Suspense grips Cannes as movie mega-battle ends
Cannes hands out its top prize Sunday after a marathon battle between heavyweights like Quentin Tarantino and Jane Campion, with the critics’ money on lesser-known names from France and Austria.
The notoriously extravagant festival toned down the glitz for this year’s crisis-era bash and was lighter than usual in star power, but it still saw celebs like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie sashay up the fabled red carpet.
Billed as a battle of auteur titans, it mostly lived up to expectations, with Britain’s Independent on Sunday calling it “a superior vintage” and France’s Journal du Dimanche declaring “the return of great cinema”.
And scandal came in the form of Lars Von Trier’s “Antichrist”, which provoked fainting, gasps and walk-outs and received an “anti-prize” that the festival director angrily denounced as an attempt at censorship.
Four previous Palme d’Or winners — Tarantino, Campion, Von Trier and Ken Loach — squared up against the likes of Pedro Almodovar, Michael Haneke, Johnnie To and Park Chan-wook for Sunday’s award.
Penelope Cruz — a hot tip for best actress award for her role in Almodovar’s flick — was among the A-list celebrities at the 12-day annual French Riviera bash, who also included Martin Scorsese and Jim Carrey.
As the jury headed by French actress Isabelle Huppert deliberated on which of the 20 films will scoop the Palme at the gala awards ceremony later Sunday, a French prison drama was among critics’ favourites.
Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet,” about a prison stint for an illiterate French-Arab youth which turns into an education in crime, “instantly takes its place alongside the greats of the crime movie genre,” said The Times.
A win for Audiard would be a triumph for French cinema, a year after high-school drama “The Class” became the first homegrown movie in more than two decades to pick up the Palme.
Critics cited as another possible winner the Austrian director Haneke’s “The White Ribbon”, a chilling black-and-white study of malice in a German village on the eve of World War I.
New Zealander Campion’s “Bright Star” ode to the doomed poet John Keats was also being touted, as was “Broken Embraces” by Almodovar, which recounts a tragic love affair between a young actress and an ageing director.
Loach’s comedy “Looking for Eric” — starring soccer legend Eric Cantona — also impressed critics, while reviewers had high hopes for veteran director Alain Resnais for “Wild Grass” and Italy’s Marco Bellochio’s “Vincere”, a tale on Mussolini’s bastard son.
Tarantino’s march up the red carpet — flanked by Pitt and his wife Jolie — for the world premiere of his long-awaited “Inglourious Basterds” on Wednesday provided the biggest celebrity buzz of the 12-day festival.
But the director of “Pulp Fiction” divided critics with his war story of Jewish-American soldiers on a mission to murder Nazis.
The festival opened on May 13 with Disney-Pixar’s 3D cartoon caper “Up” — screening out of competition — but it quickly delivered movies not at all suitable for kids.
Blood and guts were aplenty in Tarantino’s work, while Von Trier’s gothic thriller also dished up the gore and blood flowed freely in a tale of a Korean vampire priest in Park Chan-wook’s “Thirst”.
French director Gaspar Noe’s “Enter The Void” also sparked a few walk-outs with its explicit sex and a close-up of an aborted foetus.
Palestinian director Elia Suleiman unveiled “The Time that Remains”, a bittersweet farce on his family history and the daily life of Israeli Arabs.
And Ang Lee brought sex and drugs and rock n’ roll to the festival with “Taking Woodstock”. The film on the iconic 1969 music festival was well received but judged a “low-wattage” offer from the Oscar-winning director.
The late Heath Ledger’s unfinished stint in Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” was screened out of competition, while “Spider-Man” director Sam Raimi returned to horror with his new flick “Drag Me To Hell”.
Suspense grips Cannes as movie mega-battle ends
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