There can be hardly any bone to pick with the choice for the Palme D’Or at the Festival de Cannes 2018. Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters , an unassuming yet devastating peep into what constitutes a family, is one of the best you would see in contemporary film, with a twist in the end that the president of the jury, Cate Blanchett, said “blew them out of the cinema.”
Earlier, Ms. Blanchett set the tone for the awards night when she spoke of the marginalised, the displaced, disempowered, disenfranchised, disillusioned. The jury choices were as much about the films as the issues and concerns they raised, from immigration to poverty, petty crime to labour exploitation, child rights to patriarchy, to racial and global politics and more. Ms. Blanchett also rued the absence of female-driven narratives, though there were many powerhouse performances by women.
Samal Yeslyamova’s intense performance in Sergey Dvortsevoy’s Ayka , about a young Kyrgyz woman abandoning her newborn and trying hard to survive in Moscow, is as harrowing journey into darkness for her as for the audience, and won her the best actress award. Matteo Garrone’s dog-groomer-cum-coke-dealer in Dogman was the favourite for best actor, and unsurprisingly, won. Bleak and beautiful Cold War was a well-earned best director award for Pawel Pawlikowski. He said at the awards press conference that his idea was to show “history in all its complexity and paradoxes rather than push it into an ideological narrative.”
Earlier in the ceremony, Lucas Dhont, winner of the Camera D’Or for his debut feature Girl , which takes sexuality and gender identity issues a huge step forward, spoke about how Victor Polster, playing a young trans woman fighting to realise her ambition of becoming a ballerina, had won the award in the Un Certain Regard section for best performance without a qualifying gender attached, which is what his film also stood for.
Cannes #MeToo moment
The running theme of Cannes 2108, gender, had already had one moment to remember: the 82 women on the red carpet. Asia Argento provided another. Before presenting the best actress award, Ms. Argento took on sexual predators with a burning rage. “In 1997, I was raped by Harvey Weinstein here at Cannes,” she said. “I was 21 years old. This festival was his hunting ground.” She predicted that Mr. Weinstein would never be welcomed at Cannes again. “He will live in disgrace, shunned by a film community that once embraced him and covered up for his crimes.” And then a chilling warning: “And even tonight, sitting among you, there are those who still have to be held accountable for their conduct against women for behaviour that does not belong in this industry or workplace. You know who you are. But most importantly, we know who you are. And we’re not going to allow you to get away with it any longer.”
Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman seemed too mainstream a choice for the Grand Prix, but then a critique of Agent Orange, as the film-maker calls Donald Trump, seems apt in the times of Charlottesville. “The rolling back of the clock is dangerous,” Mr. Lee said at the awards press conference.
Special award
The radicalism of his politics and craft aside, the special Palme D’Or to Jean Luc-Godard (who has not won one yet) felt like the lifetime achievement awards we Indians give out to the legends, though Ms. Blanchett said it wasn’t quite honorary, but was for continually defining and redefining cinema. His film, she said, “lingered, confused and excited” the jury specially in the context of “his extraordinary body of work and influence.”
The jury award for Nadine Labaki’s uneven and manipulative Capharnaum was the biggest let-down, eliciting loud boos from a section of the press watching the live transmission of the ceremony at Théâtre Salle Debussy.
Sadly, two deserving films went home without even so much as a mention: Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s The Wild Pear Tree , a masterly ode to fathers and sons, and Lee Chang-Dong’s tale of obsessive love, Burning , merited a bit of the jury’s love.
Netflix picked up Girl and Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy as Lazzaro despite staying away from Cannes. Ms. Rohrwacher said that she had been extremely busy the last few days and hadn’t had the time to know more about it, but was pleased to hear the news.
