After 10 days, lashing rain, 19 movies, savage hangovers and something scooped from deep in Wim Wenders colon, Cannes 2008 finally served up a worthy Palme d’Or winner. The first French movie to bag Cannes’ top prize in 20 years, terrific high-school docu-drama The Class finally united the jury in a festival of films no one could agree on.
If the French were happy, the Italians were even more chuffed with their runner-up one-two. Second-prize Grand Prix went to superb Mafia muck-raker Gomorrah and third-place Prix du Jury went to Il Divo, a paranoid satire of notorious Italian politician Giulio Andreotti.
Good news for us Brits, too. Camera d’Or (Best First Feature) was handed to Steve McQueen for Hunger, his gruelling, full-force account of starvation-martyr Bobby Sands.
Benicio del Toro scored Best Actor, the only gong for Che – despite the fact Soderbergh’s daring revolutionary chronicle has more to do with its director’s triumph than its distant lead man. A great film which still looks a commercial nightmare.
In fact, it was Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan – a Cannes winner with his last two movies – who bagged Best Director for Three Monkeys.
Maintaining their record of a prize in every Cannes, the Dardenne brothers netted Best Screenplay for Silence de Lorna, Sergey Dvortsevoy’s Tulpan, meanwhile, took the Prix un Certain Regard.
With Penn urging his jury to make Cannes the anti-Oscars, it was pleasing to see Clint Eastwood’s glossy The Exchange ignored for awards – even Angelina Jolie missed out.
Instead, another troubled mother scored Best Actress – Sandra Corveloni for her role as a impoverished single mother of four in Walter Salles’ accomplished favela drama Linha de Passe.
Aging icons Catherine Deneuve and Clint Eastwood shared the Special Prize, a career pat-on-the-back for as much as for A Christmas Tale and The Exchange. Eastwood duly snubbed the ceremony.
But where was the love for ace animated anti-war doc Waltz With Bashir? Could it be that Persepolis director Marjane Satrapi did felt a teensy-bit threatened?
Could have been worse. At least Wim Wenders’ stinker-of-the-century Palmero Shooting got nothing. Except a kicking out back.
