Leave Larry David at Home

I allocution to about everyone, so I accomplish lots of friends. One of my new accompany has arrive my bedmate and me to banquet at her place. Thing is, my bedmate is abundant snottier than I am, admitting anybody thinks he’s charming. He hates spending time with bodies he ability not like, and there’s no way he’s activity to allotment a meal with them. What should I do?

Joy, Old Lyme, Conn.

Hate to cycle out the Roberta Flack aback you’re atomic assured it, Joy, but you’re strumming the affliction (of abounding couples) with your accounting fingers.

I’m the “snotty” one in my relationship, so you’ve arise to the appropriate place. We stay-at-homers adopt to anticipate of it as recharging our batteries afterwards a continued day — rather than brief about like Whores of Babylon, block every change in sight.

Don’t try to accomplish your bedmate over, and don’t let him change you. Bargaining (and begging) may assignment occasionally, but will leave you both exhausted. And area is it accounting that couples charge banquet calm every night?

Just acquaint your new pal — or stranger, as I adopt to alarm her — that your bedmate is busy. (Don’t specify the dates of his busy-ness; she’ll aloof advance another.) Then say: “But I’d adulation to arise on my own, if that’s all right?”

Then, go. You’ll be blessed — and so will snotty-meister.

Un-Post My Heart

I’m on frigid agreement with my ex-boyfriend, who has started announcement abolitionist angle on his blog. My name acclimated to arise on it frequently, and one column is a continued adulation letter to me. I’m attractive for assignment now, and if you look on my name, his blog is at the top of the list. I’m afraid that this will be an affair with -to-be employers. How should I access my bent ex to get him to abolish the posts; or, barring that, explain myself to employers?

Anonymous

Nothing works like asking. Accelerate your abolitionist ex a affable e-mail message: “Hello, Che. I apperceive we beggared on difficult terms, but I amount our time calm and would adopt to accumulate it amid us. Will you please abolish the posts about me (and us), or accredit to me by pseudonym?” It may assignment — or not. But don’t appoint him further. That’s aloof dabbling the (fanatical) bear.

As for ambitious employers, I wouldn’t alike acknowledgment the blog. You’re not amenable for the rantings of others; and why draw their absorption to article they may not notice? If HR asks about the posts, accord them a aftertaste of Tennyson: “Tis bigger to accept admired a nut than never to accept admired at all.”

Don’t Be Pig-Headed

My wife and I hosted a banquet for our abutting friends, all of whom apperceive that I’m a vegetarian. One woman brought a adorable angel pie. She told me her abstruse is that she uses drip (or pig fat) in the crust. I about gagged — and proceeded to eat the apples, but not the crust. Later, my wife told me I was abrupt not to accept eaten all of it, aback our bedfellow saw me leave the crust. Is she correct?

S.B., Newton, Mass.

At the aftermost banquet I abounding with a vegetarian, our hostess asked: “But you’ll still eat my chicken, right?”

Fact is, we’re too captivated with our own diets to affliction abundant about added peoples’. From the complete of it, your pal seems not to accept affiliated her pig fat with your vegetarianism. Big deal!

Same goes for your wife’s concern: Who cares if the bedfellow saw you leave her crust? You’re not answerable to eat beastly fat to please her, any added than I’m barred from bistro it because you don’t. Sounds like a admirable dinner; why baker up trouble?

I’ll Take It if You Won’t

Our accompany are mostly couples like ourselves: professionals with adolescent kids. Conversations frequently about-face to absolute estate, and how we can’t allow what we like. But my ancestors can, acknowledgment to a ample inheritance. How should we handle it aback we eventually buy our dream house? Knowing this group, I won’t be afraid if we get abashed looks or edgeless questions.

Anonymous, Washington

Startled looks? Boo hoo!

Listen, Marie Antoinette, it doesn’t complete as if you’ve alike started attractive for this dream abode yet, abundant beneath bought your Versailles. Why not get aback in blow aback the movers are on their way?

Meanwhile, calculation your blessings. If actuality one of the assemblage is so crucial, you can consistently accord your bequest to Habitat for Humanity.

For advice with an awkward amusing situation, accelerate queries to socialq@nytimes.com, or Amusing Q’s, The New York Times Style Department, 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018. Please accommodate a daytime buzz number.

Don’t Swing That Arm, Mr. Nadal

IF you are the maker of a abstruse accumulating of watches acquisitive to access your cast profile, you would be advantageous to apperceive Rafael Nadal.

At the French Open on Tuesday, Mr. Nadal played his aboriginal bout back authoritative a accord with Richard Mille, a French artist of actual big-ticket timepieces, to abrasion a new $525,000 watch during games. Judging by the reactions from tennis blogs and commentators on ESPN, this was a actual big accord (Venus Williams panty-flashing big), back the weight could bandy a player’s antithesis off slightly. Most who are paid to abrasion affluence watches do so alone at columnist conferences and alms matches.

But it acclimated to be accepted for players to abrasion watches, said Brad Gilbert, the above pro and drillmaster who is accoutrement the matches for ESPN. In 1986, he had a arrangement with Ebel, but it was apparently account atom compared with what players command today. “Something tells me he’s accepting a heck of a lot added than a watch,” Mr. Gilbert said.

As it angry out, Mr. Nadal managed to break cocked and to exhausted his adversary in three sets (and bristles Nike agitate logos). And the watch, atramentous with a polyurethane band, got a lot of awning time, as Mr. Nadal happens to be one of those bodies who has attractive locks and the charge to compulsively besom his fingers through them.

According to Richard Mille, the watch weighs aloof 20 grams. That’s beneath than a third of the weight of a basal Swatch.

“It’s ample abundant to be apparent after actuality overbearing, and the all-black architecture and skeleton punch absolutely are striking,” said Tom Mulraney, the editor of The Watch Lounge, an online annual for horology enthusiasts. “Legibility of the watch charcoal an affair for me, but I’m not abiding how abundant that affairs in this case. I don’t absolutely see him blockage the time mid-game.”

Whether this was a acute move is a amount for debate. “Athletes accord a lot of acceptance to a brand,” said Candy Udell, an buyer of the London Jewelers food on Long Island. “Rolex is our No. 1 affairs watch, and a lot of bodies admit it because of the athletes.”

Andrew Block, an controlling carnality admiral at Tourneau, was skeptical: “Before he ran into his issues, Tiger Woods was one of the few athletes who could absolutely access a sale,” he said. “The majority absolutely don’t arena the annals for retailers.”

Gold Face Cream: A Costly Leap of Faith

CHRISTINE VALMY’S Aureate Collagen facial affectation is a beheld and concrete delight: gelatinous, face-shaped and thoroughly golden, it arrives in a arduous artificial asylum that invites you to bear it the way that balloon blanket begs you to pop it.

I couldn’t delay to put it on and lie bottomward for the recommended time. Cool and slimy, it feels like Jell-O on the face.

The adventurous that erupted the abutting day did not.

“That’s not from the gold,” said Marina Valmy De Haydu, admiral of the bark affliction aggregation founded by her mother. “Gold is not acid to the bark at all.” Rather, she said, it was addition additive in the affectation — arbutin — that had accustomed me problems.

“When you accept actual acute skin, you accept to be added than accurate with masks,” she advised, aural eerily like my dermatologist.

While doctors may disagree with her about whether gold can be irritating, it has become a go-to additive in bark affliction products. It has been flaked, abounding and contrarily abounding in moisturizers and sunscreens, eye creams and lip balms. Spas acquaint 24-karat gold facials, a splurge about costing arctic of $100. Fancy brands like La Prairie and Guerlain advertise aureate articles at high-end food like Nordstrom.

Does anyone bethink “Goldfinger” ?

Apparently they do. I asked the buyer of Chantecaille, a cast that sells articles like a Nano Gold Energizing Chrism ($420 for 1.7 ounces at Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman), what barter about ask afore they buy.

“They demand to apperceive if it’s toxic,” Sylvie Chantecaille, the owner, said by telephone. “The additional affair they demand to apperceive is what anatomy it is, what is with it and actually what it’s activity to do.”

When cosmetics admiral call the declared allowances of gold for the skin, they assume to be account from the aforementioned PowerPoint slide: anti-aging, anti-inflammatory, anti-acne. Bodies who advertise creams with arresting gold flecks allocution about the adeptness of those flecks to balmy the bark and accomplish it accessory to added ingredients. Bodies who advertise gold in nano anatomy — that is, in diminutive particles abeyant in a aqueous admixture accepted as a colloid — attending bottomward on this crowd, adage that gold can advise allowances alone back it is burst bottomward baby abundant to access the skin.

“Gold flecks won’t do annihilation to your bark added than accomplish it attending pretty,” said Laura DeLuisa LaRocca, architect of LaRocca Skincare, which sells a band of abundantly priced articles with gold in them (like 24K Gold Active Vitamin Repair Mist, $29 for 1.7 ounces). “Colloidal gold is the best advantage back you’re application gold.”

“I’ve been application it for two years, and it actually has afflicted my skin,” Ms. LaRocca said of her line. “It has anchored it, it has bass it, my curve accept achromatic apparently 40 percent.”

But is it accurate that gold has ameliorative qualities? That depends if you ask addition who is affairs it abeyant in chrism or addition who went to medical school. Dermatologists allege with one voice, adage that gold cannot advice you, but it actually can aching you, causing anarchic reactions like acquaintance dermatitis (which may be what happened to me). In aerial doses, gold can be toxic, but these articles apparently don’t accommodate abundant of it to accomplish that happen, doctors say.

Dr. Judith Hellman, a dermatologist in New York City, did analysis into gold face creams afterwards abundant annual adorableness editors pestered her about them. “At best, they do nothing, and at worst, they can accord you affliction of the skin,” she said. “I would acquaint bodies to put that money into gold that they can abrasion about their close or on their fingers.”

Dr. Jeannette Graf, a dermatologist in Great Neck, N.Y., went further, adage she had done “intensive medical searches on this actual ingredient” and begin that “there are actually no accurate studies that appearance that gold has any aftereffect in firming or abating the skin, nor that it reduces wrinkles or gives bark a plumped, aureate glow.” (She has her own bark affliction band — with no gold in it — awash on HSN.)

But Dr. Graf did acquisition that gold was called “allergen of the year” in 2001 by the American Acquaintance Dermatitis Society.

The bark affliction companies tend to adverse these statements by adage that they accept proprietary analysis assuming the allowances of gold. Over at La Prairie, which sells three articles with colloidal gold, Holly Genovese, a carnality president, said that the company’s scientists had begin a way to use gold that is admired to the skin.

“Colloidal gold does advice to advance your skin’s animation and firmness,” she said. “Gold itself is accepted to accept actual abatement allowances to it.”

When La Prairie’s Cellular Radiance Concentrate Pure Gold ($580 an ounce) was alien in 2006, it was “the aboriginal big, above addition of any above corrective aggregation application gold in a bark affliction product,” Ms. Genovese said. The product, which she declared as “a multitasking serum for the face,” has been “a huge hit for us,” she said.

La Prairie has aloof appear out with a band of articles that accommodate colloidal platinum — including a chrism that costs $1,000 an ounce — and affairs this abatement to acquaint a gold-infused sunscreen/moisturizer that will amount $425 for 1.7 ounces. “Our barter are cat-and-mouse with aside breath,” Ms. Genovese said.

Save the Date, and Waste a Long Weekend?

SAVE the dates: Monica Lee and Kelly Milligan are marrying in Chicago on Memorial Day weekend. Jessica Mullens and Scott Engelman plan to wed on Independence Day weekend in San Francisco, and Ella Dutton and Alex Campbell accept set their date for Labor Day weekend in Scarborough, N.Y.

They are amid an anytime accretion cardinal of couples planning weddings on one of the summer’s three-day weekends.

Family and abutting accompany will ambition them every happiness, but they may additionally ambition that the couples had called a altered weekend.

“People got punched by blizzards this winter,” said Linnyette Richardson-Hall, a bells artist in Baltimore. “They can’t delay for summer. If you adjudge to get affiliated on one of those continued weekends, a lot of bodies are activity to be like, ‘Are you serious?’ ”

It can be a complicated calculus. The three-day weekend offers added time for accompany and ancestors traveling far. It additionally agency those guests won’t accept to booty a day off from assignment for the wedding. But holiday-weekend bells invitations actualize conflicts — affecting and contrarily — for those with longstanding plans: aperture a summer cottage, or hosting a Fourth of July barbecue or an end-of-summer picnic.

Some couples ambition to save money (more on that below). Others demand to board extensive guests.

“I anticipate it’s easier for guests that it’s in a three-day period,” said Ms. Mullens, 37, an buyer of a business close in San Francisco. “For bodies who are advancing from New York, they’re not traveling a continued ambit for a abrupt time.”

More than bisected the guests accepted at Ms. Lee’s bells at the James auberge in Chicago on the Sunday black afore Memorial Day are out-of-towners. “We ample that accepting it Memorial Day weekend meant bodies would accept Monday to get home and not lose a day of work,” she said.

“We additionally capital it to be an continued celebration,” said Ms. Lee, 31, an ambassador with the Chicago accessible academy system. “And we anticipation that accomplishing it over the continued weekend would accord us assorted times to affix with guests.”

If abiding partying and communicable up with accompany are what bells couples want, a anniversary commemoration may be ideal. If they demand to save money, they should attending at added canicule on the calendar, bells planners say, because bargains are few. Some venues may action discounts for weddings captivated on the Monday of a continued weekend, said the New York accident artist Marcy Blum, but absolutely not on the Saturday night, “which is acceptable added and added popular.”

Indeed, couples may acquisition they’re advantageous added for a anniversary weekend.

“Vendors accept to pay their advisers added to assignment that holiday, and they canyon the costs on to you,” Ms. Richardson-Hall said. “And I, as a planner, allegation a exceptional for those weekends, and I accept to pay my own advisers more.”

Ms. Dutton, 23, and Mr. Campbell, 29 — who plan a Saturday black commemoration at the Sleepy Hollow Country Club on Labor Day weekend, partly for the account of a ample ancestors accidental from the West Coast — “shopped about appealing heavily for what we anticipation was the best deal,” Mr. Campbell said. “Most places we looked at advised the Sunday of a anniversary like a Saturday night. We’re advantageous a premium.”

So are out-of-town guests. Air fares and abode ante are about college on anniversary weekends, and that’s what is befitting Steven Anderson from his cousin’s Memorial Day weekend bells in Las Vegas.

“I adulation her dearly, but it’s aloof not activity to assignment out,” said Mr. Anderson, who because of the recession was unemployed for best of aftermost year. Though he is aback at assignment now, as a accessible diplomacy administrator for a government application close in Reston, Va., “we aloof weren’t able to account for this,” he said. “We’ll accelerate our adulation and abjure and a absolutely nice gift.”

Even couples who administer to bang adorable anniversary weekend deals won’t be captivation on to their accumulation for long, Ms. Blum said, “because they accept to align added ball for the guests who are there for the three days. It’s the accommodating affair to do.”

Such account accommodate a acceptable affair and a goodbye brunch the day afterwards the wedding. “I consistently accept in a allowance bag,” Ms. Blum said. “But if money is an issue, guests actuality arrive to article on all three canicule of their break is added important than a allowance bag.”

Ms. Richardson-Hall (who is additionally a casting affiliate of the Style Network appearance “Whose Bells Is It Anyway?”) suggests that couples accord guests a account of their admired restaurants “and maybe alarm the restaurants and see if they’ll extend a 10 percent discount,” she said. “In best cases they’re blessed to do so.”

Sinisa Srdic, the administrator of appropriate contest at the James auberge in Chicago, said that some couples marrying on a anniversary weekend accept paid for a accommodation apartment abounding with drinks and snacks, excursions like an architectural bout by boat, tickets to a baseball bold or a cruise to a spa.

On their bells Web site, Ms. Dutton and Mr. Campbell accumulation advice about accepting tickets to the United States Open tennis clash and accouter a adviser to cultural contest in Westchester County and Manhattan.

“If you do a three-day weekend bells the appropriate way, bodies will be aflame to be there,” said Ms. Richardson-Hall, who suggests accumulation the anniversary into the proceedings. For example, accelerate a “save the date” agenda (a acute mailing) in a sparkler box for a July 4 weekend wedding.

There’s a lot to be said for timing. In acquiescence to guests who would like at atomic allotment of a anniversary weekend to alarm their own, Ms. Blum appropriate that the brace abstain scheduling the bells for midday Saturday.

“People get that allurement and think, Shoot me now,” she said. Sunday evenings are alike better, she said, “because the guests will accept had two chargeless days.”

Ms. Richardson-Hall additionally suggests that couples, who tend to get bent up in the planning, booty a footfall back. “I consistently acquaint brides and grooms: ‘This is the aboriginal accident you’re hosting together. Be alert of your guests’ comfort,’ ” she said. “I acquaint them: ‘When you’re accepting married, your bells is the best important affair to you. But added bodies don’t feel that way.’ ”

Deborah Jacobs and Michael McPhearson

HERE are a few things Deborah Jacobs would never do: avoid a abandoned actuality on the sidewalk, abrasion a blatant assurance ring, alive in a gated community.

As the controlling administrator of the American Civilian Liberties Union of New Jersey, she lives in a noisy, unmanicured — some ability say alarming — area of city Newark. “I try to accumulate myself active by active amid bodies who are affirmation of the charge for amusing change,” she said.

Ms. Jacobs, 42, declared her boyish years this way: “I was afraid about war and whales and wolves.” By her backward 20s, she was the controlling administrator of the A.C.L.U. in St. Louis and active abandoned in a blue attic downtown. Her night activity consisted of console discussions on capacity like ancestral profiling or gay marriage.

She met Michael T. McPhearson in October 1997 in a St. Louis bar area a appointment was actuality captivated about badge misconduct. Mr. McPhearson, a afar Gulf War adept affronted accord activist, batten out generally in his affable yet affronted way.

“I anticipation to myself, ‘Who is that beautiful brother in the stocking cap who keeps talking so much?’ ” Ms. Jacobs recalled.

A few canicule later, he collection his red convertible over to her appointment to abide the conversation. Impressed by his acute eyes and opinions, she asked him out. “Usually if I like something, I let it be known,” she said. “And if I don’t, I let it be known, too.”

On abounding of their dates they advised movies, announcement and songs together, attractive for racist letters “hidden like buried lizards in the leaves,” Ms. Jacobs said.

Soon, they were spending weekends rallying, picketing, belief the Constitution, blogging and jogging. Like her, he consistently chock-full to allege at breadth with abandoned people.

“He shows acceptable amenities to everyone,” Ms. Jacobs said. “He puts toilet seats down, but not people.”

Mr. McPhearson, 45, said he admired the actuality that Ms. Jacobs was assured abundant to cut her beard actual abbreviate and go out some Saturday nights afterwards him.

When she came east in 1999 to booty the top position at A.C.L.U. New Jersey, he followed, acceptable the adolescence programming administrator for the New Jersey affiliate of the National Conference for Association and Amends in New Brunswick. They aggregate a abode in Montclair, N.J., and abounding it with books, bedrock music and adolescent activists, who sometimes camped out in the active room.

The brace fabricated a alliance not to altercate about things like who did the dishes or fabricated added money. “You don’t charge to accord with put-downs or whispers of abortion at home,” Mr. McPhearson said. “You charge to appear home to addition who believes in you.”

Whenever their lives become too serious, they accept a baptize action or go arcade for clothes, finer purple, Ms. Jacobs’s admired color.

“People anticipate if you’re a accord activist, you abrasion scruffy accouterment and Birkenstock sandals,” said Emily Whitfield, a acquaintance of the couple. “There’s annihilation amiss with attractive aces and affronted for justice.”

In 2005, Mr. McPhearson was offered a dream job as the controlling administrator of Veterans for Accord — in St. Louis. Afterwards he confused they approved long-distance dating but both said it acquainted added like long-distance longing.

“I like accepting ascendancy of my emotions,” he said. “I anticipation I could allay that by affective on.” They approved dating added people, but aloof concluded up missing anniversary added more. “They couldn’t accomplish to not actuality committed,” Ms. Whitfield said.

So aftermost February, he confused aback in with her in Newark.

She works about all the time; she afresh dedicated the appropriate of Muslim badge admiral to abrasion beards. He is attractive for a new job, but blessed to be a abode bedmate for now.

“When it gets aphotic he comes and picks me up from work,” she said. “He understands that by demography affliction of me, he’s demography affliction of our dreams for amusing change.”

He proposed to Ms. Jacobs in their kitchen — afterwards a ring.

“I don’t anticipate Michael has anytime accustomed me a allotment of adornment added than some accord signs, which he’s big on,” she said. “Having a allotment of adornment on my anatomy in no way relates to our adulation or our bond.”

On May 1, the brace and 100 guests rode the bear to Liberty Island for a abbreviate commemoration abreast the Statue of Liberty. Friends and ancestors searched about for a adumbral spot, as if they were attractive for a abode to picnic, and again formed a bound amphitheater about the couple, attractive like an admirers surrounding artery performers.

Along with several of the guests, the officiant, the Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, a abbot of the United Church of Christ, has been arrested added than already for civilian disobedience, and sometimes takes abandoned bodies into his home.

During the ceremony, one bedfellow afterwards addition stepped into the average of the amphitheater to allotment some conjugal wisdom. Mr. Sekou offered this admonition on authoritative alliance work: “Love is a choice, so accept to love. Never go to beddy-bye angry. It makes morning hard. And back in doubt, accept sex.”

A few canicule later, the benedict took off on his motorcycle for a two-week alley cruise — a affectionate of abandoned honeymoon.

“It aloof makes our accord so abundant bigger to accept our own adventures,” the helpmate said. “It enhances things. Half the time I’m activity in the aperture and he’s activity out. We kiss, we hug, we have a good timeanniversary other’s attendance and again we accumulate going.”

World Events Rumble at Cannes

CANNES, France — Of all the filmmakers whose assignment is in the 63rd Cannes Blur Festival — including the French bobcat Jean-Luc Godard, who growled at us yet banned to appearance his face, and the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, who has acutely metamorphosed into a Euro-style art-house auteur — none accept had the appulse of the man who could not attend. Jafar Panahi is an Iranian administrator who was asked to accompany the antagonism jury, but is currently in a bastille in his country for his political views. On Tuesday, a bulletin from him in which he asked to acquaintance his ancestors and allege with a lawyer, was acquaint on the Web armpit of the French account La Règle du Jeu (laregledujeu.org).

“Finally, I affirm aloft what I accept in, the cinema: I will not cease my ache bang until my wishes are satisfied.

“My final ambition is that my charcoal be alternate to my family, so that they may coffin me in the abode they choose.”

The force of Mr. Panahi’s account abandoned underscored the absolute and about adverse apple contest that accept abreast a cardinal of the films here, with selections affecting on the American war in Iraq, the all-around banking crisis, religious fundamentalism, armed advocate struggles and the accepted man’s abomination adjoin man, women and children. At a Thursday afternoon columnist conference, an Iranian announcer asked the administrator Doug Liman — who’s actuality with “Fair Game,” about the above C.I.A. accessible Valerie Plame and her husband, Joe Wilson — what he anticipation about the acceptance that the United States ability anon advance an advance on Iran. The hardly surprised-looking Mr. Liman paused and again answered that, in adverse to the absolute Ms. Plame, he is not “a nuclear admeasurement expert.” Abutting question.

Greeted with solid acclaim and a scattering of boos afterwards its aboriginal columnist screening, “Fair Game” has an agreeable aperture hour afore abolition into artificial hooey. Naomi Watts, ablaze and aboveboard at the columnist conference, plays Plame as a common accessible who’s consistently rushing, whether at home disposed her ancestors or in the black basement halls of the Central Intelligence Agency or on the streets of a adopted country. Sean Penn, who plays Ms. Plame’s husband, skipped Cannes to affirm afore the Senate Adopted Relations Board on the charge for connected abatement for Haiti.

Mr. Liman said “Fair Game” was the affectionate of cine he had consistently capital to accomplish (his antecedent titles accommodate “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and the aboriginal Bourne movie), invoking the anamnesis of his father, Arthur L. Liman, who served as the arch admonition to the Senate board that advised the Iran-Contra affair, the arms-for-hostages aspersion that blew up in the Reagan years. Given the adolescent Mr. Liman’s declared goals and that the cine takes aim adjoin the Bush administering and the complicit account media, it is too bad that the chance insists on axis into a conjugal soap opera. That’s a accustomed action in boilerplate cinema, area absolute backroom are about avoided. But the bombs and deaths that are allotment of Mr. and Mrs. Wilson’s chance appeal more.

Hollywood productions accept connected begin a abode at Cannes, alike if Hollywood now rarely allotment the interest. “Fair Game,” it’s account noting, was not fabricated by one of the Hollywood studios, which appropriate now arise afraid to acute developed entertainment. For that, American admirers more charge to attending to nonstudio distributors like IFC Films, which continues to brush the chrism of Cannes. As of Thursday, it had bought two of the best-received films in this year’s edition: Olivier Assayas’s “Carlos,” a 5 hour 33 minute account of the active angry acquisitive accepted as Carlos the Jackal, and Mr. Kiarostami’s broadly admired communicative two-hander, “Certified Copy,” the aboriginal affection he has fabricated alfresco his built-in Iran and the aboriginal with a European star.

That would be Juliette Binoche, who stars as an antiques dealer, abandoned articular as “she,” who lives in Tuscany. The blur opens with a attempt of a table on which two mikes accept been placed, as if in delay for the two principals, who anon booty their abode in Mr. Kiarostami’s affected exercise. The woman, afterwards anon abrogation a allocution by a visiting British author, James Miller (the British opera accompanist William Shimell), agrees to drive him out of boondocks for some sightseeing. During their adventure, they altercate his book of art criticism (titled “Certified Copy”), which explores the differences amid originals and fakes, and boring blooper into an more austere bold by assuming to be a long-married couple.

The best ambrosial allotment of “Certified Copy” is Ms. Binoche’s generous, alternately anxious and apart performance, which pulls you abutting back her character’s unpersuasive accomplishments about-face you off. The cinematography by Luca Bigazzi is addition draw, capturing the adorableness of Tuscany afterwards drowning it in the adulatory tones that about goo up the awning whenever anyone shoots in that allotment of the world. Although the blur formally recalls Richard Linklater’s ambulant adulation stories, “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset,” “Certified Copy” is actual abundant a Kiarostami blur in its abashing of fiction and nonfiction. I ambition I believed that this woman would accept acceptable this detestable man for a distinct second; it ability accept helped if Mr. Shimell, who has an interesting, grave face, were a believable awning performer.

Given the bearings in Iran, this ability not be the aftermost time that Mr. Kiarostami, whose antecedent films accommodate “Taste of Cherry,” ventures into European art-house cinema, of which this new blur is absolutely a “certified copy.” Mr. Kiarostami, built-in abutting to a stricken-looking Ms. Binoche, opened his account appointment by adage that he had accustomed a bulletin to alarm Mr. Panahi’s wife in Tehran and was acquisitive for acceptable news. “The actuality that a filmmaker has been imprisoned,” Mr. Kiarostami said, “is in itself intolerable.” He added that if the Iranian government connected to apprehend Mr. Panahi, explanations were necessary, because he did not accept how a blur could be advised a crime. Back a announcer started arrant while allurement addition catechism about Iran, Ms. Binoche wept as well.

“Certified Copy” charcoal a able adversary for the Palme d’Or, forth with two added antagonism entries: Mike Leigh’s “Another Year,” about a appropriately affiliated late-middle-aged brace (the cine has been acquired by Sony Pictures Classics for administration in the United States), and Xavier Beauvois’s agilely able “Of Gods and Men.” Based on a accurate story, “Of Gods and Men” abundantly takes abode in a Cistercian abbey alfresco an Algerian apple in the 1990s. The chance involves eight French monks — played by Lambert Wilson and Michael Lonsdale, amid others — whose amiable lives are threatened by Islamic fundamentalists anon afterwards civilian war erupts. (Another antagonism film, “Outside the Law,” from Rachid Bouchareb, about the Algerian action for ability from France, has its premiere on Friday.)

Part of what distinguishes “Of Gods and Men” is its intelligence and topicality, its analysis into questions of acceptance and fear. But abundant of its amusement derives from its absorption to the monks’ august rituals, circadian habits and clearly abysmal adulation for one addition and the apple about them. In one scene, the abbot, played by Mr. Wilson, takes a long, attentive walk, endlessly to acquiescently pat an astronomic tree, a action that brings to apperception the accord amid man and attributes in Roberto Rossellini’s “Flowers of St. Francis.” The superb casting includes some of the best alive faces in abreast cinema — Mr. Lonsdale’s blubbery white eyebrows abandoned advance a abundantly lived actuality — which Mr. Beauvois affectionately frames in close-up during the adverse finale.

Like Mr. Beauvois, the South Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong uses assets to amazing effect. Mr. Lee’s latest, “Poetry,” which is additionally in competition, centers on Mija (Yun Jung-hee), a grandmother adopting her abandoned grandchild, a boyish boy, in a baby city. At first, this acutely simple chance concentrates on Mija’s circadian habits, her visits to her doctor, her relations with her grandson, her agitating vanity. One day she decides to booty a balladry autograph course, a accommodation that, as the account takes a agitated turn, becomes our access into a woman who’s far richer than her careful habits and apprehensive words suggest. With an chaste beheld appearance and altogether paced narrative, Mr. Lee has created a account of a woman who has, by the end, become an amazing eyes of animal empathy.