Veteran Actor Trintignant’s Talk of the Town : Cannes report: The French star is showcased in two films, ‘Three Colors: Red’ and ‘Regarde Les Hommes Tomber.’

Although its imperturbable director insists that it realizes only 35% of his intentions (as opposed to 30% for the rest of his films), Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Three Colors: Red” looks to be the surest bet to win at least one Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, if not for film or director then at least for best actor for French veteran Jean-Louis Trintignant.

But for Trintignant, the role of a misanthropic judge whose life changes when a young model (Irene Jacob) runs over his dog, was challenging “only in the technical sense; I never had a problem understanding my role or understanding the story.” With his other film at Cannes, “Regarde Les Hommes Tomber” (“See How They Fall”), a mesmerizing film noir that opened the Critic’s Week section, the story was entirely different.

For though he has starred in more than 100 films, including Claude Lelouch’s “A Man and a Woman,” Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Conformist” and Eric Rohmer’s “My Night at Maude’s,” Trintignant admits that he’s never had a part anything like the surly, violent conman named Marx in director Jacques Audiard’s debut film.

Speaking through a translator, Trintignant acknowledged that Kieslowski was “a director with very precise ideas, much more demanding. With certain moments, even with the rhythms of speech, which Kieslowski wanted faster than my Southern manner, he knows exactly what he wants.”

With “Regarde,” however, “the challenges were of a psychological order. I found the character much harder to understand, and I was very frightened during the filming. I was worried I would not be able to act the person, that I wouldn’t be realistic.

“It was all the more difficult because I’m quite well known in a certain way, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be believable, that the audience wouldn’t be able to forget that they’re watching an actor.”

However with “Regarde” a hot ticket for French audiences here (it has yet to find an American distributor), Trintignant has relaxed. “I’ve seen the film. I think it is a good film and that I’ve given a good performance,” he says quietly. “Now I’m not worried.”

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“Unfortunately, my name is Paul,” says P.J. Hogan, the writer and director of “Muriel’s Wedding.” Unfortunately because in Australia, “Crocodile Dundee” made another Paul Hogan into a kind of national symbol.

“I’m too stubborn to change it,” says this Hogan, smiling. “But I tell everyone I’m his love child. Maybe he’ll believe it and leave me some money. Anyway, I believe we can coexist in the film world. We’ll have to.”

After the tumultuous reception “Muriel’s Wedding” has received at Cannes, Hogan will no longer have to worry about the confusion. An uproarious tale of an ugly duckling who is fixated past the point of sanity on getting married, “Wedding” is the comic crowd-pleaser of the festival so far.

“I’m interested in life’s outsiders, and it was liberating to put someone as gauche as Muriel, who wears a fake leopard-skin dress to a wedding, on screen,” Hogan says. But because “actresses are so devoted to perfection in look,” until he met the fearless Toni Collette, “I couldn’t give this part away.”

If being confused with the other Paul weren’t enough, Hogan is married to director Jocelyn Moorhouse, whose “Proof” was one of the most impressive of recent Australian films and who served as co-producer on “Muriel.”

“Jocelyn says that I bring out her humor and she brings out my eccentricity,” Hogan says. “Before she met me, she used to make very Bergmanesque short films, uncontaminated by humor of any sort. And though I’m drawn to comedy, she’s gotten me to go deeper.”

Deeper for “Muriel” means a dark edge to the proceedings that Hogan says he had to fight to keep. “I abhor sentimentality,” he says decisively. “There’s nothing worse than a film that comes up and licks you.”

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Some films, perfect gems though they are, have a hard time making it out of film festivals, and the Polish “Wrony” (“Crows”) may be one of them. Only 66 minutes and made for a big sounding but really tiny budget of 6 million zloty (approximately $300,000), it is a beautifully assured, poetic look at a day in the life of two small girls in the Polish city of Torun.

“That’s Copernicus’ birthplace,” volunteers writer-director Dorota Kedzierzawska through a translator. Age 36 and herself the daughter of a female director, Kedzierzawska first began writing “Wrony” because “I wanted to do something with my daughter so I wouldn’t miss her while I was away shooting. But before the money could be found, she was old enough that she didn’t want to do it.”

To find “Wrony’s” leads, Kedzierzawska looked at more than 2,000 children, and then found that the two selected wanted to leave the picture within a week. The two charming girls selected ended up being found on very short notice and the director, whose second film about children this is, says dealing with them “is easier for me than working with some adults. They are more open, more direct, though you have to be very patient.”

And what does Kedzierzawska’s mother the director think about “Wrony”? “She loves it,” comes the bashful answer.

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One of the most fascinating characters in Kayo Hatta’s “Picture Bride,” the evocative story of the trials of a Japanese mail-order wife in 1918 Hawaii, is that of the benshi , a traveling narrator who would supply the verbal accompaniment to silent films.

“They were often a bigger attraction than the on-screen people,” says Hatta, a graduate of UCLA’s film school. “Kurosawa’s brother was a benshi , and when the silent era ended, he committed suicide.”

Though it seemed like “a total fantasy,” Hatta’s first choice to play the benshi was legendary Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune. And though he didn’t reply to her letter for five months, Mifune, who has ties to Hawaii, agreed to take the part.

“I was initially intimidated, thinking, ‘What am I doing directing Mifune in my first film?’ ” Hatta remembers. “But he wasn’t gruff and unapproachable at all. He would really listen carefully, even furrowing his eyebrows. And if he couldn’t remember his lines, he would knock himself on the head and say, ‘Oh, I’m getting old.’ ”

One of Hatta’s most memorable Mifune moments came even before the shooting began. “He had had Tojo, the big Japanese studio, make him a costume appropriate for a benshi , and he called us to his hotel room to see it. Mifune is a very precise man, he held up each garment and explained how it was cut, how it was worn, how it was supposed to hang. The whole presentation must have taken about an hour. He turned it into a ceremony.”