he’s drawn to situations and settings that have disorder just automatically.”

Anderson says he often begins a film with only a small shred of an idea, like “Royal Tenenbaums,” which started with just the image of a girl exiting a bus, and an unrelated scene of a meltdown on a tennis court. Such scant beginnings are all the more remarkable for the deeply layered finished films: “Tenenbaums” became a full portrait of an intellectual New York family a la “The Magnificent Ambersons.”

“It always feels like the story exists somewhere and you’re just discovering it,” says Anderson. He recently finished a new script —one “particularly unrelated” to “Moonrise,” he says — with unusual speed. It began from researching a real-life character that has little to do with the finished story.

While Anderson’s films have often revolved around a clash of innocence with a cynical world, “Moonrise Kingdom” is his most stark dichotomy of adults and children. In the film, the grown-ups react variously to the children’s gambit, with a chance for redemption for Willis’ police officer.

“His adults are always kind of wrangling disappointment,” said Swinton, who plays a bureaucrat simply called “Social Services,” in a news conference at Cannes. “And this film, I think maybe more than any other film, the adults are the disappointed ones and the children, they’ve got the grail.”

Schwartzman, a frequent collaborator with Anderson since “Rushmore” who considers the director his mentor, thinks his films are getting slightly deconstructed.

“I feel like Wes in each movie is examining, in a more intense way, an aspect of something that’s in his own body and world,” says Schwartzman. “And I think in other movies he’s examined or played around with the idea of young feelings of love and feeling stuck or confused.”

The wisdom of one of Anderson’s characters comes to mind: Gene Hackman’s rascal Royal Tenenbaum, who implored, with a glint in his eye: “I’m talking about taking it out and chopping it up.”

The rapper announced Friday that he’ll present the film on Wednesday at the French festival. West and his creative collective DONDA will screen the “short art film” out of competition in Cannes.

West’s press release promises “a fusion of short film and art installation” and an “immersive seven-screen experience.” It will remain open to the public for two days following its premiere.

West has previously directed music videos for his music, including 2010′s “Runaway.”

CANNES, France — It’s not just film stars who are flocking to Cannes. Music types can’t resist either.

Anyone strolling along the city’s famed Croisette promenade on Thursday afternoon was treated to a free show from LMFAO as they sound-checked and practiced how to rock Cannes in the bright Riviera sunshine.

The American dance music duo, Redfoo and Sky Blu, were to perform Thursday night at a stage on the beach. Redfoo was seen doing his trademark “shufflin’” on stage in animal-print pants.

The film festival in the south of France always draws in plenty of top recording stars: Diddy, Kylie Minogue, Cheryl Cole, Cyndi Lauper and Simple Minds are all attending this year. And Lana Del Ray made an appearance on opening night at the gala for “Moonrise Kingdom.”

The festival runs until May 27.

Yousry Nasrallah’s film is set after last year’s overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak. It was filmed in the streets of Cairo while the uprising and its uncertain aftermath were still unfolding, with a cast that mixes professionals and non-actors.

The director said Thursday that making the movie had been an act of faith in art “at a time when the cinema is being attacked in Egypt as a sin.”

“(The) arts are being criticized by the Islamist parties, and my commitment and the commitment of the actors … was a commitment in favor of the cinema,” said Nasrallah, whose film “Gate of the Sun” screened at Cannes in 2004.

“After the Battle” is one of 22 films competing for the coveted Palme d’Or at the French Riviera film festival, which runs to May 27.

The film’s crew worked amid the fear of intimidation from members of the old regime or Islamists, who are vying for power in Egypt’s first post-revolution presidential election next week. The largely secular and leftist forces who led the revolution have no viable candidate in the race, and many who championed change now fear for the future.

Nasrallah said the movie was shot under a code name, “to make it sound like a romantic comedy.”

It isn’t that, but nor is it a political diatribe.

“After the Battle” focuses on the relationship between wealthy Tahrir Square revolutionary Reem (Mena Shalaby) and Mahmoud (Bassem Samra), a poor horseman from the foot of the Pyramids who has seen his livelihood disappear along with the tourists and has been involved in an attack on protesters.

The characters on both sides are more messy and complicated than they initially appear. Nasrallah said his goal was to make them all human.

“We wanted to show individuals faced with major events who refused to be crushed by history,” Nasrallah said Thursday at a Cannes press conference.

“It’s about a man who is trying to regain his dignity for himself and for his family, and a woman who is trying to find a place in an Egypt that is changing.

“When there is a dictatorship you end up hating yourself,” he added. “I think the Egyptian people deserve this love letter we ended up making through this film.”

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Jill Lawless can be reached at http://twitter.com/JillLawless

CANNES, France — There’s vintage fashion and there’s ancient fashion — and Chinese actress Fan Bingbing tapped into the latter for the opening of the Cannes Film Festival.

The Chinese actress wore an elegant pale strapless gown by her friend Christopher Bu, decorated with bright floral designs and traditional Ting dynasty stories. Inspired by a porcelain vase, the ancient vibe of her dress was complimented by her hair, which was pinned to look like a young girl from the Tang dynasty.

Fan says she selected the style of these long-gone eras because she didn’t want a “normal, elegant” red carpet look for the festival’s famous steps. She wanted “something special.”

Fan wore her China tribute to the world premiere of Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom,” which opened the film festival on Wednesday night.

CANNES, France — Clad in a plaid jacket that could have come out of Rodney Dangerfield’s wardrobe in “Caddyshack,” Bill Murray clashed with traditional Cannes fashion but made the most of the film festival in every other way.

Murray has been soaking up the atmosphere on the French Riviera, where he joined other stars for the opening night premiere of Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom.” The 61-year-old actor has been to Cannes before but his attendance is never assured, leaving film publicists to cross their fingers and hope he shows.

But he hit Cannes in high style, first appearing for the Wednesday photo call in the aforementioned jacket, with checkered pants. At the fancier, black-tie premiere, he wore a mangled purple and orange bow tie, reportedly tied by his driver en route to the event.

Usually, he was dancing. He sashayed down the red carpet, took pictures of the photographers and blew kisses to onlookers, charming the crowds at Cannes’ famed Croisette promenade. Murray has now stared in Anderson’s “Rushmore,” ”The Royal Tenenbaums,” ”The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox.”

“Sometimes, when you work with a director you know, you not only may never see him again, sometimes you hope you never seen him again — and that goes for the director as well,” said Murray. “They can’t wait for you to leave. They drive you to the airport to make sure you leave. That happens.

“With Wes, I’ve never gotten a ride to the airport.”

“Moonrise Kingdom” is about two 12-year-olds (newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward) in love and running away together on a New England island in 1965. Murray, along with Bruce Willis, Edward Norton and Tilda Swinton make up the more cynical adults in pursuit.

“I really don’t get any other work but through Wes,” joked Murray. “The making of these films has become more of a fun adventure all the time. I’m just delighted. I’ve known Wes a pretty long time and he just gets better.”

Cannes runs until May 27 and has days of glamorous premieres to go, but the plaid-wearing Murray may have already made the festival’s signature fashion statement.

“Rust and Bone” is a love story of jolting twists starring Academy Award-winning French actress Marion Cotillard (“La Vie En Rose”) and Belgium’s Matthias Schoenaerts (“Bullhead”).

Audiard won the Cannes Film Festival’s second prize in 2009 with tough prison drama “A Prophet.” He said “Rust and Bone” was his attempt to make something completely different — “a love story full of light and space.”

The movie is one of the favorites to win prizes when the festival ends May 27. But it sharply divided journalists Thursday, with opinions ranging from “terrible” to the best film of the year.

Diane Kruger must have arrived in France with a lot of luggage. On Wednesday, Day 1 of the 12-day Cannes Film Festival, Kruger, a member of the prestigious jury, turned up in two different outfits.

She wore an edgy burgundy cocktail dress with a pleated skirt and black cord-laced straps by Versus by Versace for her first photo call, and a fancier, more feminine aqua-colored silk draped dress by Giambattista Valli later for the red-carpet premiere of Moonrise Kingdom.

“This girl knows how to edit herself perfectly,” says designer Rachel Roy, who is keeping tabs on the Cannes fashion show from New York.

Of the aqua gown, Roy says, “The transparency and draping is reminiscent of the Jacqueline Kennedy mint green moment, yet modern. … Pure elegance.”

Also on the red carpet, Eva Longoria chose a frilly Marchesa column gown in blush tulle with a dramatic ruffled skirt and train, and Jessica Chastain wore a light-pink, scoop-neck gown by Alexander McQueen. Eva Herzigova did pink, too — hers a Dolce & Gabbana.

Lana Del Rey attended in a black, scalloped, strapless Alberta Ferretti gown.

Some of the men captured the more relaxed vibe of the seaside resort: Bill Murray put on a plaid jacket, and Ewan McGregor paired his navy cotton suit by Marni with white lace-up shoes and a star-print tie.

CANNES, France — If Nanni Moretti had his way, what happened in Cannes would stay in Cannes.

The Italian director is heading the film festival’s jury and will preside over the annual post-prizes press conference when the movie extravaganza wraps up May 27.

He preferred it in the old days, when jury meetings were a bit like gatherings of the conclave of cardinals who choose Roman Catholic popes.

Then, he said Wednesday, “there were two remaining taboos in the world — the silence after the awards and the conclave. Now it’s just the conclave.”

The jury includes actors Ewan McGregor and Diane Kruger, directors Alexander Payne and Raoul Peck, and fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier. They will choose a winner of the Palme d’Or from among 22 competing films.