For a moment, it felt like the old Cannes again.

On Sunday night, as the festival crawled toward its midpoint, news broke that Mubi, the upstart distributor that rode “The Substance”’s Oscar success to a $1 billion valuation, was shelling out $24 million for “Die My Love.” The film was one of Cannes’ most polarizing, but here Mubi was spending more than “Anora” made at the domestic box office for the right to release an edgy relationship drama. Perhaps it justified the price tag because “Die My Love” features Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, movie stars at a time when those are an endangered species.

They were a rare breed on the red carpets of Cannes, where studios mostly resisted the lure of splashy premieres. An exception was made for Tom Cruise, who rode “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning”’s global hype machine to the steps of the Palais, where...