Marriage trial film wins at Cannes
Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall won the Palme d’Or at the 76th Cannes Film Festival in a ceremony that bestowed the festival’s prestigious top prize on an engrossing, rigorously-plotted French courtroom drama that puts a marriage on trial.
Anatomy of a Fall, which stars Sandra Huller as a writer trying to prove her innocence in her husband’s death, is only the third film directed by a woman to win the Palme d’Or. One of the two previous winners, Julia Ducournau, was on this year’s jury.
Cannes’ Grand Prix, its second prize, went to Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, a chilling Martin Amis adaptation about a German family living next door to Auschwitz. Huller also stars in that film.
The awards were decided by a jury presided over by two-time Palme d’Or winner Ruben Ostlund, the Swedish director who won the prize last year for Triangle of Sadness. The ceremony preceded the festival’s closing night film, the Pixar animation Elemental.
Remarkably, the award for
Anatomy of a Fall gives the indie distributor Neon its fourth straight Palme d’Or winner. Neon, which acquired the film after its premiere in Cannes, also backed Triangle of Sadness, Ducournau’s Titane and Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, which it steered to a best picture win at the Academy Awards.
Triet was presented the Palme d’Or by Jane Fonda, who recalled coming to Cannes in 1963 when, she said, there were no female film-makers competing “and it never even occurred to us that there was something wrong with that”.
This year, a record seven out of the 21 films in competition at Cannes were directed by women.
After a rousing standing ovation, Triet, the 44-year-old French filmmaker, spoke passionately about the protests that have roiled France this year over reforms to pension plans and the retirement age.
Several protests were held during Cannes this year, but demonstrations were — as they have been in many high-profile locations throughout France — banned from the area around the Palais des Festivals. Protesters were largely relegated to the outskirts of Cannes.
“The protests were denied and repressed in a shocking way,” said Triet, who linked that governmental influence to that in cinema.
“The merchandising of culture, defended by a liberal government, is breaking the French cultural exception.
“This award is dedicated to all the young women directors and all the young male directors and all those who cannot manage to shoot films today,” she added.
“We must give them the space I occupied 15 years ago in a less hostile world where it was still possible to make mistakes and start again.”
After the ceremony, Triet reflected on being the third female director to win the Palme d’Or, after Ducournau and Jane Campion (The Piano).
“Things are truly changing,” she said.
The jury prize went to Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki’s Fallen Leaves, a deadpan love story about a romance that blooms in a loveless workaday Helsinki where dispatches from the war in Ukraine regularly play on the radio.
Best actor went to veteran Japanese star Koji Yakusho, who plays a reflective, middle-aged Tokyo man who cleans toilets in Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, a gentle, quotidian character study.
Turkish actor Merve Dizdar took best actress for the Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses. Ceylan’s expansive tale is set in snowy eastern Anatolia about a teacher, Samet (Deniz Celiloglu), accused of misconduct by a young female student. Dizdar plays a friend both attracted to and repelled by Samet.
“I understand what it’s like to be a woman in this area of the country,” said Dizdar. “I would like to dedicate this prize to all the women who are fighting to exist and overcome difficulties in this world and to retrain hope.”
Vietnamese-French director Tra` n Anh Hu` ng took best director for Potau-Feu, a lush, foodie love story starring Juliette Binoche and Benoˆıt Magimel and set in a 19th century French gourmet chaˆ teau.
Best screenplay was won by Yuji Sakamoto for Monster. Sakamoto penned Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda’s nuanced drama, with shifting perspectives, about two boys struggling for acceptance in their school at home.
Monster also won the Queer Palm, an honour bestowed by journalists for the festival’s strongest LGBTQthemed film.
Quentin Tarantino, who won Cannes’ top award for Pulp Fiction, attended the ceremony to present a tribute to film-maker Roger Corman. Tarantino praised Corman for filling him and countless moviegoers with “unadulterated cinema pleasure”.
“My cinema is uninhibited, full of excess and fun,” said Corman, the independent film maverick. “I feel like this what Cannes is about.”
The festival’s Un Certain Regard section handed out its awards on Friday, giving the top prize to Molly Manning Walker’s debut feature,