“The Cannes festival is, famously, the keeper of the flame of the auteur tradition. … Since the turn of the millennium, only two winners of the Palme d’Or have been literary adaptations: Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, and Laurent Cantet’s The Class. … This year, however, things are different: it is a bookworm’s Cannes, with directors as likely to have had their noses buried in novels as dreaming up original ideas.”