The jury of the Cannes Film Festival awards Saturday evening the prestigious Palme d’Or, epilogue of an edition that will have kept its promise to the end : celebrate despite the pandemic the return to theaters and the reunion of world cinema.
Who will succeed “Parasite” by South Korean Bong Joon-ho, crowned in 2019, before coronavirus ? This year, no favorite stands out clearly, at the end of a competition of good performance which counted no less than 24 films in official competition.
“We’re going to laugh!” »
To deliberate, the jury chaired by the American filmmaker Spike Lee, the first African-American artist to hold this position, and including personalities as diverse as the Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho or the singer Mylène Farmer, will retire to a villa in Cannes.
Within the jury, “Everyone has a different opinion”, had entrusted Spike Lee in the first days of the festival. “I promised the people on the jury that I will not be a dictator, that I will be democratic… but up to a certain point, since if the jury is divided four against four, it is I who decides! We are going to have fun! “.
Among the films that have most marked the Croisette, “Drive my car”, by Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, is the favorite of the international press. This dazzlingly aesthetic film-river, adapted from a short story by Haruki Murakami, features two beings haunted by the past.
In other genres, no one has forgotten “Annette”, opera-rock by Leos Carax, since its projection with fanfare at the opening, and many quote “Julie (in 12 chapters)”, a fine observation of the amorous mores of today’s youth, with a feminist tone, by the Norwegian Joachim Trier.
Unless the jury seizes the opportunity to reward a woman, for the second time only, 28 years after “The Piano Lesson” by Jane Campion – why not the youngest of the competition Julia Ducournau, author of the most gory film , “Titanium”, shunned by critics but which left no one indifferent.
Feminist breath
A coronation, in Cannes, of the Russian Kirill Serebrennikov, in disgrace in Moscow and banned from leaving his country after a conviction, or of Nadav Lapid, a harsh critic of Israel, would send a strong political message.
Among the filmmakers who have already obtained the Palme d’Or and are trying to join the very closed club of nine twice-crowned directors, only Apichatpong Weerasethakul has convinced some of the critics with his film, however the most hermetic. The last opus of Nanni Moretti and Jacques Audiard seemed to many to lose in breath or in singularity.
More broadly, like an industry affected by societal changes, Cannes films, in competition and beyond, have blown a fresh breeze: despite only four female directors in competition, feminism is omnipresent. Directors have seized on it, and lesbian relationships, for example, now have their place.
The climate also occupied a more important place than ever, with a special selection of films on the environment, going beyond the manifesto, as with Aïssa Maïga who connected to her family history in “Walking on the water ”, To address the issue of the accessibility of this resource. The subject remains a big question for the festival, which still has a long way to go to continue reducing its ecological footprint.
Saturday evening will also be the occasion to present an honorary Palme d’Or to the Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio, who after five decades of committed career, sparing neither the army nor religion, presents a very personal documentary, “Marx can wait”.
And after the thrill of the winners, the Croisette will be able to unwind. Cannes is showing as a closing and preview the most anticipated French comedy of the summer, “OSS 117, Red alert in black Africa”, by Nicolas Bedos with Jean Dujardin still, in Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, joined by Pierre Niney and Fatou N’Diaye.
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