Cannes Award Winners: A User's Guide

Break it down: 

PALME D’OR: Entre Les Murs (The Class), dir­ec­ted by Laurent Cantet

As Dave Kehr points out, the first French film to take Cannes top prize in 21 years, and surely a less con­tro­ver­sial pick than the last one, Pialat’s Under the Sun of Satan. With such films as Time Out, Human Resources, and Heading South, all of which got some American dis­tri­bu­tion and were largely well-received by crit­ics, Cantet has shown a knack for tack­ling socially rel­ev­ant sub­ject mat­ter without com­ing off too didact­ic. This pic­ture is an unusu­al fiction/reality hybrid: based on a book by Francois Begaudeau about his exper­i­ences as a teach­er in a French equi­val­ent of an inner city, it stars Begaudeau as him­self and a cast of non-professionals as his charges. A com­ment by jur­or Marjane Satrapi sheds some light on the rationale for the prize: “There is almost noth­ing I believe in any­more. But if there is some­thing I believe in, it is cul­ture and edu­ca­tion.” Kent Jones, in the com­ments sec­tion of Dave’s site, reveals him­self to have been less impressed by the pic­ture: “if you’ve seen it, it’s impossible to avoid a com­par­is­on with the fourth sea­son of The Wire, which is not flat­ter­ing to the Cantet…[it’s not] a bad film, but it seemed like small pota­toes com­pared with Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale or a Lucrecia Martel’s start­ling The Headless Woman.”

As I noted in a post below, I missed Entre les Murs; I look for­ward to see­ing it, but I’m with Kent on the Desplechin and look for­ward to a chance to see the Martel again, as my ini­tial view­ing of it took place under less-than-optimum circumstances… 

GRAND PRIX: Gomorra, dir­ec­ted by Matteo Garrone

Speaking of The Wire…this multi-narrative, quasi-doc-style epic about the var­ied tendrils of the Comorra, Naples’ rul­ing organ­ized crime entity, could per­haps be prof­it­ably peddled Stateside as an Italian vari­ant of the well-regarded series. The engross­ing film, based on an excel­lent non-fiction book by Roberto Saviano, is thor­oughly inex­or­able in its step-by-step por­tray­al of how mob activ­it­ies are invari­ably tied to so-called “clean” cap­it­al­ism. But its cri­tique is vital, alive, and palp­able, nev­er drily didact­ic. And the pic­ture’s gritty real­ism masks an art­ful­ness that keeps regis­ter­ing with you long after the film’s over. A real break­out pic­ture for Garrone, who’s been tog­gling between art­house and exploit­a­tion with his most recent films First Love and The Embalmer. Absolutely one to watch for; no U.S. dis­trib as of yet.

PRIX DE MISE EN SCENE: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, for Three Monkeys

Turkish dir­ect­or Ceylan’s new film was the sub­ject of fevered Palme d’Or spec­u­la­tion before the fest­iv­al even kicked off. A lot of crit­ics, myself included, were a little dis­ap­poin­ted with this follow-up to Climates, a tale of fam­ily guilt and sor­row that, beneath its sur­faces, rather resembles Ordinary People without the ther­ap­ist. Still, one would be hard-pressed to deny its con­vic­tion, the excel­lence of its per­form­ances, or its strik­ing imagery. Hence, its dir­ect­or’s prize. “I don’t need awards, but my coun­try does,” Ceylan noted, and per­haps the jury sensed that as well. That said, I thought this time around, Desplechin, Martel, Eastwood, the Dardennes, and Soderbergh all brought bet­ter mise-en-scene to their respect­ive pic­tures. The pic­ture has been picked up for U.S. dis­tri­bu­tion, smartly, I believe, by New Yorker Films.

PRIX DE SCENARIO: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, for Le Silence de Lorna

I’m happy to see that what may turn out to be the Dardenne’s most con­ven­tion­ally access­ible film, a tale of an Albanian illeg­al in Belgium whose con­science emerges as she’s drawn in to a murder plot, get some recog­ni­tion, but this is a rather pecu­li­ar award to bestow upon a film in which no part of the behind-the-camera pro­cess is less equal than anoth­er, and the on-screen act­ing is so extraordin­ary. I doubt the broth­ers are com­plain­ing, though, except maybe on behalf of their spec­tac­u­lar cast. No U.S. dis­trib­ut­or yet. Sony Pictures Classics has the U.S. dis­tri­bu­tion rights.

BEST ACTOR: Benicio del Toro for Che

Not unexpected—it’s a pro­tean por­tray­al, even if del Toro can­’t entirely dis­guise that, at the start, he’s a good ten years too old for the role. His Cannes accept­ance speech, ded­ic­ated to The Man him­self, will surely prove good red meat to the film’s detract­ors, who haven’t been lay­ing in wait (e.g., endeavor­ing to actu­ally see it) to pounce. As massively com­mited and good as del Toro is, I was still more impressed by Amalric’s mad black sheep in Desplechin’s Un Conte de Noël. Che, as has been widely noted, still has no U.S. distrib.

BEST ACTRESS: Sandra Corveloni for Linha de Passé

This, on the oth­er hand, was quite a sur­prise for sev­er­al reas­ons. I’m not sure if any­one’s poin­ted this out yet, but the Cannes Competition this year fairly teemed with superb female roles, superbly acted. Martina Gusman as a pris­on inmate and moth­er in Leonera; Deneuve’s mat­ri­arch in Un Conte de Noël; Arta Dobroshi as the illeg­al immig­rant in the Dardenne’s Le Silence de Lorna; and, yes, some would argue, Angelina Jolie’s cru­sad­ing mom in Eastwood’s Changeling. The award to Corveloni comes as a sur­prise not so much because she’s a first-timer (at least that’s what’s claimed; the imdb, on the oth­er hand, has her appear­ing in a Brazilian film from 1996) but because crit­ic­al notices praised the Walter Salles/Daniela Thomas film’s ensemble cast but rarely singled any of its mem­bers, least of all Corveloni…at least as far as I’ve been able to glean. This is anoth­er pic­ture I missed, and has no U.S. dis­trib­ut­or yet, although giv­en Salles’ name value that won’t be the case for long. 

PRIX DE JURY: Il Divo, by Paolo Sorrentino

In case you’re won­der­ing, the above-cited Grand Prix is a fancy name for second place, and the Prix de Jury is…a prize the Jury gives to some­thing just because they feel like it, I think. This was anoth­er sur­prise, and kind of a pleas­ant one, as I, ungen­er­ous of spir­it as I am, could­n’t ima­gine any­one who was­n’t intim­ately acquain­ted with the incred­ibly labyrinthi­an polit­ics of post-WWII Italy could pos­sibly fol­low it, let alone enjoy it. I mean, I know some stuff about mobbed-up fin­an­ci­er Michele Sindona and “sui­cided” banker Roberto Calvi from Nick Tosches book Power on Earth, and some oth­er stuff about the Red Army and Christian Democrats and all that from hav­ing once dated a woman whose fam­ily actu­ally coun­ted the late Aldo Moro as a friend, and I had a ter­rible time keep­ing up with this satir­ic­al account of the life of remark­ably lucky (and aston­ish­ingly implic­ated!) Italian pol Giulio Andreotti. That said, while Il Divo isn’t one tenth as insuf­fer­able as Sorrentino’s A Friend of the Family, a real low point of my 2007 Cannes exper­i­ence, its’ still, to my taste, far too tricked-up and osten­ta­tious to be really effect­ive or bit­ing. Without hav­ing got­ten this prize, this would have zero shot at U.S. dis­tri­bu­tion. With the prize, it’s a def­in­ite maybe. 

In oth­er prizes, the Camera d’Or, the award for best first film, went to Hunger, the cinema debut of the con­cep­tu­al artist who—as a con­cep­tu­al artist will—calls him­self Steve McQueen. This was maybe the only prize that seemed a fore­gone con­clu­sion. (I missed the film, on a schedul­ing gaffe, and not, as oth­ers might try to tell you, because I claimed that I’d spent enough time in past years at Rocky Sullivan’s to ful­fill whatever karm­ic debt I might have to Bobby Sands.) A spe­cial men­tion was giv­en to Russian first-timer Valeria Gai Guermanica’s Vse Umrut a Ja Ostanus, which screened in the Critic’s Week—which is pro­grammed by crit­ics, but seem­ingly atten­ded by very few. “Thanks for Stopping By” awards, offi­cially known as the “Prix de 61^st Festival de Cannes,” were awar­ded to Catherine Deneuve, who accep­ted, and Clint Eastwood, who had already left town.