Wes Anderson was dining with French friends when he got the call—three months after submitting his resplendent new feature, Moonrise Kingdom, to Cannes—that his eccentrically funny-sad, 1965-set charmer was chosen for opening night at the world's most prestigious film festival. Sharing such thrilling news with his dinner companions, they all offered up the same reaction: "Better to be in competition."

Fortunately for Anderson, as the director recalled during an intimate press conference more luxurious than your average hotel junket (the sound of raindrops bouncing softly off an open-air tent on the Riviera beach), Moonrise later rose to a competition slot, and remains this writer's first and favorite selection seen at this year's Cannes. It's for that reason that only now, while fruitlessly waiting for a second film to rank as highly, that MovieMaker checks in at the fest's midpoint. Which is not at all to say that this has been a "weak year," as some jaded critics have grumbled, but we haven't yet seen any cinematic pleasures to collectively knock us out of our chairs (or wildly polarize) à la 2011's Melancholia, Drive and Palme d'Or winner The Tree of Life.

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