The unveiling, at the start of the closing ceremony of 74e Cannes Film Festival, from the Palme d’Or to Titanium, by a strangely confused Spike Lee, makes a logically illogical conclusion to this extraordinary edition, from whatever side you consider it: prize list, progress, material conditions.
At the press conference that followed the chaotic and warm ceremony, one of the jurors, American actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, agreed that no film had won unanimity among the jurors. A series of fractures that reflected the fierce discussions between professionals that followed almost all the screenings of the twenty-four films in the competition, each of which caused deep divisions – including within this editorial staff – and unexpected agreements. Thus, the interventions of Spike Lee and Mylène Farmer during the press conference suggested the formation of an alliance between the director of Malcolm X and the creator of Libertine.
Anyway, the crowning of Titanium double or even triple the percentage of women who received the Palme d’Or. The French Julia Ducournau is the first director to receive this award in her own right. In 1993, Jane Campion (The Piano Lesson) had shared his with the Chinese Chen Kaige (Goodbye my concubine). The winner stands out from her predecessors by her gender, but also by her age: at 37, she is younger, even much younger than Bong Joon-ho, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Ruben Ostlund or Ken Loach.
This prize list, which shared a reward – the Grand Prix – between two almost antagonistic films (the austere A hero, by Asghar Farhadi, and the sensual and joyful, Compartment n ° 6, by Juho Kuosmanen), has dispersed according to its divisions on all the aesthetic surfaces of the cinema planet.
Bet on the future
The important thing this year is elsewhere, in the renewal. Among the directors of the awarded films, only one, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Jury Prize for Memoria, tied with Ahed’s Knee, by Nadav Lapid, has already received an award in Cannes.
This feeling of youth is contagious: Leos Carax, Best Director Award for Annette, had presented his first film in competition, Pola X, in 1999 and yet the award for his musical, received by the Mael brothers – the Sparks -, authors of the score and lyrics, also appears as an innovation.
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