‘Titane’ wins top prize at Cannes

Director Julia Ducournau is the second woman to receive the Palme d’Or.

Julia Ducournau’s “Titane,” a wild, body-horror thriller featuring sex with a car and a surprisingly tender heart, won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, making Ducournau just the second woman to win the festival’s top honor in its 74year history.

The win on Saturday was mistakenly announced by jury president Spike Lee at the top of the closing ceremony, broadcast in France on Canal+, unleashing a few moments of confusion. Ducournau, a French filmmaker, didn’t come to the stage to accept the award until the formal announcement at the end of the ceremony. But the early hint didn’t diminish her emotional response.

“I’m sorry, I keep shaking my head,” said Ducournau, catching her breath. “Is this real? I don’t know why I’m speaking English right now, because I’m French. This evening has been so perfect because it was not perfect.”

After several false starts, Lee implored Sharon Stone to make the formal Palme d’Or announcement, explaining: “She’s not going to mess it up.”

The problems started earlier, when Lee was asked to say which prize would be awarded first. Instead, he announced the evening’s final prize, as fellow juror Mati Diop plunged her face into her hands and others rushed to stop him.

Lee himself spent several moments with his head in his hands before apologizing profusely for taking a lot of the suspense out of the evening.

“I have no excuses,” Lee told reporters afterward. “I messed up. I’m a big sports fan. It’s like the guy at the end of the game who misses the free throw.”

“I messed up,” he added. “As simple as that.”

Ducournau’s win was a long-awaited triumph. The only other woman to win Cannes’ top honor — which is among the most prestigious awards in cinema — was Jane Campion for “The Piano” in 1993.

In recent years, frustration at Cannes’ gender parity has grown, including in 2018, when 82 women — among them Agnes Varda, Cate Blanchett and Salma Hayek — protested gender inequality on the Cannes red carpet. That number was chosen to signify the movies by female directors selected to compete for the Palme d’Or — 82 of them, versus 1,645 films directed by men.

This year, four out of 24 films up for the Palme were directed by women.