I am not entirely sure what it is that gives press conferences at the Cannes film festival their special, slightly awkward, feeling.

They are usually presided over by Henri Behar, a veteran French journalist with swept-back silver hair who looks out from the podium at his fellows with what seems like ill-disguised disdain, and they generally amount to a search for a sound bite in a tide of banality.

The stars and directors of the films are shamelessly flattered and they seem to do their best, but illuminating answers are at a premium.

Do you think that Jake is considered one of the most promising actors of his generation? someone asked David Fincher, director of the serial killer movie Zodiac of his star Jake Gyllenhaal.

Gyllenhaal, sitting alongside, responded with a creditable show of self- mockery and he had fulsome, if impenetrable, praise for his co-star Robert Downey Jr.

Working with Robert is like working in the eighth dimension, he said. He tells a Chinese journalist: “I love your shirt”.

Perhaps none of it is supposed to mean anything anyway since much of the time the press conferences seem to be about establishing a mood rather than conveying information.

Even so, the spectacle of journalists applauding, asking for autographs and taking pictures with their mobile phones is a strange one.

Listening to film makers trying to communicate their creative vision through the uncertain medium of a roomful of the worlds press can have a hidden comedy of its own though.

A dream is a form of reality but its your personal reality so the film is a dreamlike reality. It allows you to dream and I thought a lot in order not to give into the temptation to make images too beautiful, explained Andrei Zvyagintsev, director of The Banishment (through a translator, admittedly).

There is usually some kind of a gesture on everybodys part towards a shared love of the cinema. But occasionally what seems like a truer picture shows through.

British director Steven Frears, president of the Cannes jury, greeted a brash-sounding Australian journalist with a despairing Hello, Hello again, before turning to Australian actor and fellow jury member Toni Collette to ask Is she a friend of yours?