I am sitting in the Nice airport on my way out of France and back to Seattle and as I was doing that the Cannes Film Festival was handing out its top awards. Today I caught my final screening before heading to the airport as I had not yet seen Xavier Beauvois’s Of Gods and Men and with it looking to be one of the frontrunners for the Palme d’Or I figured I had better give it a watch. Well, it seems I went to the wrong screening as Apichatpong’s Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives took the fest’s top award with Gods serving as the runner-up taking the Grand Prix award.
I did not see Uncle Boonmee, but heard some pretty crazy things such as a woman making love to a catfish (literally). That may be an exaggeration or what have you, but it sounded like some sort of serious trip.
Other top awards handed out include the following:
Best Director:
Mathieu Amalric for Tournée (On Tour)
Best Screenplay:
Poetry (dir. Lee Chang-dong)
Camera d’Or (Best First Feature):
Año Bisiesto (dir. Michael Rowe)
Jury Prize:
A Screaming Man (dir. Mahamat-Saleh Haroun)
Best Actress:
Juliette Binoche for Certified Copy (dir. Abbas Kiarostami)
Best Actor – TIE:
Javier Bardem for Biutiful (dir. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu) and Elio Germano for La Nostra Vita (dir. Daniele Luchetti)
Palme d’Or (Short Film):
Chienne d’Histoire (dir. Serge Avedikian)
Of the rest of the winners I would say while Binoche was very good in Certified Copy the best performance I saw was Lesley Manville in Mike Leigh’s Another Year, my favorite film of the festival which unfortunately went completely overlooked. I also saw Tournee directed by Mathieu Amalric and it was decent, but to say it was the best direction of the festival is something I would love to see explained.
Looking over it all, I am still digesting. I still have four reviews yet to write, but for anyone looking for some kind of Oscar prognostication based on the results I will have that shortly, though if you’ve been reading my reviews throughout the festival you already have a pretty good idea what I’m thinking.
Stay tuned, I may be heading home from the festival but there is much more to come.
