Names and faces
Barbra Streisand is mourning the loss of her beloved dog, Sammie. The 75-yearold star announced the news on her social media accounts Saturday, saying “we cherish every moment of the 14 years we had with her.” On her Instagram page, Streisand has posted numerous photos of herself doting on the fluffy white coton de Tulear, also known as the “Royal Dog of Madagascar.” Streisand is fond of the breed and has had several coton de Tulear in the past. Streisand once told British newspaper The Independent that Sammie is “like the daughter I never had.”
The Cannes Film Festival awarded its coveted Palme d’Or award to Ruben Ostlund’s Swedish comedy The Square on Sunday, while Sofia Coppola became only the second woman to win the best director award. “Oh, my god! OK,” the Swedish filmmaker exclaimed after he bounded onto the stage to collect the prestigious Palme, in a rare and somewhat surprising win for a comedy. In The Square, Claes Bang plays a museum director whose manicured life begins to unravel after a series of events that upset his, and the museum’s, calm equilibrium. The movie’s title comes from an art installation that Bang’s character is prepping, which invites anyone who enters a small square to be kind and generous. The president of the Cannes jury, Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, praised the film for exploring the “dictatorship” of political correctness and those trapped by it. “It’s clever. It’s witty. It’s funny. It deals with questions so important,” said French actress and filmmaker Agnes Jaoui, a member of the jury that also included Americans Will Smith and Jessica Chastain. Coppola won best director for The Beguiled, her remake of Don Siegel’s 1971 Civil War drama about a Union soldier hiding out in a Southern girls’ school. Hailed as Coppola’s most feminist work yet, the remade thriller told from a more female point of view stars Nicole Kidman and Kirsten Dunst, with Colin Farrell playing the wounded soldier. Diane Kruger was named best actress and Joaquin Phoenix best actor as the festival celebrated its 70th anniversary. Kruger was honored for her performance in Fatih Akin’s In the Fade. She played a German woman whose son and Turkish husband are killed in a bomb attack. Phoenix was recognized for his role in Lynne Ramsay’s thriller You Were Never Really Here, in which he played a tormented war veteran trying to save a teenage girl from a sex trafficking ring. The French AIDS drama 120 Beats Per Minute won the Grand Prize from the jury. The award recognizes a strong film that missed out on the Palme d’Or. Directed by Robin Campillo, the co-screenwriter of the Palme d’Or-winning film The Class, the movie centers on the activist group ACT UP in Paris in the 1990s during the AIDS crisis.