Advertisement

Movies & TV

Cannes 2015: Wrap-up

Dheepan, Jacques Audiard’s compelling look at the immigrant experience in France, won the Palme d’Or in Cannes Sunday night.

“Everybody had an enthusiasm, some high level of excitement for it,” jury co-president Ethan Coen said at a press conference following the awards ceremony.

The eponymous protagonist is a Tamil Tiger who puts together a fake family after his wife and children are killed in Sri Lanka. Using false papers, he and his “wife” and “daughter” move to the Paris suburbs, where he becomes the caretaker of an apartment complex controlled by drug-dealing gangs, while his pretend spouse becomes caregiver to an incapacitated head gang leader.

Played with charismatic warmth by Sri Lankan author Jesuthasan Anthonythasan, himself a former boy soldier for the Tamil Tigers who was granted political asylum in France 22 years ago, Dheepan follows a typical immigrant path, conscientiously doing a job few Frenchmen would consider. His wife, meanwhile, is anxious to get to England, where she has a cousin, but she must wait until the family’s temporary papers are approved.

The makeshift nature of the family set-up makes affection for one another problematic, but the matter of attending to the daughter’s school needs forces the adults to behave like parents.

Always a master plotter (his A Prophet won the Grand Prize here in 2009), Audiard gave the film a happy ending that upset some critics, but not the jury.

“This isn’t a jury of film critics,” said Joel Coen, who co-led the jury with his brother. “It’s a jury of artists who want to celebrate the work.”

“Audiard is real cinema,” said jury member and Malian singer Rokia Traore. “It touched us deeply.”

Jake Gyllenhaal, another jury member, found the film invigorating. The way three strangers become a family had a profound impact on him.

Son Of Saul, László Nemes’s powerful first film, which won the Grand Prize (the silver medal, if you will), elicited an intense emotional response from jury member Sienna Miller. Another jurist, Canadian actor/director Xavier Dolan, said, “It’s one of those films that grows into you.”

Nemes stated after the award ceremony that his “goal was to plunge the spectator into a unique experience, to be at the heart of the story by focusing on just one human being.” His tale, told from the POV of a Jew working in Auschwitz, grabs your attention right from the start and never lets go.

Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s The Assassin, a critical favourite, seems likely to be viewed as the masterpiece of this year’s competition. Hou was named best director for his visually gorgeous, ninth-century story of a female assassin ordered to kill a man to whom she was once betrothed. The plot is hypnotic but sometime impenetrable. As the action unfolds in Hou’s trademark medium-shot scenes, you’re drawn in but suddenly lose your bearings, only to be thrust onwards by the force of the images. It’s a mashup between a Kurosawa samurai movie and an Ozu observational drama, moving from almost static scenes of court life to sudden kinetic action.

Vincent Lindon took best actor for his dignified and hopeful portrait of an ordinary man who’s been laid off during the recession in Stéphane Brize’s The Measure Of A Man.

“We wanted to show everyday life in France,” Lindon said after the ceremony. The film recalls the French humanistic tradition of Jean Renoir. When Lindon’s character does find work as a store detective, he must confront people who are often in the same dire straits he’d been in, testing his compassion. His expressive face conveys emotions often without saying a word.

It was no surprise that the best actress prize went to a performer in Carol, Todd Haynes’s adaptation of the 1950s Patricia Highsmith novel about the love affair between a reticent young sales clerk and a wealthy married mother. What was a surprise was that Rooney Mara, not Cate Blanchett (who has the showier role), won the prize. But as Haynes said, “Rooney’s quieter role holds the film together.”

The award was shared with Emmanuelle Bercot (who also directed the opening out-of-competition social drama Standing Tall). In Mon Roi, Maïwenn’s melodramatic portrait of a tumultuous 10-year marriage, Bercot convincingly runs the full gamut of emotions.

“I wouldn’t be here had I not had Vincent Cassel as a partner,” Bercot said. “He is a fabulous actor who swept me away during the filming.”

Yorgos Lanthimos deservedly won the Jury Prize for his inventive societal allegory The Lobster, which deals with the relationship between men and women in a refreshingly original way.

Michel Franco was awarded best screenplay for Chronic, his L.A. tale of a nurse (Tim Roth) who forms bond with the terminal patients he cares for in their homes. Franco and Roth developed the film after they met in Cannes three years ago when Roth was the president of the Un Certain Regard jury, which awarded Franco’s After Lucia the sidebar’s top prize.

Roth’s character’s empathy and professionalism draw you toward him even as his own personality remains a bit of a cypher. As jury member Guillermo del Toro put it, Chronic is not filmed in a melodramatic way, but with “restraint and intelligence.”

In a festival marked by six English-language films by non-native English speakers, two (Chronic and The Lobster) won prizes. And three of the five record-setting number of French films also came away with awards.

Many of these films, as well as several from the non-competitive official selection in various categories and the Un Certain Regard, Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week sidebars, will find their way to Toronto screens beginning as early as this summer with Amy, the critically acclaimed documentary on Amy Winehouse.

Of the 42 I saw, many will turn up at TIFF in September others will have extended runs and go on to Oscar glory. The 2015 award season has officially begun.

Look for Un Certain Regard winner, the seriocomic Icelandic film Rams, and the Fortnight winner, Arnaud ­Desplechin’s charming story of adolescent love, My Golden Years. Avid cinephiles can anticipate Hitchcock/Truffaut, a documentary based on Truffaut’s book about the week the two directors spent discussing Hitchcock’s films just after The Birds was completed. Also notable was Memories And Confessions, a film made in 1981 by the Portuguese master Manoel de Oliveira but only released now, after the director’s recent death at 106, according to his own instructions. He was 73 years old then, looking 40ish. A better testament to a filmmaker’s legacy is hard to imagine.

The mix of humour and seriousness that permeates the Coen brothers’ films was evident in their remarks about how they handled the jury. When asked at the post-ceremony press conference if the brothers ever disagree, Joel replied, pointing at Ethan, “He says yes. I’m gonna say no.”

Advertisement

Exclusive content and events straight to your inbox

Subscribe to our Newsletter

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

By signing up, I agree to receive emails from Now Toronto and to the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.