Julia Ducournau won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday, a remarkable achievement considering it is only her second feature. As with her debut, Raw, her latest film is classified as a “body-horror” movie in which a victim of a vehicular accident has a sexual relationship with an automobile. The Paris-born Ducournau is the second woman director to win the festival’s top prize, following Jane Campion in 1993 for The Piano. Actors Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux were also co-awarded the Palme with their director Abdellatif Kechiche for the film Blue is the Warmest Color in 2013. (Cannes is allowed to make up rules on the fly like that, and that’s why Cannes is the greatest.)
The audience who came to the Grand Auditorium Louis Lumière to applaud the 2021 Cannes Film Festival winners also braved protocols to stop the spread of the coronavirus during the busy 12-day event. (One can hardly imagine Brigitte Bardot or Marcello Mastroianni spitting into a cup before a premiere.) The festival, usually held in May, was canceled entirely in 2020 due to the pandemic, the first such cancellation since World War II.
Jury president Spike Lee goofed up during the ceremony and announced the big winner first. When prompted to read the “first prize” champion, he misinterpreted his cue.
Earlier, Lee joked that he intended to be a benevolent leader during the judging process. “I promised the guys on the jury that I won’t be a dictator, that I’ll be democratic … but only up to a point!” he said. The director and actor whose 2018 film, BlacKkKlansman won the Grand Prix (essentially the second place prize) reminded the audience that “if the jury is split four against four, it’s me that decides.”
His fellow jurors included director Mati Diop, singer-songwriter Mylène Farmer, Maggie Gyllenhaal, writer-director Jessica Hauser, Mélanie Laurent, director Kleber Mendonça Filho, actor Tahar Rahim, and Song Kang-Ho, star of the 2019 Palme d’Or winner Parasite.
The daring Titane was chosen from 24 competition films (which represent less than one-quarter of the movies that debuted at Cannes this year). It triumphed over a class of world cinema heavy-hitters, including previous Palme winners such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Jacques Audiard, and Nanni Moretti, and returning contenders Paul Verhoeven, Wes Anderson, Leos Carax, Sean Baker, and Mia Hansen-Løve.
Titane marks the first time a horror picture has won the prize, though one could make the case for Shōhei Imamura’s 1983 film The Ballad of Narayama.
The Grand Prix, ostensibly second place, was a tie (not unheard of) awarded to Iran’s Asghar Farhadi for A Hero and Finland’s Juho Kuosmanen for Compartment No. 6. The Jury Prize, the bronze medal of sorts, was also a tie between Israel’s Nadav Lapid for Ahed’s Knee and Thailand’s Weerasethakul for the Tilda Swinton-led Memoria.
Best director went to Leos Carax for the musical Annette, written by Ron and Russell Mael of the band Sparks and starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard.
Best actress was awarded to Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve for her work in Joachim Trier’s dark romantic comedy The Worst Person In The World. Best actor went to Caleb Landry Jones for Justin Kurzel’s Australian thriller Nitram, making him the first X-Man to be so honored. Jones was apparently so nervous upon receiving the award he mumbled, “I cannot do this,” and left the stage. (After the year we’ve had, this feels relatable.)
Lastly, the best screenplay award went to Japan’s Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe for Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car, based on a 2014 Haruki Murakami short story.
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