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OfDaniel Kothenschulte
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shut down
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The French contribution “Titane”, the most daring film of the Cannes Festival, wins the Palme d’Or – framed by a wonderfully absurd gala.
You can also look forward to a surprise that has been divulged. In any case, nobody really believed their ears when jury president Spike Lee announced the winning film right at the beginning of the gala on Saturday evening after a bizarre misunderstanding. Least of all the director herself, the French Julia Ducournau. Tears stood in her eyes when it finally became certain what the presenter had been trying to cover up until then. With her darkly poetic genre mix “Titane”, Ducournau was only the second woman in the history of the Cannes Festival to win the Palme d’Or. And for the first time alone: her predecessor, Jane Campion, had to share the 1993 award for “Das Piano” with the Chinese Chen Kaige.
More controversial than almost any other film at the festival, no other can match the daring power of “Titane”: Seductively like a sultry nightmare, it follows the surreal development of an androgynous female figure, steely and at the same time fragile. A female Terminator capable of brutal murders who has sex with cars with engine oil dripping from their breasts. And when he slips into the role of a male victim, he finds the uncompromising, innocent love of his father. Anyone who thinks all of this is almost unbelievable is underestimating the power of cinema: Ducournau’s appropriation of the genre succeeds on the basis of sensitive actor management and formal strength. And that has already produced many winners in Cannes: Luis Buñuel, David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino or Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
The Thai has now been honored with a great jury award for his new work “Memoria”: In it Tilda Swinton plays a woman who feels a strange sound that she hears inside. In Bogotá she made the acquaintance of an archaeologist played by Jeanne Balibar, and then it was as always with Weerasethakul: human and cultural-historical memories mix into a metaphysical concert in which ghosts and in this case maybe even a UFO want to get involved. The director once told us in an interview that he himself often sensed ghosts in his surroundings, except when he was not in Asia. That could perhaps explain why his South American excursion can’t quite match previous works like “Uncle Boonmee”.
He shares the prize in Cannes with a no less personal but highly contradicting film: “Ahmed’s Knee” by the Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid is an almost agitatively choreographed charge against censorship, not only in his own country. It’s great that this minimalist work did not escape Spike Lee’s jury. She celebrated the artistic extremes, also in the director’s award to the French Leos Carax for another surreal bang. His dark musical “Annette” had opened an extraordinary festival, which has now come to a wonderfully chaotic conclusion.
The prices
Golden palm “Titane” by Julia Ducournau (France)
Grand Jury Prize “A Hero” by Asghar Farhadi (Iran) and in equal parts “Hytti No 6 (Compartment No 6)” by Juho Kuosmanen (Finland)
Best Actress Renate Reinsve for “The Worst Person in the World” by Joachim Trier (Norway)
Best actor Caleb Landry Jones for “Nitram” by Justin Kurzel (Australia)
Best Director Leos Carax for “Annette” (France)
Best script Ryusuke Hamaguchi und Takamasa Oe für “Drive My Car” von Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Japan)
Jury Prize “Ha’berech (Ahed’s Knee)” by Nadav Lapid (Israel) and in equal parts “Memoria” by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand)
Camera d’Or for the best debut film “Murina” by Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic (Croatia / USA)
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What discipline had you defied the dangers of the pandemic, carefully checked vaccination and test certificates at every entry? An outbreak was successfully avoided during the festival, while the palace was swarming as always.
And then this strange situation at the beginning of the award ceremony: “Mr. President, can you tell me which price is the first prize?” Spike Lee was asked by the presenter. “Yes, I can,” he replied to the president, getting up in his iridescent rainbow suit and engine driver’s hat. Then he read from a note he had brought with him: “The film that wins the Golden Palm is ‘Titane’ …” Turbulent scenes followed. “Halt!” Called the moderator, other jurors jumped up. Jury colleague Tahar Rahim took Lee protectively in his arms before Lee himself seemed to be fully aware of the extent of the faux pas.
It only got really absurd when people tried to pretend nothing had happened. Before the final, Lee sensed the chance to make up for his mistake. And was called back in the middle of the sentence after the word “Golden Palm”: The presenter had forgotten that Hollywood star Sharon Stone had been flown in for the purpose of the announcement. When Julia Ducournau was finally declared the winner and Lee swept excitedly across the stage, it became clear that he did not have to apologize for anything.
Cannes probably owed it to him for the warmest gala in decades. And the pathos could not be locked out either. It came back by itself in the tearful acceptance speech. “This evening was so perfect because it wasn’t perfect, it was big, it had a heart,” Ducournau began. “Thank you Spike, you had a lot to do with it, it was amazing. As a kid, I thought all the films that were on here were perfect. Today I know it’s not my film, maybe it’s even monstrous. Today I know that perfection is a dead end. There is so much beauty in what doesn’t fit into a box. “
And then she summed up the quality of this diverse edition better than anyone before her: “We are fighting for more diversity in society and that also applies to cinema. Thank you dear jury for letting the monsters in. ”The big monster cinema, Cannes let it out of the bottle again.
Small glitch: Spike Lee names the winner in advance.
© dpa
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