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Cannes (AFP)
The Cannes Film Festival has given itself a facelift for its first edition since the start of the pandemic, by offering the Palme d’Or to a 37-year-old transgressive director, Julia Ducournau, at the end of a colorful edition .
The tears of the winner, the blunder of Spike Lee, the absence of Léa Seydoux … Here are the strong images that will remain, before the return of the biggest festival in the world, if all goes well, in May 2022.
“Titanium”: blood and oil
“Thank you also to the jury for letting the monsters in,” said director Julia Ducournau in tears as she stepped onto the stage of the Palais des Festivals.
This furious and sometimes gory film with French actor Vincent Lindon evokes both the woman / machine hybridization, love for cars and the quest for fatherhood.
The heroine literally makes love with cars, a tribute to “Crash” by David Cronenberg, and kills men, like Sharon Stone in “Basic Instinct”, but with a hair stick.
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Her body is haunted by a mass of metal growing in her stomach as she sweats and bleeds motor oil.
Femininity, virility, fluidity
Four years after the Weinstein affair and the explosion of the #MeToo movement, issues of gender, their representation and the place of women have been at the heart of the Festival. Obviously on the prize list, with the Palme d’Or won by the youngest in the competition, a first since Jane Campion, the only woman crowned so far for “The Piano Lesson”, 28 years ago.
These topics have infused more widely, in competition and elsewhere. From Norwegian Trier to Dutch Paul Verhoeven via Chadian Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, male directors have also explored the intimacy of their heroines, through very strong roles.
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“The strong gesture (of the general delegate) Thierry Frémaux was to choose a young, feminine and inclusive jury”, commented to AFP Iris Brey, specialist of the “female gaze” in the cinema, who welcomes the choice for the Palme of an “extremely innovative and disobedient” film.
This award, which has “something very contemporary”, “gives the signal that we are moving towards a more inclusive world”, and “shows that there are also heroines who are not smooth, who do not correspond. to the guns that are expected “. But there is still some way to go: this year, only four female directors, out of 24 films, were in competition.
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The gaff of President Spike Lee
It was the mistake not to do. President of the jury Spike Lee, got tangled up and announced the name of the winner of the Palme d’Or early in the evening, instead of the award for male interpretation.
Poor Julia Ducournau, overwhelmed with emotion, then had to wait throughout the ceremony to get on stage.
At a press conference, Spike Lee apologized: “I’m like the one who misses the goal (…) I’m sorry … they forget spike Lee!”, He launched to the address of the film crew.
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Stars but not Seydoux
Holding an international festival despite the Covid: with a health pass, a mask in screenings and regular reminders to order, the bet has been won, and the event has not created a cluster.
A star will however have been prevented because of the virus: Léa Seydoux who should have lived her moment of glory by being in the cast of four films of the festival, including three in the official competition, including “The French Dispatch” by Wes Anderson. But she was ultimately unable to climb the steps or go to Cannes, having to comply with the Festival’s strict health rules after having tested positive for Covid-19. The height of bad luck, the 36-year-old actress left empty-handed, the price of female interpretation going to another thirty-something, the Norwegian Renate Reinsve.
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© 2021 AFP
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