Thursday on the Croisette was D-day. D for decadence. Bright and early at 8:30 A.M. we got a menage a trois. 11 A.M. brought a heavy dose of Asia Argento and S & M. 2 P.M.-- happily I'd been fortified by lunch – served up mother/son incest plus matricide.

The menage a trois in question occurs early on in Competition entry Chansons d'Amour by Christophe Honore [pictured above], a pleasant, at times poignant operetta about young people in Paris enjoying, losing, and rediscovering love. Yes, I said operetta: when overcome by emotion, the characters burst into song. It's the only way they can express themselves, says Honore in the press notes. Trouble is the music barely rises above French-style Musak, with banal lyrics to match. In a nice touch, the boy-girl-girl trio romping through Paris pays homage to such New Wave classics as Jules and Jim. And Louis Garrel, of the great hair and demonic eyes, is always fascinating to watch. But he needs a director to dial down his narcissism.

Inspired by a news brief about a French financier murdered during an S & M session, Boarding Gate from Olivier Assayas elaborates the sordid portrait of global financiers explored to ill effect in his 2002 Demon Lover. The plot of Boarding beggars description. Essentially we watch Asia Argento, slut assoluta (that's a compliment) play S & M games with wide-body financier Michael Madsen, kill him, then escape to Hong Kong with the help of another lover, who may have set her up.

In the press notes Assayas claims that due to budget constraints, he shot the film on the cheap, adopting an appropriate B-movie esthetic. Guess he achieved his goal. Assayas is fascinated, rightly, by the skanky underbelly of the global economy. But his lurid, even romanticized image of kinky financiers seems to reflect more private obsession than reality. Most financiers I know get off on 80% return on investment or winning at doubles, not playing “snuff” and getting garotted by their own belt, while Asia Argento ... oh, never mind.

Topping off D-day was Tom Kalin's Savage Grace, a selection of the Director's Fortnight sidebar. It's based on the true story of Barbara Baekeland, who married up into the Bakelite plastics fortune. Husband Brooks seems to despise his gorgeous wife for being “low class” (Julianne Moore, in a wardrobe keyed to her coloring); and his son for being gay. Brooks runs off with son's theoretical g.f., leaving Moore and son in their own hothouse. Then Moore's “walker” b.f. seduces the son, and all three end up, giggling, in the same bed. It gets worse. You have to wonder what we're supposed to take away from a sicko psychodrama that's well acted (Moore gives it her best shot), but offers zero insight into what made these folks derail. Maybe the problem is that they never held an honest job.

Over a diet coke in the American Pavilion (I'm not a member and had to sneak in), I got to thinking. Friday's 3 D-movies share an intangible flaw: somewhere between intention and execution, the film loses credibility, even turns ridiculous (in fact, when Moore's character, after seducing her son, tells him, “You're the best,” the audience laughed). It's hard to poinpoint where it happens, but the falseness is fatal. Rather than engaging the viewer, the film virtually fades from the screen as you watch, becoming a phantom of the filmmaker's imagination.