Festivals
Cannes 2011: The S&S blog
Awards reaction
Nick James, 22 May
Wow again. What a relief. Robert De Niro’s jury do the right thing: the Palme d’Or goes to The Tree of Life. The Grand Prix is shared between Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (The Kid on a Bike).
What this suggests once again is that it doesn’t pay to be too entertaining at Cannes. Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist, Aki Kaurismäki’s Le Havre and Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin That I Live In gave us the most fun, but didn’t get much of a look in when it came to prizes, the Best Actor award to Jean Dujardin from The Artist (pictured, with Bérénice Bejo) being the exception. However, Kirsten Dunst getting Best Actress is maybe the reason why Lars von Trier’s Melancholia itself didn’t get kicked out like its director.
Wish I’d been there to hear De Niro’s French. (You can hear it 6½ minutes in to the video on the festival’s homepage.)