The illegitimate love child of The 400 Blows, Naked Childhood is secretly the better film: its imprint of pre-teen adolescence certainly a more cosmic remembrance of childhood to Truffant’s very particular and personal memoir of embattled youth. It also feels encapsulated in time, quite unlike the petulant Antoine Doinel, whose adventures over 3 1/2 subsequent films petered out into cinema’s equivalent of 42 Up. The boy in Pialat’s film, 10-year-old Francois, is a little terror, hurling scrap metal from a highway overpass, throwing a switchblade at his foster brother, and dropping a cat down a stairwell. At times glazing over into a possessed stare, the kid could be Damien’s long lost brother for all we know, and his tantrums are no less than demonic (his bedroom door bearing the brunt of it). And yet he is capable of genuine tenderness, forging an affectionate bond with the plucky grandmother of his elderly (and stoic) foster parents. These, and other moments of mutual appreciation, are the film’s best and sincerest scenes. Pialat, in his first feature, observes with an air of clarity – something he would perfect 23 years later in his penultimate film, the lucid Van Gogh.

Once the chubby-faced rascal of martial arts cinema, Jet Li’s purported last excursion into the genre is a strange endnote indeed. In Fearless, he plays the same folk hero role of a thousand other wushu pictures: another Zhang San Feng, another Fong Sai Yuk, another Wong Fei Hong, rebuilt with all the 21st-century trimmings. All rather uninteresting, if not for a glimpse into Li’s dark potential. As champion wushu exponent Huo Yuanjia, Li initially spends much of his time beating opponents to a pulp: arms are broken, fingers are snapped in half, and pretenders are dispatched with all the cocky ruthlessness of an amoral kung fu villain. Recalling the rare mean streak Li fashioned in Lethal Weapon 4, the film climaxes at its halfway point with a brutal fight to the death, only to bend over backwards and reform Huo’s murderous ways, and any hope of a showpiece finale in the process. Righteous to the end, if this is Li’s martial arts swan song, then he sure missed the boat: a prospective "bad guy" in the making (and a shot at career reinvention), the opportunity now seems all but lost.

Meanwhile, over at the Shortbus, Ashton Kutcher’s gay twin brother has the star-spangled banner recited up his ass, and some sad flexible fuck tries desperately to suck his own dick. Sex is comedy in John Cameron Mitchell’s placard for the orgasm, but apart from the slapstick intercourse, there’s really nothing new (sexually) going on here that we haven't seen in a movie before. Much of the film’s marketed explicitness is premature to say the least, but it’s all so jocular from the word go that the anticipation of titillation quickly dissipates, and when there is sucking and fucking, it’s mere wallpaper. This is Mitchell reclaiming screen intercourse if anything; even neutering it as a gimmick for arousal or shock value. Princess may be the self-proclaimed anti-porn film of the festival, but Shortbus takes that title in my book.—Tim Wong