Cannes 68 was dubbed "the year of the woman", and they complained vociferously when a festival guard refused entry to a woman wearing flat shoes rather than high heels. This has been happening for years at the evening galas and it is totally random, at the discretion of each attendant, but it embarrassed the festival after all the proclamations about women and equality.

Major stars were outraged but none changed their choice of footwear. Benicio del Toro was rumoured to be planning to wear high heels to a gala but that didn't happen either.

Depardieu appeared just in time, lumbering along the red carpet, looking like Brando in his later years. The photographers stopped looking at feet. Mon Dieu, what are they feeding him in Russia, where he is now a citizen? Nice-Matin described him, with tongue-in-cheek, as "the Belgo-Russian actor", since he is now a resident of both countries. They hailed his 'magnificent return' in Guillaume Nicloux's Valley of Love - perhaps a touch generously.

His performance is certainly strong and brave, in a story close to his heart. In Death Valley, a divorced couple reunites at the request of their late gay son. They are playing famous actors, and Isabelle Huppert, as the ex-wife, makes that easy to believe. Her character is inconsolable; his wants to outrun his guilt.

Depardieu appears in his boxers for about half the film because of the heat. The sight of him opposite her, the elfin Isabelle and the mountainous Gerard, gives the film a vast incongruity, before it lapses into sentimentalism. This is their first film together in 35 years. Those years have been kind to her; less to him, but the talent remains.

Earlier, Colin Farrell showed a paunch in The Lobster, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, surely the strangest film in the competition. Farrell gained 18kg by eating cheeseburgers and cake to play a man who checks in to an Irish seaside hotel after the loss of his wife.

In the film's version of the future, being single is illegal. He has 45 days to find a partner among the other guests, or he will be turned into an animal of his choice - in his case, a lobster. Farrell was back in shape by the time he arrived here, but the sight of his 'dad bod' in the film caused inevitable questions about how he won and lost the weight. Forget the sharp satire of the film, feel the width.

The competition of 19 films concluded on Saturday with the debut of Justin Kurzel's Macbeth to a loud thud. The Australian director of the brilliant Snowtown went to Scotland to return Shakespeare's story to its roots, with Michael Fassbender in the crown and Marion Cotillard as his wife.

She puts in a fine performance but Fassbender gets lost in mannerism, then engulfed by widescreen sound and fury. This is the loudest and bloodiest Macbeth ever, with ultra slow-motion battle scenes that quickly become tedious. Shakespeare's words come second to blood on the heather. Not worth the toil or the trouble, in fact. This was the Bard in the style of the Spartan movie 300.

Controversy is common in Cannes, although it was manufactured this year. Argentine-born iconoclast Gaspar Noe (Irreversible) gave us Love, about a ménage a trois. The sex is real and explicit, and in 3D. Hardly anyone liked it but the shots of ejaculation towards camera had people ducking.

The film has been sold around the world, including Australia, where it will present a challenge to the censor. With the explosion of internet pornography, explicit sex in serious cinema hardly seems like a door worth kicking down. Clearly, no-one tried to stop Noe from making, showing or selling it. Controversy, what controversy?

The winners are announced on Sunday night but the frontrunners were obvious. First among the discoveries was the holocaust film, Son of Saul, a first feature from Hungarian director Laszlo Nemes. This extraordinary film went straight to the heart of the problem for any holocaust film – how to depict.

Some critics argue that it cannot and should not be depicted but Nemes found a way, so that the film was unflinching and terrifying, without becoming overt.

Todd Haynes's Carol, with Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara in a lesbian love affair in the 1950s, was lush, serious and loved by all. There was affection too for Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien's version of a martial arts flick, The Assassin. Achingly beautiful but glacial, each scene like a Chinese painting, it defies anyone to explain the story.

Wait, who was she working for when she … and what about that old guy, was he …? Hou has rarely bothered with clarity but he has now embraced the close-up, something he rarely did before.

Some big names came a cropper. Gus Van Sant's The Sea of Trees was laughed off the screen. Paolo Sorrentino's Youth, with Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel ogling naked women in a Swiss resort, was funny but flawed.

Denis Villeneuve earned some admiration for Sicario, in which Emily Blunt is an FBI agent caught up in the drug wars of Juarez, Mexico. Tim Roth gave a towering performance as a nurse who helps terminally ill patients to die in Chronic, by Mexican director Michel Franco. French veteran Vincent Lindon was similarly brilliant as an unemployed man in La Loi du Marche.

The opening film, Standing Tall, directed by actress-director Emmanuelle Bercot had admirers, but the two films by women in the competition generally did not. Valerie Donzelli's Marguerite and Julien was a post-modern 'romance' between a brother and sister that left a bad taste.

Maiwenn's Mon Roi was similarly disliked, which raises a hard question. If Cannes wants to increase the number of films by women in the competition – and they do – they can't do it by taking bad films. There are enough of those already, by men.