Cannes Passes on Anti-Americanism

The awards have been made at the Festival International du Film in Cannes. The winner of the Palme d'Or was Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's L'Enfant, the film briefly profiled here on Wednesday. The Dardenne brothers first received the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1999, for Rosetta, which also won the Best Actress award for Emilie Dequenne. Here is an excerpt from an article ("L'Enfant" des frères Dardenne, Palme d'or d'un cinéma des marges, May 22) in Le Monde:

The Dardenne brothers defended themselves, on Tuesday at the press conference after their film was shown in competition, for being too realistic in their films. "We do not try to copy reality to make our films," claimed Luc, the younger of the brothers. "Abandoning a child is a very old practice. But what interested us with this film was to see how Bruno [Jérémie Renier] would or would not form a bond with this baby."

Their work methods are special, as Luc explained: "We begin by talking together a lot. We make a plan for the whole story. I write the first version of the screenplay, which I send to Jean-Pierre. He makes corrections, suggestions, and then we write the subsequent versions together. During the filming, one of us directs while the other is at the control screen, and we switch back and forth."

Other awards were the Grand Prix du Jury for Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers (profiled here and with photographs on the day of competition), Best Actress for Hanna Laslo (in Amos Gitaï's Free Zone), Best Actor for Tommy Lee Jones (in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada), Best Director for Michael Haneke (his film Caché was a favorite for the Palme d'Or), Best Screenplay for The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (which clearly I will have to see), and the Caméra d'Or for best first film to Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know (co-awarded, actually, with Vimukthi Jayasundara's Sulanga Enu Pinisa [Abandoned earth]). Recently, a post by Gregg Chadwick got me interested in Miranda July, and I also found out from Gregg that Miranda has a blog, called Me and You and Everyone We Know. Check out her post about her trip to Cannes, complete with pictures. What a story! (Miranda's movie also won the Grand Prix de la Semaine internationale de la critique, which takes place alongside the Cannes competition.) Congratulations!