Only one American film in competition? Filmmakers aren't trying hard enough. George Lucas has already been lowering our expectations; why not go a step further and change expectation? At least long enough to slide Indy under the Cannes door just in the nick of time, like the adventurous archaeologist he is. People are paying attention to Lucas leading up to the film's opening, so he has their ears. Tell them the movie is about a sixty-something man, reliving the travels of his youth, as he hallucinates Shia LaBoeuf into existence. That "crystal skull" thing is actually a metaphor for a world that Indy no longer understands, and maybe doesn't even want, even as he desperately seeks it out. As for that panda movie, frame it as an environmental statement about how the disappearance of its natural habitat have forced the hero to turn to fighting to make a living. Slap on an intro by eco-darling Al Gore and you've got a contender.

All right, neither of this is going to happen. I'm not really suggesting they should. But if we don't send more films to Cannes, we'll have to spend from May until the end of the Oscars listening to all the entertainment news show hosts as they try to pronounce synecdoche.