Cannes 2008: Epilogue
Posted on Tuesday May 27, 2008, 08:59 by Damon Wise

Well, everyone has gone (apart from us), the posters are coming down, the locals are being slightly nicer and the front of house security staff are going back to wherever it is they go to learn to be so impossible to deal with. And as the dust is settling, it's time to reflect on the division of prizes, which, like the title of the surprisingly amiable Barry Levinson movie-about-movies that closed the event, jury president Sean Penn promised would leave us thinking What Just Happened?

Well, the first surprise was actually a relief: there was only an acting prize for Steven Soderbergh's Che. Soderbergh's loosey-goosey sketch of the rise of the Argentinian rebel leader has been something of a cause celebre since it screened last Wednesday evening (or rather, at 270 minutes, it WAS last Wednesday evening). True, it had some moments, but the fact remains that the film really was not finished. Or should that be films, plural? Even now, nobody really knows what's going on with Che, meaning whether it will be released as one single film with a break (or not) or as two films with a several-month interval. If it's the latter, it's debatable whether anyone will pay to see part two, since the opener is slow, repetitive and simply ends with no cliffhanger or apparent climax. And Part 2 is most definitely not the epic, self-contained masterpiece that advance buzz promised. The most infuriating thing about Che, though, is the people who thought that this underwhelming, unrevealing work-in-progress deserved the Palme D'Or in order to give it a much-needed leg-up in the marketplace. Hmm, so the Palme D'Or is now a failsafe device to help Hollywood directors flog their wilfully uncommercial side projects, is it?

Thankfully common sense prevailed, and the night's big prize went instead to the extraordinary Entre Les Murs (The Class) by Laurent Cantet. A low-key school story, with no music and an unusually freeform narrative, it tells the story of a year in the life of a dodgy Parisian school, where a diligent teacher (Francois Begaudeau) is trying to tame his lively but mercurial pupils. Like Half Nelson directed by Ken Loach, it's an incredibly immersive experience, throwing you right in with rat-a-tat schoolroom debates that play hard and fast with modern French slang. However, it soon reveals itself as an astonishing achievement, drawing superb performances from its cast of 13/14-year-olds and addressing several major topics of the day: youth, immigration and the right to education, the latter weighing heavily on the unassuming Begaudeau's shoulders.

From the Palme down, the prizes were deemed to be well-judged and deserved, with the possible exception of the Dardenne brothers' screenwriting prize for Le Silence de Lorna, which many felt was a little under par for the two-time Palme winners. The one big surprise, however, was that there was nothing for Ari Folman's Waltz With Bashir, an extraordinary animated documentary in which the filmmaker wrestles with the memories of the true-life horrors he witnessed while serving as a soldier in Beirut in the eighties. Beautiful rendered, with some haunting imagery, it's a thoughtful and finally harrowing film that really drives home the horrors of modern warfare, which today takes place mostly in towns and cities rather than the battlegrounds of the past. Looking back on the awards show – the usual shambles, in which guest host Fatih Akin revealed he didn't have a clue who had won the prize he was giving, Faye Dunaway wittered in French, Clint didn't show (even though he was still rumoured to be at the Hotel Du Cap) and Dennis Hopper claimed to have won the Camera D'Or in 1969, even though it wasn't created until 1978 – Folman's snub was the only omission. Otherwise, Penn and co did an admirable job of steering through an interesting but never truly stunning selection. Here's to next year, when hopefully more films will be *properly* ready, and neither Wim Wenders nor Abel Ferrara will have anything to bring. Note to festival: neither director has made a decent film in over a decade, so please, please, please stop inviting them....

The Winners:

Palme d'Or: The Class (Entre Les Murs), Laurent Cantet

Grand Prix: Gomorra, Matteo Garrone

Special prizes: Catherine Deneuve, Un Conte De Noel; Clint Eastwood, Changeling

Best Director: Three Monkeys, Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Jury Prize: Il Divo, by Paolo Sorrentino

Best Actor: Benicio Del Toro, Che

Best Actress: Sandra Corveloni, Linha De Passe

Best Screenplay: Le Silence De Lorna, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Camera D'Or (for first feature): Steve McQueen, Hunger