Palme D'Or sports book...

Jeff Wells is report­ing on some “scut­tle­butt” that Steven Soderbergh’s con­tro­ver­sial (yet ter­rif­ic!) Che “may—I say ‘may’—be in a favor­ing pos­i­tion to win the Palme D’Or.” 

Way to hedge your bets there, my friend. Jeff goes on to sur­mise that Jury pres­id­ent Sean Penn’s “lefty polit­ic­al views” are motiv­at­ing his push for the movie. Maybe so. Although I must point out that >Che itself is not in any par­tic­u­lar way a lefty film. I ima­gine Penn would have pre­ferred a more overt piece of agit­prop to the meas­ured, almost Rossellini-esque vis­ion Soderbergh’s put forth. In any case, for a Cannes jury led by Sean Penn to give a Palme d’Or to a movie named Che is just too obvi­ous. Me, I’m stick­ing with the pre­dic­tion I made to pals on the first night of the festival—that Ari Folman’s anim­ated inquiry into Israeli guilt, Waltz With Bashir, would take the Palme. Not only does it ful­fill Penn’s obnox­ious require­ment of being con­scious of the world we’re liv­ing in today, but it exam­ines a phe­nomen­on that most Israel-boosters in the U.S. would baldly deny even con­ceiv­ably exists. Also, the mere act of a French film fest­iv­al hon­or­ing an Israeli film would be big symbolic/semiotic news to those who pay atten­tion to such things. How could Penn res­ist? Unless he’s so anti-Israel he can­’t even coun­ten­ance Folman’s vis­ion, which is entirely pos­sible, I guess. But still. That’s my pre­dic­tion, and I’m stick­ing to it.

“But Glenn,” you say,“you’re blog­ging as if Sean Penn is the only mem­ber of the Cannes jury. He’s just the pres­id­ent of it. Don’t you think he’s going to be obliged to listen to his fel­low jurors?” 

In a word, no. You think Natalie Portman’s actu­ally going to stand up to Sean Penn? You think Alfonso Cauron and Sergio Castellitto don’t have bet­ter things to do with their lives than bick­er with a steam­rolling Yankee asshole? (Castellitto, many of you will be happy to learn, was just cast in a new film by…wait for it…Jacques Rivette, to co-star Jane Birkin.) You think Apitchatpong Weerasethakul is any­thing but just happy to be there? No. The only jury mem­ber I can see giv­ing Penn any sig­ni­fic­ant res­ist­ance is feisty Persepolis cre­at­or Marjane Satrapi, who delivered the lone rejoin­der to the pres­id­ent’s asin­ine rel­ev­ance rules at the open­ing press con­fer­ence. And she’s likely to be pretty par­tial to Waltz, for reas­ons eas­ily inferable.

We’ll see in a few hours. For myself, I’m about to get on a plane, bound for home, sweet home. Anybody inter­ested in a friendly wager…?