The festival strikes back

The lean years are over," announced Gilles Jacob, the éminence grise of Cannes, just before the 2005 festival began. But two or three days into the programme, many of us wondered what he meant. Not for the first time, the opening film, Dominic Moll's psychological thriller, was a disappointment, and what came after wasn't much better

Meanwhile, the Brits have been pacing the Croisette in droves, with nothing much in the official programme - except for Thomas Clay's The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael, in Critics' Week, which caused a fuss over the graphic rape in its last reel.

But as we approach the final stretch, and bleary-eyed critics fight off sleep in important competition screenings that start at the unamiable time of 8.30am, the general opinion seems to be that Monsieur Jacob, who ran the festival for a decade, might be right.

The film that woke us all up was by Michael Haneke, the Austrian director of the controversial Funny Games and The Piano Teacher. Hidden is his best work to date: a brilliantly controlled study of guilt that taps eloquently into contemporary neuroses.

It is about a middle-class and successful French couple, Georges and Anne (Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche), who receive a package containing a video tape of covert images taken of their home and the street in Paris where they live. The videos, wrapped in drawings of a bloodied chicken's head, keep coming and grow ever more personal.

Georges has his suspicions - could it be something to do with Majid, an Algerian boy who lived with his family when they were both young?

Mysterious phone calls worry the pair still further and they start to quarrel. Meanwhile, Georges visits the now grown-up Majid, to face him down. But he denies everything, and the videos continue to arrive.

We never discover who sent them but that's not the point of Haneke's terrifically scary study. It's about those guilty secrets which pursue us, sometimes into the grave. If Hidden doesn't receive a major prize, there will be a great deal of booing on Saturday when the coveted Palme d'Or is awarded by a jury headed by the decidedly eccentric Serbian Emir Kusturica - himself a double winner at Cannes.

Another candidate for honours is The Child, by Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Darbenne. They won the Palme d'Or in 1999 with Rosetta. Back then, hardly anybody had seen their film, thinking that a small movie from Belgium was unlikely to be a contender. Now the brothers are European celebrities, and there's a definite buzz about them.

Their film follows two povertystricken youngsters: Sonia, 18, has a baby by Bruno, who is 20. They live off Sonia's benefit and the thefts committed by Bruno and his gang. Then Bruno goes too far and sells the baby; Sonia slams the door in his face. Even when he manages to get the child back, Sonia won't speak to him. But he's now obsessed with being a father.