Director Julia Ducournau poses for photographers during a photo call following the awards ceremony. Photo / AP
Director Julia Ducournau poses for photographers during a photo call following the awards ceremony. Photo / AP
Julia Ducournau's Titane, a wild body-horror thriller featuring sex with a car and a surprisingly tender heart, won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Ducournau is just the second female filmmaker to win the festival's top honour in its 74-year history.
The win on Saturday was mistakenly announced by jury president Spike Lee at the top of the closing ceremony, broadcast in France on Canal+, unleashing a few moments of confusion. Ducournau, a French filmmaker, didn't come to the stage to accept the award until the formal announcement at the end of the ceremony. But the early hint didn't diminish from her emotional response.
"I'm sorry, I keep shaking my head," said Decournau, catching her breath. "Is this real? I don't know why I'm speaking English right now because I'm French. This evening has been so perfect because it was not perfect."
After several false starts, Lee implored Sharon Stone to make the Palme d'Or announcement, explaining: "She's not going to mess it up". The problems started when Lee was asked to say which prize would be awarded first. Instead, he announced the evening's final prize, as fellow juror Mati Diop plunged her head into her hands and others rushed to stop him.
Lee himself spent several moments with his head in his hands before apologising profusely for taking a lot of the suspense out of the evening.
"I have no excuses," Lee told reporters afterward. "I messed up. I'm a big sports fan. It's like the guy at the end of the game who misses the free throw or misses the kick."
"I messed up," he added. "As simple as that."
Decournau's win was a long-awaited triumph. The only previous female filmmaker to win Cannes' top honour — among the most prestigious awards in cinema — was Kiwi Jane Campion for The Piano in 1993. In recent years, frustration at Cannes' gender disparity has grown, including in 2018, when 82 women — including Agnes Varda, Cate Blanchett and Salma Hayek — protested gender inequality on the Cannes red carpet. Their number signified the movies by female directors selected to compete for the Palme d'Or — 82 compared to 1645 films directed by men. This year, four out of 24 films up for the Palme were directed by women.
Spike Lee, center, holds his head in hands after accidentally revealing the film 'Titane' as the winner of the Palme d'Or. Photo / AP
In 2019, another genre film — Boon Joon Ho's Parasit" — took the Palme before going on to win best picture at the Academy Awards, too. That choice was said to be unanimous by the jury led by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, but the award for Titane — an extremely violent film — this year's jury said, came out of a democratic process of conversation and debate. Juror Maggie Gyllenhaal said they didn't agree unanimously on anything.
"The world is passion," said Lee. "Everyone was passionate about a particular film they wanted and we worked it out."
In Titane, Agathe Rousselle plays a serial killer who flees home. As a child, a car crash leaves her with a titanium plate in her head and a strange bond with automobiles. In possibly the most-talked-about scene at the festival, she's impregnated by a Cadillac. Lee called it a singular experience.
"This is the first film ever where a Cadillac impregnates a woman," said Lee, who said he wanted to ask Decournau what year the car was. "That's genius and craziness together. Those two things often match up."
Cannes' closing ceremony capped 12 days of red-carpet premieres, regular Covid-19 testing for many attendees and the first major film festival to be held since the pandemic began in almost its usual form. With smaller crowds and mandated mask-wearing in theatres, Cannes pushed forward with an ambitious slate of global cinema. Last year's Cannes was completely cancelled by the pandemic.
The slate, assembled as a way to help stir movies after a year where movies shrank to smaller screens and red carpets grew cobwebs, was widely considered to be strong, and featured many leading international filmmakers. The awards were spread out widely.
The Grand Prix award was a joint honour split between Asghar Farhadi's Iranian drama A Hero and Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen's Apartment No. 6.
Best director was awarded to Leos Carax for Annette, the fantastical musical starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard that opened the festival. The award was accepted by the musical duo Sparks, Ron and Russell Mael, who wrote the script and music for the film.
Nadav Lapid's Ahed's Knee, an impassioned drama about creative freedom in modern Israel, won the jury prize. Caleb Landry Jones took home the best actor prize for his performance as an Australian mass killer in the fact-based Nitram by Justin Kurzel. Renate Reinsve won best actress for Joachim Trier's The Worst Person in the World.
The Croatian coming-of-age drama Murina, by Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic, took the Camera d'Or award, a non-jury prize, for best first feature. Kusijanovic was absent from the ceremony after giving birth a day earlier.
Lee was the first black jury president at Cannes. His fellow jury members were Gyllenhaal, Melanie Laurent, Song Kang-ho, Tahar Rahim, Mati Diop, Jessica Hausner, Kleber Mendonca Filho and Mylene Farmer.
