The last, and lasting, image of Cannes 2017 was an emotionally charged one: jury president Pedro Almodovar trying hard to fight back tears at a press conference.
He was responding to a question about how he felt, as an LGBTQ icon, with the festival favourite 120 Battements Par Minute ( 120 Beats Per Minute ) not winning the Palme d’Or. It won the second big prize, the Grand Prix.
Almodovar said he loved the film, was touched right from the first scene to the last but that it was eventually a democratic jury of which he was just the ninth member. Recollecting the early heroes of gay rights and HIV/AIDS activism — which the Robin Campillo film deals with — had him breaking down, only to have fellow jury member Jessica Chastain reach out to comfort him.
It seemed like an equitable distribution of awards eventually, ticking all the expected causes, weighing in the various political parameters.
Refreshing choice
The refreshingly surprising choice for the Palme d’Or was Swedish film The Square . Ruben Ostlund’s sharp critique of the bourgeois and the art world, brought out Almodovar at his most astute. Almodovar said the film was significant in bringing out the “dictatorship of political correctness”, which he described “awful” and “horrifying”.
Jury member Agnes Jaoui liked The Square for being clever, witty, funny and for asking important questions, about the poor, the media, and for showing how people try to be shocking to get attention.
As expected, the jury has supported women’s causes and women filmmakers in a big measure this year. The Prix De La Mise En Scene (Best Director) went for the first time to a woman: Sofia Coppola for her wicked, feminist thriller The Beguiled . In a statement, she thanked Jane Campion (among others) for being a role model. Chinese actor and jury member Fan Bing Bing pointed out that Coppola won not because she was a woman but because of the great movie she had made.
Spotlight on Kidman
The 70th Anniversary Award was given to Nicole Kidman, who had four films playing at the festival: The Beguiled , The Killing Of A Sacred Deer , How To Talk To Girls At Parties and Top Of The Lake: China Girl .
Lynne Ramsay shared the Best Screenplay award for You Were Never Really Here with Yorgon Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou for The Killing Of The Sacred Deer . Ramsay’s film that was being mixed just a week before playing at Cannes also got Best Performance By An Actor award for Joaquin Phoenix who accepted it while bringing everyone’s notice to his sneakers and how he can’t wear leather shoes. Yes, not even to the red carpet.
It was left to Will Smith to bring colour in to the forefront: “A couple of black folks won’t hurt,” said Smith. He spoke about how the jury has also looked at the future of the festival and hopes that people of various colours and communities will have better access to it, that alleyways would be opened up for them. He also pointed out how much he loved Kornel Mundruczo’s Jupiter’s Moon , an interesting film which got ignored at the awards.
Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Nelyubov ( Loveless ) went home with the Prix Du Jury (Jury Prize). The brilliant Diane Kruger walked away with Best Performance By An Actress award for an otherwise politically contentious, divisive and problematic film: Fatih Akin’s Aus Dem Nichts ( In The Fade ).
Kruger, in her acceptance speech, was categorical in acknowledging people affected by acts of terrorism, who pick up the pieces and go on living: “Please remember you are not forgotten.”
Amazon film gets prize
Meanwhile, the much in news Netflix didn’t make it, neither with Bong Joon-ho’s Okja nor with Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories . Amazon Studio, however, got one in its kitty with You Were Never Really Here that it distributes in North America.
