CANNES, France – Everybody knows you have to travel to the film festival in Cannes to see the finest cinema in the world, but who knew Woody Allen would have to go to London to make his best film since “Deconstructing Harry”? By late afternoon on Wednesday, word was here out that “Match Point” would prove a return to form for our great oyteur, so first thing Thursday morning the New York press corps – and about 2,000 others – staggered into the gigantic Lumiere theater to see for ourselves.

Conventional to the core, “Match Point” is nevertheless a constant surprise: From the BBC logo that precedes the film, to the absence of regular Allen crew members in the credit sequence, to the shocking display of actual characters, a decent narrative, and smart writing, this isn’t the kind of Woody Allen picture we’ve become accustomed to in the last decade. Setting the film in London forced Mr. Allen to imagine something other than twenty-something versions of himself strolling the West Village while name-dropping Chekhov and Strindberg.

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers stars as a former tennis pro turned social-climbing instructor, who gets involved with the daughter of an upper class British family. Tensions rise with the appearance of Holly (Scarlett Johansson), an aspiring actress engaged to the family’s son. The ensuing narrative plays like a 19th-century novel of adultery, class resentments, crime, and tragic irony. Characteristically, Mr. Allen can’t help flaunting his shallow erudition – a paperback of “Crime and Punishment” looms large – but he’s aired out the suffocating solipsism of his recent oeuvre and remembered how to pen incisive, witty dialogue.

“Match Point” is well enough played to distract you from noticing the essential banality of its literary schematic. Still, I’d much rather watch Mr. Allen crib from Thackeray than Bergman – or himself. “Melinda and Melinda” suggested just how redundant Mr. Allen’s movies were becoming, but “Match Point” proves the old geezer’s got a fresh serve in him yet.

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Paris may be the official City of Light, but for the two weeks in May nowhere else on earth glitters and shines like Cannes. Spotlights bristle over the harbor like luminescent spears; champagne flutes sparkle on hotel balconies; movie stars scintillate on the red-carpet ascent to the Lumiere. Slightly less glamorous, but far more relevant to my personal Cannes experience, a citronella candle stays perpetually lit on my kitchen sink in what has proved to be insufficient (but pretty!) defense against the mosquitoes invading my Old Town sublet.

Then there is the light of the projection in the grand theaters of the Palais des Festivals, which for clarity, scale, and brilliance of color make the Ziegfeld look like Cinema Village. Jet lag is the least of a film critic’s problems when returning home; withdrawal from the technical perfection at Cannes leaves you desperate for a fix.

This year, another kind of light is pervasive in Cannes: the electric pulse of the hyper-wired crowd. Cell phones ring so often during screenings that hardly anyone bothers to shush their owners anymore, but this year I find it even more annoying that everyone is getting their text message on with the least possible discretion. It’s like a swarm of robot fireflies have decided to nest in the Palais.

Low-fi paraphernalia is just as bad. All throughout the screening of “Lemming” on opening day an elderly French woman on my right made constant use of her flashlight pen, an idiotic note-taking aid considered beyond de trop by every critic of my acquaintance. Click click click: What on earth could this gauche Gaul so desperately need to remember? Exactly how stupid the movie was?

Later that night I found myself sitting to the right of another flashlight pen; they must be handing them out at the French Pavilion. On my left, a pair of obnoxious industry types from Manhattan were checking their BlackBerrys every five minutes and scribbling furiously into their PDAs. For a moment, I considered donning the hood of my sweatshirt to block it out, but as I suffered through Kim Ki-duk’s “The Bow,” I accepted the ambient glow as the more enlightening of the two visual phenomena in the room.

Mr. Kim (“3-Iron”) has set his latest pretentious romantic parable entirely on a boat as if to acknowledge that his brain is now hopelessly out to sea. A crusty old man (Jeon Sung-Hwan) welcomes young fishermen to his barge, but attacks them with a bow and arrow when they hit on his 16 year-old assistant and bride-to-be (Han Teo-Reum). She is mute and obedient, but begins to resist control when a handsome young man (Seo Ji-Seok) catches her fancy. Inert drama, inept metaphor, and reactionary sexual politics ensue.

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I wondered where Tsai Ming-Liang would go after “Goodbye Dragon Inn,” a masterly distillation of his emotional and formal concerns. His next film was reported to pick up the narrative line begun in “What Time Is It There?” and continued in the “The Skywalk Is Gone.” At the end of that short film, a watch vendor played by Lee Kang-Shen auditioned for a porno. Now, in “The Wayward Cloud,” we get the graphic story of his employment in the adult entertainment industry, along with all the usual Tsai obsessions (water symbolism, urban melancholy, triangulated desire).

By “we,” I don’t exactly mean the attendees of the Cannes Film Festival; the new film by Taiwan’s art house titan is nowhere in the official program. I caught “The Wayward Cloud” at a “Market” screening in one of the town’s local movie theaters. Officially off limits to the press, films in the market are accessible in practice so long as there’s room. There was a lot of room at this one. Most of the buyers had already seen it at the Berlin festival, where critical word of mouth had been mediocre to withering.

“The Wayward Cloud” may be a sequel to “What Time Is It There?” but fans of that picture’s suave, minimalist whimsy are sure to be put off by the tougher, bleaker, far less forgiving territory explored here. I’m not entirely sure it works; this is the kind of movie that needs a couple days to sink in.

What it is assuredly not, however, is the work of an artist coasting on his trademark style. Mr. Tsai is venturing into new places, testing out new methods, regarding his static universe from new perspectives. In the shadows off the Croisette, Cannes has posed its first bold vision and major challenge.