There’s a series of steps near the Palais which have incribed upon them the past Palme d’Or winners. They going to have to use a smaller font to get the 2010 winner to fit as the Palme was awarded to Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives by Apichatpong Weerasethaku. The film hadn’t premiered by the time that most people had left mid-week and didn’t have the kind of nudge-nudge buzz from insiders that indicates that it’s a work of quality that has to be sought out. I had seen a trailer for it and must admit was captivated by the excerpted visuals. The Cannes jury, however, led by Tim Burton, chose the Thai production as the best of the fest. Javier Bardem was an early favorite for Best actor for Biutiful, though he had to share it with Elio Germano from La Nostra Vita. Juliette Binoche won Best Actress for Copie Conforme, the new film by Abbas Kiarostami.

The Grand Prix went to Les Hommes et des Dieux by Xavier Beauvois (it also picked up the Ecumenical Prize on Saturday). Non-Franco eyebrows have to be raised, however, after Mathieu Amalric picked up Best Director for Tournee (“On Tour”), a film derided by most. The strong French showing just doesn’t track with the films they showed.  Here are the winners:

Feature films

Palme d’Or

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Lung Boonmee Raluek Chat) by Apichatpong Weerasethaku.
Grand Prix
Les Hommes et des Dieux (Of Gods and Men) by Xavier Beauvois

Award for Best Director
Mathieu Amalric for Tournee (On Tour)

Award for Best Screenplay
Lee Chang-dong for Poetry

Award for Best Actress
Juliet Binoche in Copie Conforme (Certified Copy)  directed by Abbas Kiarostami

Award for Best Actor

Javier Bardem in Biutiful directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu
Elio Germano in La nostra vita (Our Life)  directed by Daniele Luchetti
Jury Prize
Un homme qui crie (A screaming man) directed by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun

Short Films
Palme d’Or – Short Film
Chienne d’histoire (Barking Island) directed by Serge Avedikian

Jury Prize – Short Film
Micky Bader(Bathing Mickey) directed by Frida Kempff

*********************************

The Palme d’Or isn’t given out until Sunday but awards are starting to come in from Cannes. The Un Certain Regard award, created in 1998, was chaired this year by director Clair Denis and this year’s winner is Hahaha by Hong Sangsoo. The film beat out such competition as the Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams film Blue Valentine and the new film by Jean-Luc Godard. The biggest surprise, however, came from the International Federation of Film Critics who awarded theirFIPRESCI prize to Tournee (“On Tour”) by Mathieu Amalric, a film that opened the first day of Cannes and was largely derided in most quarters as inconsequential fluff.

Un Certain Regard:  Hahaha by Hong Sangsoo

Cinefoundation Awards:
1st Prize: Taulukauppiatt (“The Painting Sellers”) by Juho Kuosmanen
2nd Prize: Coucou-Les-Nuages (“Anywhere Out of the World”) by Vincent Cardona
3rd Prize (tie): Hinkerort Zorasune (“The Fifth Column”) by Vatche Boulghourjian
3rd Prize (tie): Ja Vec Jesam Sve Ono Sto Zelim da Imam (“I Already Own Everything I Want to Have”) by Dane Komljen

The Cinefoundation prize is awarded solely to student filmmakers. The head of the jury this year was director Atom Egoyan.

Cannes Ecumenical Prize:

Les Hommes et des Dieux by Xavier Beauvois

Special mentions to Another Year by Mike Leigh and  Poetry by Lee Chang-dong

FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics)
Tournee (“On Tour”) by Mathieu Amalric

Those three films, with the addition of Oliver Assayas’s Carlos, were the favorites among the critics I talked to. Other nods of approval went the simple but sweet Stephen Frears film, Tamara Drewe, Xavier Beauvois‘s Les Hommes et des Dieux, and Doug Liman‘s Fair Game.

Woody Allen and Oliver Stone were cited with having done the same, better, earlier in their careers. Numerous films, such as Takeshi Kitano‘s Outrage were cited as just being lousy.

Most of the buyers and sellers in the Marche told me they were leaving on Wednesday, avoiding the still lingering ash cloud, which squares with reports that the aisles are now empty.

But beyond the crazy antics of Lindsay Lohan (who missed a court date in America using the excuse that she lost her passport) Cannes seems to have ended with a whimper, not a bang. but leave it to this particular festival to pull out a surprise or two. I wouldn’t be surprised.

The empty red steps at the Cannes Palais

I’m unable to muster equal passion for Les Hommes et des Dieux, a film by Xavier Beauvois (Le Petit Lieutenant) that strives for greatness but falls short of glory.  Lambert Wilson stars as Christian, the leader of monastery in the mountains of Maghreb. When violent Muslim extremists begin to attack the locals the eight brothers of the order must decide if they will flee for their lives or resolve to stay. It’s a slowly paced, meditative piece that asks a little much of its audience at two hours though it provides some satisfying and redemptive scenes.

The same could also be said for the new documentary Cameraman about Jack Cardiff which recounts the life and work of one of the world’s great cinematographers. Cardiff was the lenser on the great films of the Archers, Michael Powell and  Emeric Pressburger, including Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes. A little too elegiac it doesn’t give much in the way of new revelations or insights, though the stroll back through Cardiff’s great works is enjoyable. Martin Scorsese, Lauren Bacall and Kirk Douglas are interviewed.

People are starting to head home, including me. It’s sad to leave as this 63rd Cannes, filled with the usual drama, but also suffused with life and energy, it’s been a memorable experience. Cannes makes you step back and revisit the idea of cinema. Cannes allows cinema to reinvent itself even as movies reinvent Cannes; it remains the crown jewel of the film year.

Many here seem to like the Mike Leigh film, Another Year. That may or may not now include Richard Brooks, a journalist from the Sunday Times. During the press conference for the film yesterday Brooks began a question, meant for Leigh, by stating that “they’d had their differences before” but went on to say that he really liked the film.

That’s as far as Brooks got.  Leigh asked Brooks to raise his hand so he could identify him in the crowded press room. When Brooks obliged and Leigh was able to figure out who he was and where he was sitting, he laid into him.

“I refuse to answer a question from you and you know why,” said Leigh.  Brooks, rather smugly and coyly,  said he actually didn’t have any idea why, to which Leigh countered, “You do know. And I don’t want to answer a question from you.”

And that was that. The conference moved on, the next question was taken and Brooks sat there like a wet cat.

The big film today was La princesse de Montpensier, by beloved French director Bertrand Tavernier. Princess is a throwback to big-scale bodice-rippers of the past, the kind that Cahiers de Cinema used to trash on in the late ’50s. One can see why.

Tavernier seems to have been afflicted by the costumes, the swordplay, castles, and horses and likely nostalgia for the films he grew up with, like Fanfan la Tulipe. Montpensier has a much more serious intent than Fanfan and its ilk but his characters often act as if they stepped off that film and into this one.  It’s sumptuous to look at it but it doesn’t appear to have real people in it. When they fight it’s painstakingly choreographed with outlandish Pirate King moves, instead of real savagery.  Even when they’re naked these actors are moving around in costume.

Princess is a semi-convoluted tale (from the story by Madame de la Fayette) that takes place in 1562, when the Catholics and the  Huguenots were still bashing each others’ brains in over indulgences and the like. Into this chaotic time of war and riots the very comely Marie de Monspensier (Melanie Thierry) and the impetuous Henri de Guise (Gaspard Ulliel, who looks a lot less creepy than he did as a young Hannibal Lecter) fall in love. She, however, gets promised by her father to another man, Phillippe de Montpensier (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet), whom she doesn’t love. Watching over all of this is the noble Francois de Chabannes (Lambert Wilson), who also eventually falls in love with Marie.  Cue to the duels.

Also disappointing, and highly hyped was Un Homme qui crie (The Screaming Man) by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun about an elderly pool worker in Chad who must face his impending forced retirement, the ascension of his handsome son, and the civil unrest in his country. It’s quite slow and though the performances are all-around quite good (particularly Djénéba Koné as the son’s fiance) there’s not much more to recommend it.

Countdown to Zero, by Lucy Walker, is a documentary about nuclear war that is thought-provoking and chilling. While most of us have conveniently shelved the threat of a nuclear bomb going off somewhere in the world Walker reminds us, in the most positive but truthful fashion, that the threat remains all too real.

Here’s the program for today:

Here’s a gallery of just some of the titles being presented:

Some of these films have been made. Others are just seeking $$ to get made, on the title alone. Like who wouldn’t want to see “Lizard Boy?” Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, however, is a known title and was out in 2009. See, this is why the Academy MUST revisit their policies concerning Best Foreign Film.

My heart will go on indeed! For Titanic 2, releasing on home entertainment venues worldwide on July 22, they don’t need to list things like the director (Shane Van Dyke, grandson of Dick Van Dyke) on the poster; when you have Bruce Davison and Brooke Burns it’s already a lock. I’m surprised they didn’t just say “Bruce” and “Brooke.” I do doubt that the producers would allow the ship to hit an iceberg which is old-fashioned (unless it’s some colossal globally-warmed iceberg) so I’m sensing Mega-Shark here (that’s not too crazy, either, Asylum, the company that’s doing T2, distributes the “Mega Shark” series).

Really? Jason Momoa? Is he big in Europe? Did a miss a break-through somewhere? “Stargate: Atlantis” was really that big, huh?  Empire Magazine did a great write-up of the Conan series and included the Nispel – Momoa title so it’s on its way.

Here’s the sequel to the Takashi Miike (yes, Audition‘s Takashi Miike) 2004 film, Zebraman. After seeing this I had to seriously talk myself out of just chucking it all to become an actor in a Zebraman film. After all, who hasn’t always dreamed of shouting, “It’s not over yet, Zebraman!”?

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

I find rich, rich irony in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps‘s premiere at Cannes. First off, director Oliver Stone is in didactic mode throughout the film (at times it feels like a PowerPoint presentation) and in the film, and in his comments afterward, excoriates capitalism and greed, during a festival where everyone is trying to figure out how to secure financing to make movies and the main participants of the film are staying in swanky hotels and driving around in limos.

Stone appears to be trying to make amends for creating Gordon Gecko, an iconic Wall Street hero, since it was someone whose motives and mind-set the writer/director so clearly loathed. He’s now made Godzilla nice and turned Gecko (who has been played by Michael Douglas both times) from a confirmed capitalist into a redeemed reflector, exemplified by the twist on the iconic “Greed is good” line from the first film that features so prominently in the trailer for this one: “Someone reminded me I once said, ‘Greed is good,’ now it seems it’s legal.” Gecko delivers that line in a lecture he’s giving, which includes Jacob Moore (Shia LaBeouf) and Jacob’s fellow traders in the audience. What’s odd is that not only is the entire crowd lapping up what is essentially an upbraiding of corporate and personal avarice, but Jacob and his cohorts are rapturously enjoying it too. Don’t they hear what he’s saying? He’s reproaching them! But Stone, never a subtle storyteller, doesn’t let that bother him because, even though he makes Gecko appear to be as predatory as he was in the first film, you know he is pulling his punches and you know where this new film is going.

There are other things wrong with Money. Stone’s direction hasn’t felt this awkwardly intrusive since Natural Born Killers. In one scene, a phone call to Jacob  has the caller’s face (an attractive broker he’s working with) replace the face of the young woman sitting next to him, Winnie Gecko (Carey Mulligan). Yes, her name really is Winnie Gecko and yes, she’s Gordon’s  estranged daughter. Winnie is an activist who doesn’t seem to have as many issues with her name (if there ever was a justified reason to legally change a name, this is it) as with her dad, who went to the slammer for eight years for the events that Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) set in motion years before.

In another scene, when Jacob is in a discussion with Bretton James (Josh Brolin), and the audience realizes what Bretton must be bringing to Jacob’s mind is the memory of his mentor, Lewis Zabel (played by Frank Langella), Langella’s spectral image appears. James, by the way, is Stone’s new villain for the film, the heartless speculator who produces nothing but plunders everything.

The music by David Byrne, fine in its own right, is all wrong for this movie. It’s as if someone in the dubbing process was listening to Byrne and it accidentally was layered over the film

Though this film was an overall disappointment there are some nice lines and a few nice moments, typically when Stone is trying to fool you into believing that Gecko is as predatory, self-consumed, and honest as he was in the first movie.

There’s always one film a festival that is so fascinating and over-the-top that it demands your attention; you can’t turn away. This year that film is The Housemaid, a Korean film from director Im Sang-Soo. It stars Jeon Do-Youn (Best Actress at Cannes in 2007 for Milyang), Lee Jung Jae, Youn Yuh-Jong and Seo Woo. The leads are attractive and the scenes are erotic. It’s a very well made film, Im Sang-Soo aping De Palma, aping Hitchcock, and I suppose it is rich with dark, humorous analogies of class-ism in a patrician society. But really, the movie is what Variety used to call a “meller,” a melodrama that Douglas Sirk would have beemed about.

Jeon Do Youn (a truly winning actress) plays Eun-yi, an outwardly shy young woman who becomes a maid in the house of Hoon (Jung-Jae Lee). He is wealthy and powerful and has a beautiful young wife Hae Ra (Seo Woo), who is very pregnant with twins. Hoon immediately comes on to Eun-yi and she reciprocates readily and willingly in some pretty steamy scenes. They aren’t too quiet either so the affair becomes known to the Mrs. Danvers-ish Byung-sik (Youn Yuh-Jung). She spills the beans to Hae Ra’s mother, Mi-hee (Park Ji-young) and we’re off to the races. A “what’s going to happen next”curiosity takes over the proceedings and any semblance of importance, of social messaging, becomes subsumed by the nasty messiness of it all.

But it’s a glorious mess.

Jafar Panahi

Before the screening of O Estrano Caso de Angelica Cannes ran a short called “Vicious Circle.”

It was a brief interview with now-imprisoned director Jafar Panahi. Panahi’s jailers are his own Iranian government, largely, it is reported, for being a supporter of Iran’s Green Movement and the opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi and for questioning the legitimacy of Iran’s elections last year, which returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power.

In the short, Panahi discusses a former abduction and questioning by the authorities. Panahi explains to the camera and the interviewer how it was one in a series of inquisitions for the director.  For several hours they questioned him, asking him about his allegiances. Finally, the interrogator implored him to explain why he continued to make films in Iran, when he should and could do it safely outside of the country. This infuriated Panahi and he responded in such a manner that he likely extended the questioning for several more hours. Panahi said that, after the officer had said his peace and done what he felt was necessary for national security he looked at him and said, “I really enjoyed The Circle” (Panahi’s film from 2000).

The Cannes jury has also made a statement on opening night by including an empty chair on stage with them, acknowledging the missing director, who was supposed to have attended and sat on this year’s jury.

A Cannes Did-You-Know: The music that has been playing at most red carpets that I’ve seen, as the celebrities and filmmakers mount the red steps up to the Palaise, is the haunting opening by Camille Saint-Saëns from Days of Heaven. It’s been used for at least the last nine years. It’s haunting, beautiful music and has always set the right tone, regardless of the film.  You can hear it here.

Fireworks atop the Majestic Hotel in Cannes

The Majestic Hotel hosted the Cannes Opening Party. The magnificent structure, right across from the Palais (home of the famous red stairs), had a 5 story white sheet affixed to the southern end upon which a Cannes retrospective was shown. It went through the years, reveling in the past glamour and glory of the festival including this year’s jurists, led by Tim Burton (Burton’s influence is all over the festival this year). At the end of the video the sheet was unhooked, cascading down to reveal drummers on the balconies behind the it, who finished their set just as the fireworks went off.

We followed a very determined Kate Beckinsale into the party. She has the neck of a 15-year-old girl. She was checking her Blackberry, which, like most of us, was likely having some connectivity issues.

One of the most interesting people we met was Lucy Walker, a hot director with two acclaimed, very different documentaries in the pipeline:  Countdown to Zero, a film about the growing nuclear threat, which has been invited for special screenings at the festival,  and  the by-all-accounts enjoyable Waste Land, which received rave reviews in Sundance (and won the Audience Award for Docs).

Last night’s premiere was Robin Hood. Mostly positive notices were given in my general vicinity, though some grumbling was heard too.

I met Mark Strong, who is absolutely one of the most gracious, articulate and generally all-around good eggs I’ve had the chance to meet. He’s very well-kept, lithe actually. Yes, the tooth really does look like that. He’s wicked smart and observant of his craft as well.

He was with the Robin Hood crew at the Hotel Carlton at an after party that happened upon us. It was like being in the middle of someone else’s class reunion, as co-workers who’d been out of touch for many months embraced and told stories.

Somewhere around 2:30 in the morning Russell Crowe came in, with his wife, Danielle Spencer. You could claim that he was just doing reputation damage control, but I don’t think that was the case. There were no known journalists there. There were no cameras. He must have been exhausted having been prodded and shouted at for hours but he was clearly joining in with his “merry men” for a post-premiere celebration, one they clearly appreciated. In one of the nicest moments of the evening, Crowe and his wife were enjoying a brief moment to themselves when someone came by to fetch him to their table. Before he left he gave her a peck on her bare shoulder, like a child kisses a beloved toy.

FROM EARLIER:
Chris Tucker really needs Brett Ratner to make Rush Hour 4. He was riding in coach to Nice, although he certainly wasn’t hiding the fact or going incognito. He sported a ridiculous orange hat you’re likely only to see again in a Denny’s in Boca Raton.

Also in Nice, Diane Lane looked almost Faye Dunaway-ish with a brown, wide brimmed hat and wrap-around sunglasses. Her husband, Josh Brolin, waiting for their luggage, was wearing a Legendary Pictures ball cap (hey, they’re producing Jonah Hex so why not?). As the conveyor belt started up he came up beside me. Up close, that beard he’s sporting has that shoe-polish brown color from an atrocious dye-job that, I hope, is necessitated by a role he’s shooting and not of his own choosing. As piece after piece of luggage came by I said, “They’re all black.”   “Not ours,” he replied as he retrieved a dowdy, reasonably-packed blue suitcase, the kind you toted off to college but were glad to be rid of, off of the carousel. Lane and Brolin have a dowdy blue suitcase. I know it’s stupid but I like them even more now.

Like the sign says, “Welcome to the Cannes Festival.”

courtesy NYT/Arni Saeberg/Bloomberg News

If the old saying is true, that it’s not a party until something gets broken, then Cannes should be a doozy this year.

Volcanic ash from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland has confounded European travel and stranded attendees in Paris (guess I better revisit the “Taking the Train” portion of my “Learn French in Your Car” audio book).  Last week, huge waves, some reportedly as high as 20-25’, battered the beaches of the French Riviera , causing one official to say, “The damage was considerable, so the festival will not proceed exactly as forecast.”

That’s an understatement with or without Mother Nature.

According to The Wrap, one of the lions of the independent film scene, Bob Berney, has abruptly pulled out of attending with Apparition, the company he helped to create just last year. Berney, who shepherded hit films such as Memento, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Whale Rider and The Passion of the Christ to the screen, resigned yesterday which came as a shock to his business partner, Bill Polhad.

Not to be outdone the Italian culture minister, Sandro Bondri, is effectively boycotting the festival because it’s showing a film he considers propaganda.  According to the New York Times and Agence France-Presse the film, Sabina Guzzanti’s Draquila: Italy Trembles, recounts the events of the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake and the subsequent government reconstruction projects.  In the film, satirist Guzzanti impersonates and lampoons the Italian prime minister, the embattled Silvio Berlusconi.

The festival has also announced a late entry into the competition’s lineup. It’s Route Irish, a film by Cannes perennial Ken Loach, about two ex-soldiers who become private contractors in Iraq. Loach won the Palme d’Or in 2006 for his film The Wind That Shakes the Barley.

Adding Loach to the party is like inviting the school activist to the prom but oh, well. It’s not like there’s a lack of drama at Cannes this year. And it hasn’t even started!

We'll be covering the festival live from Cannes starting May 12, 2010.

The last time I was at the Cannes Film Festival (okay, it’s pretty great to be able to start a post that way) was 2003. Though anti-American sentiment was high and the invasion of Iraq was recent, the French were welcoming, gracious and kind. The festival, however, was a bit back on its heels.

Attendance appeared to be down as the world was still getting its breath back from the events of the last 18 months. The then co-chairman of Miramax films, Harvey Weinstein, in an article in the ultra swanky, now-defunct Variety VLife magazine, questioned the viability of the festival.  Sour journalists, and critics from print media picked up the comment and echoed the sentiment, neither Weinstein nor the pundits apparently realizing that the mortality that they needed to worry about was their own.

The big controversy that year was over Vincent Gallo’s The Brown Bunny, a soporific, self-indulgent film that infamously featured Chloe Sevigny fellating Gallo. The film was so boring, and so bad that Roger Ebert, who had walked out of the screening, hyperbolically proclaimed it “the worst film ever shown in the history of Cannes” to a camera crew that had pounced on him. In response Gallo called Ebert “a fat pig” and flippantly wished cancer upon the critic. Mr. Ebert, borrowing from Churchill, replied: “One day I will be thin; Mr Gallo will still be the director of The Brown Bunny.” Ironically, tragically, Ebert was diagnosed with thyroid cancer two years later.  By that time Gallo had also cut 26 minutes from Bunny and Mr. Ebert had revisited it, giving the film a much warmer reception for its director’s efforts. Recently Ebert, after considerable trials, regained his voice with prolific posts while Gallo appeared in Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro. Though the film was a 71-year-old’s version of experimental Gallo showed he still had the acting chops that intrigued everyone years before.

The hottest ticket in Cannes in 2003 was the premiere of The Matrix Reloaded which debuted on May 15th, prompting Keanu Reeves and cast to hit the Croissette and red carpet to the Palais de Festival.

In another irony, Reloaded’s debut was the same day as “European Day” at Cannes where the cultural ministers from the European Union (EU) announced that the EU intended to invest upwards of $400 million in films made by filmmakers principally from the EU. The goal? To “preserve our culture,” said an informed source, “from the strong influx of American product.”

That strong influx has not ebbed a bit. Universal and Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood kick off Cannes this year while Tim Adler, in Deadline Hollywood Daily’s recent article revealed that 67% of all European ticket sales went to American studio product in 2009.  It makes one wonder: wither the $400 mil?

The film’s fighting it out In Competition in 2003 included Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River, Denys Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions, Lars von Trier’s Dogville, and Elephant which Gus Van Sant directed to the Palme d’Or.

This year, it’s the return of favorites such as Abbas Kiarostami (Copie Conforme), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Biutiful), Mike Leigh (Another Year), Doug Liman (Fair Game) and Bertrand Tavernier (La Princesse de Montpensier).    But most of these films, besides their name directors and their anointing by Cannes, are mysteries and we’ll have to wait to see what the next week brings to see which be written about in blogs seven years from now, reflecting on 2010.