Anatomy of a Fall by Justine Triet: The Palme d’Or Winner and Favorite of Cannes 2023

With Anatomy of a Fall, Justine Triet imposes herself in a consensual list, mixing film styles and where the favorites are there.

The haters of French cinema are in PLS tonight. From 2021 to 2023, since the end of this damn pandemic, this one will therefore have totaled a Golden Lion (The Event d’Audrey Diwan), un Ours d’Or (On the Adamant by Nicolas Philibert) and two Palmes d’Or. With Anatomy of a fall, Justine Triet succeeds Julia Ducournau (member of the Jury who awarded her this prize, an unusual generosity in this exercise which often resembles a basket of crabs) and her Titanium crowned in 2021. A triumph completed by the prize for directing for The Passion of Dodin Bouffant de Tran Anh Hung. Greeted with enthusiasm by the foreign press, it even has a royal road to the Oscar for foreign film, an award which French cinema has been deprived of for 30 years and theIndochina by Régis Wargnier.

Cannes 2023: Anatomy of a fall by Justine Triet wins the Palme d’Or [palmarès complet]

However, Justine Triet’s victory is not a surprise. When we scrutinized the stars of the French and international press, Anatomy of a fall stood out as the favorite with The Zone of interest the Jonathan Glazer. It only remained to know the order – Palme and Grand Prix – between the two films which share a common actress, the exceptional Sandra Hueller (avenged this evening for the affront of forgetting Toni Erdmann winners in 2016), a unique case in the history of the Festival.

Glazer aficionados will no doubt be disappointed… but less than the Italians who leave empty-handed after having nevertheless brought out the heavy artillery (Nanni Moretti, Marco Bellocchio, Alice Rohrwacher who had so far been rewarded for all her films in competition) and above all than Americans. Because if the representatives of the country of Uncle Sam remain the record holders in number of Palmes (13 since Marty by Delbert Mann in 1955), they have not won the supreme award since… 2011 and Tree of life by Terrence Malick (with that year a jury chaired by an American, Robert de Niro)! And this while they monopolize the Golden Lions at the Mostra (no less than 4 between 2017 and 2022: The Shape of Water, Joker, Nomadland et All the beauty and the bloodshed).

This contrast is obviously not good news for Thierry Frémaux who strives to attract as many Hollywood films as possible to the Cannes competition each year to ensure stars and glamor on the red carpet. Engaging in the race for the Palme and leaving empty-handed, it weighs on you an Oscar campaign before you even start it. And we imagine that the decision of Apple TV + and Scorsese to simply present Killers of the Flower Moon out of competition is no stranger to this observation.

However, this 2023 prize list has succeeded in sparing the goat and the cabbage, between sharp auteur films (Dried herbs, The Zone of interest…) and cinema with a more popular vocation (Dodin Bouffant), between owners of their napkin ring in competition (Kore-eda, Kaurismäki, Wenders) and those who had never faced it (Glazer, Tran Anh Hung). But also by excluding more radical works (club zero) or surrounded by a scent of sulfur (The return by Catherine Corsini, Last summer by Catherine Breillat). And at Première, we will regret that our own Palme, Olfa’s Daughtersawarded the Golden Eye for the best documentary of the festival in all sections, did not find favor in the eyes of the jury, Kaouther Ben Hania’s hybrid proposal having therefore aroused more rejection than support from them.

It now remains for these films, award-winning or not, to find their place in theaters. Few – unlike previous editions – have ventured there during the festival. The successful starts of Jeanne du Barry et Love and forests may suggest a strategic error. Autumn will inevitably be deadly for some and in particular for those who will not be crowned with a reward. For Anatomy of a fall, the appointment is already fixed. It will be August 23. On your calendars!

Cannes 2023: the Premiere awards