No one poses rhetorical questions more deliciously than the French. Consider this treat, included in the official press kit of the 2005 Cannes Film Festival and addressed to artistic director Thierry Fremaux: “We left the Festival 2004 with a dual impression: it was considered to have been a good year for the Selection and it felt as though there had been a strong desire for renewal. What are the perspectives for 2005?”

Last year I attended the world’s most marvelous and maddening film festival for the first time, and having remained for the most part in a state of crazy-making cinephilic rapture, I hardly feel qualified to include myself among that enigmatic “we.” Nevertheless, the formulation sounds just about right. Any year that features the world premiere of movies like “Tropical Malady,” “Our Music,” and “Moolaade”(to say nothing of the legendary rough cut of “2046”) can declare itself good without sounding too presumptuous.

But a “good” selection is, by definition, not a “great” one, and we all know how picky the French are when it comes to le mot juste. Cannes 2004 may have widely been considered an improvement over the previous year – popularly remembered as the Worst Cannes Ever – but it wasn’t without its shortcomings, as the festival itself appears to acknowledge.

The problem, and many festival veterans considered it a significant one, lay in that “strong desire for renewal,” a polite euphemism for some fairly dramatic tinkering with the tried and true Cannes formula. Remarkable new films by Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Jia Jhangke, and Mike Leigh were absent from the program, making room for the likes of “Troy,” “The Ladykillers,” and not one but two animated sequels – both of which were lousy.

Word along the Croisette – and nowhere does the chattering set chat more than along the Croisette – was that the festival was pandering to the desires of jury president Quentin Tarantino, with the competition presence of aggressive pulp fiction “Oldboy” taken as the most egregious evidence. Well, it’s a new year, with a new president (Emir Kusturica), and if there’s any sort of renewal going on, it’s of the energies that have always made Cannes the unsurpassed authority on the state of the seventh art. The masters are back. Or, as Mr. Fremaux says, “This year is under the sign of cinema d’auteur.”

Cannes heavies Michael Haneke (“Hidden”) and the Dardenne brothers (“The Child”) have new films in compe tition, as does – hurrah! – Hou Hsiao-Hsien (“Three Times”). Palme d’Or winner Gus Van Sant leans into his experimental second wind with a meditation on the “Last Days” of a Kurt Cobain-style rock star. Lars Von Trier will unleash “Manderlay,” his follow-up to “Dogville” and the second entry in a proposed “American” trilogy.

Staged in the antebellum South, Mr. Von Trier’s take on race relations in America is sure to provoke wildly different reactions and the most entertaining hyperbole of the festival. As his fear of flying has prevented the Danish provocateur from ever actually visiting America, we can only hope he takes a train to the Riviera to regale the press corps with his infamous grandstanding.

Whether or not critic’s darling Jim Jarmusch has a masterpiece on his hands with “Broken Flowers,” the paparazzi will be pleased: He’s single-handedly packing the Croisette with movie stars (Bill Murray, Sharon Stone, Jessica Lange, Tilda Swinton). Atom Egoyan’s cinemascope thriller “Where the Truth Lies,” described as a cross between “Marnie” and “Mulholland Drive,” is already generating buzz.

Among the wild cards are the directorial debut of Tommy Lee Jones (“The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada”), the sophomore effort from “Japon” director Carlos Reygadas (“Battle in the Sky”), and Marco Tullio Giordana’s follow-up to his slavishly praised “The Best of Youth.”

Every festivalgoer has their own most anticipated title, and for me it’s the latest by David Cronenberg. Adapted from a graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke, “The History of Violence” stars Viggo Mortensen as a small-town family man whose life is shaken up after an act of heroism thrusts him into the public eye. Mr. Cronenberg has compared the results to a John Ford Western. He could have compared it to “Soul Plane,” and I’d still have booked my flight to France.

Like Jerry Lewis before him, Woody Allen finds a more appreciative following in Paris than in Manhattan. Nevertheless, it’s conceivable that his London-set “Match Point” will prove the return to form that some thought he achieved with the doubly stupid “Melinda and Melinda.” Israeli director Amos Gitai makes his own attempt at a comeback with “Free Zone,” as does Wim Wenders with “Don’t Come Knocking.”

Having caught a pre-Cannes screening of “Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith,” I can’t say George Lucas is due for reappraisal, but the final entry in his mythic series is a vast improvements over its muddled predecessors. If only for the additional hysteria the movie will generate at this already wildly hysterical event, I’m looking forward to the stomp of Wookies on the Croisette.

Smarter franchise fare may be in store with a sneak peek at 20 minutes of “Land of the Dead,” George Romero’s much-hyped return to the newly chic zombie genre. This shameless chunk of publicity will screen after the documentary “Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream.”

Yet it’s in the margins of the festival programming that many of the best films at Cannes are to be found. This year’s clear winners include Kim Ki-Duk’s “Hwal” and Francois Ozon’s “Le Temps Qui Reste,” but the real discoveries are likely to be found in the dozen other unknown films invited to Un Certain Regard, the second-tier section.

Down the street from the Palais des Festivals, the epicenter of official screenings and events, the concurrent Director’s Fortnight seeks to complement (and occasionally one-up) the Cannes Festival proper. The Australian horror flick “Wolf Creek” arrives via Sundance with strong word of mouth, and Matt Dillon stars in an adaptation of Charles Bukowski’s “Factotum.”

I’m putting my euros on Joao Pedro Rodrigues’s “Odete” as the find of the Fortnight. His sexually explicit, formally adventurous, altogether extraordinary “O Fantasma” caused a stir in France but was ignored everywhere else. “Odete” should clarify whether that assured debut was a one-of-a-kind fluke or the first bold move of a major new talent.

With all this and literally hundreds of other movies storming through Cannes for the next two weeks, there’s more than enough to satisfy the spectators – even if we are, as Mr. Kusturica says, a “greedy, curious, and demanding” lot.