Yes, I’m a little late since Day 6 ended up stretching into Day 7 (not everything runs on time here, including me). But the last 12 hours have been eventful, marking the premieres of two new major American titles, the first of which featured a shot of Gwyneth Paltrow’s exposed left breast. Has someone informed Mr. Skin?

And that’s not the sole reason that James Gray’s Two Lovers — which had the late screening on Monday — trumps Clint Eastwood’s The Exchange. Much loved by the French and rather less so by the rest of the world, Gray’s films can be hard to take — his cop thriller We Own the Night was one of the most divisive movies last year, earning as many passionate supporters as it did player-haters for its faux-'40s take. Two Lovers returns him to the Brighton Beach setting of his debut Little Odessa — it’s a small-scaled tale starring Joaquin Phoenix as a depressed young man who ends up torn between a woman who’s good for him (Vinessa Shaw) and one who’s just as damaged as he is (Paltrow). With an evenly balanced tragicomic tone that evokes the best of Paul Mazursky and Elaine May (it couldn’t be more New York-y), the movie is so beautifully poised and carefully controlled that it’s hard not to feel that Gray’s finally fulfilled the immense promise he exhibited by The Yards. So mannered in recent roles, Phoenix contributes the most nuanced and heartbreaking performance of the fest so far. Indeed, he nails it so well, it’s hard not to deem Angelina Jolie’s lead turn in Eastwood’s flick as so much Oscar-bait showboating.

The Exchange — which was called Changeling up until a few days ago, a title already used for a George C. Scott horror pic that still plays on late-night TV every other week as if to fulfill some obscure Can-Con requirement — tells the real-life story of how a missing-child case ended up exposing abuses of power by the LAPD in the late 1920s. Playing the boy’s mother — who is shocked when the cops force her to accept the word of an impostor who swears he’s the missing kid — Jolie is effective in the early scenes but the starchy period feel and J. Michael Straczynski’s by-the-numbers script soon reduce the film to a series of clips for future Academy Awards nomination reels. Adding to the air of opportunity missed are the provocative strains of political allegory about unchecked government authority (the misdeeds of the era’s LAPD are hardly anomalous) and a sense of unease about the limitations of knowledge that were front and centre in David Fincher’s Zodiac but clumsily shunted aside here. Eastwood’s movie just doesn’t convince. Sorry, Cleent. Maybe the French will love it anyway.

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