CANNES, France — Today marks the first full week of the Cannes Film Festival, and there's plenty of buzz about possible front-runners.

Not that popular opinion matters all that much, since the winner of the Palme d'Or is decided by a nine-person jury. But still ... nothing beats a good "I told you so" at the end of a competition.

Early favorites include the UK's emotional thriller We Need to Talk About Kevin, with Tilda Swinton giving a performance that's "getting talked about" far more than the her character's psychologically-disturbed son Kevin. A heartwarming immigrant fairytale from Finland, Le Havre, is also popular, as is the spectacular black-and-white silent film The Artist (which yours truly will be reviewing later on this week).

The festival goers expect great things out of the Cannes alumni who are here in force: the Dardenne Brothers with The Kid with a Bike and Pedro Almodóvar with The Skin I Live In. While Almodóvar's film doesn't screen until tomorrow, and scheduling conflicts prevented this reviewer's attending of The Kid with a Bike, let's take a look at three other, prior Cannes contenders and their offerings:

--- The Tree of Life, written and directed by Terrence Malick

The only American entry in the top category, The Tree of Life marks a long-awaited return for prior winner Malick (Best Director, 1979's Days of Heaven). Starring Brad Pitt as a 1950's patriarch who believes in rigid discipline above all, he and Jessica Chastain's muted housewife raise their three boys in a perfectly-depicted Texas suburb.

The costumes, lighting and production values are so evocative, you can almost feel the summer's nighttime humidity closing in.

But just as the drama heats up between the family members, whoosh, we're spirited away by a spectral light show into worlds prehistoric and fantastical. Doggie dinosaurs crouch in lush forests. There's a planet. A cave. Amoebas mate. Water rushes. Think a gorgeously photographed show at the local planetarium. Seriously.

Now consider yourself trapped in said nature show for 1.5 of the 2.5 hours. Since this is the The Tree of Life, then, darn it, we're going to explore every limb since time immemorial. Malick scrambles the concept of story, his characters whispering voice-over prayers up to God rather than dealing with each other.

We want to pray as well, begging Malick to reconsider. To let us spend some time with what looks to be some fascinating characters. But no ... there's some rain falling over here, or a sunflower growing over there ... obviously much too riveting to miss.

* Rating on a scale of 5 trees falling in the forest: 2

--- Melancholia, written and directed by Lars von Trier

Oddly enough, this film is filled with otherworldly planetary drama as well. But in this case, there's a point.

Kirsten Dunst plays a bride who suddenly turns from blushing to deeply depressed on her wedding night. It turns out that she's got more than a difficult family on her mind ... and when the band plays Fly Me to the Moon, she alone knows that the lyric is far more prophetic than the rest of the revelers understand.

A few days later, while the scientific community and her brother-in-law (a marvelous Kiefer Sutherland) strenuously argue to the contrary, the bride's got a strong sense that the rogue planet Melancholia is hurling straight at us.

Divided into two parts, the film zeroes in on Dunst's relationship with her sister (a deeply affecting Charlotte Gainsbourg) as the two of them come to terms with each other and their mortality.

With operatic, over-the-top orchestrations (von Trier cranked the volume to ear-boggling levels with Wagner's Tristan and Isolde), visual images that will leave you breathless, and a revelatory performance by Dunst, this film by prior Cannes multiple award-winner von Trier is nothing short of an epic masterpiece. Whether or not it takes the prize, it's a cinematic treasure you'll probably want to view a second time around. That is, if there's time.

* Rating on a scale of 5 bangs and whimpers: 4.5

--- Restless, directed by Gus Van Sant, written by Jason Lew

With this, his fifth appearance at Cannes, Gus Van Sant got the nod to open the secondary film category of "Un Certain Regard."

It's not that the performances by Mia Wasikowska and Henry Hopper (looking for all the world like a retro version of his famous dad Dennis) are weak. The actors are simply hampered by a silly script.

The story by first-time screenwriter Jason Lew is embarrassingly sentimental, a monotonous Harold and Maude meets Love Story. It's an, ahem, grave Boy Meets Girl: he's got an obsession with funerals and she's that cute girl with terminal cancer. She's beyond perky in the face of death; so much so, we long to see just one crack in her go-to guise of "chipper."

While local Oregonians will enjoy the frequent location shots of Portland, recognizing familiar landmarks does not a movie make. Hopper was a painter before he took on this role ... given the film's early negative reactions at Cannes, he may be returning to the paintbrush sooner than expected.

* Rating on a scale of 5 kisses of death: 2