The 79th Festival de Cannes opens Tuesday, May 12, with Park Chan-wook in the jury president's chair and Pierre Salvadori's "La Vénus électrique" (The Electric Kiss) as the opening film. [1][2] Park is the first South Korean to lead the main competition jury in the festival's 79-year history; he succeeds Juliette Binoche. [3] What is still pending — and what the trade press is waiting on — is the rest of the jury. The festival typically reveals the eight-or-nine-member composition seven-to-ten days before opening night, which puts the announcement window inside the next ten days.

Friday's paper carried Salvadori's elevation as the festival's curatorial register; Saturday's read is what comes around it. The short-films and La Cinef juries are already named, with Carla Simón presiding; Critics' Week is led by Payal Kapadia. [3] The main jury is the missing piece, and its eventual composition is the festival's strongest editorial choice — the eight people who will decide a Palme d'Or whose Competition slate already includes Asghar Farhadi, Cristian Mungiu, and Hirokazu Kore-eda.

The calendar around the festival is the news that travels with it. Met Gala Monday May 4 turns the costume calendar into a Manhattan event; Cannes Tuesday May 12 re-anchors it on a Mediterranean axis. The 2022-Russia-cycle boycott pressure is the smallest the festival has seen in three years, with no titles withdrawn over the war. [3]

What Saturday's reader is told to watch is the next jury name. The opener is fixed. The chair is fixed. The eight chairs around it are not.

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles