6/2/2014 Cannes Diary, the Last Days: This Is Your Red Carpet. These Are Your Winners.

http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/cannes-diary-the-last-days-this-is-your-red-carpet-these-are-your-winners/?print=1 1/11
MOVIES
Cannes Diary, the Last Days: This Is
Your Red Carpet. These Are Your
Winners.
Every year we come looking for the film of the festival or, come the
final days, a masterpiece to save it. This wasnt the year for that. And
it turned out to be refreshing not having a single film or director suck
all the oxygen out of Cannes.
BY WESLEY MORRIS ON MAY 27, 2014
Of the many conversations Ive had or have overheard in the last 11 days, very few
mentioned the jury. Its a shame. Any deliberation process that involves the woman
who made The Piano and the director of Drive is one worthy of rubbernecking. But,
to date, the only story to come out about that gang this year involved a flap over the
Iranian actress Leila Hatami exchanging cheek kisses with the festivals storied
6/2/2014 Cannes Diary, the Last Days: This Is Your Red Carpet. These Are Your Winners.
http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/cannes-diary-the-last-days-this-is-your-red-carpet-these-are-your-winners/?print=1 2/11
outgoing president Gilles Jacob. News reports claim that at least one appalled
Iranian religious group has called for Hatami to receive the maximum sentence of
50 lashes for violating Sharia law. She made a public apology, and the festival has
moved on. But, for the public, thats as rousing as things appear to have been for the
jury. You hope theyre not serious for her.
Its also been a weak year for harbingers. You can no longer gauge much by the
duration of epic standing ovations. Audiences are reported to have leaped to their
feet and cheered (and cheered) for films as different as Naomi Kawases bloodless
sex-and-death tone poem, Still the Water, and Damien Chazelles jazz band action-
thriller, Whiplash. I saw the reaction to the Chazelle, which was a big hit in January
at Sundance, and it was so unceasingly enormous that its stars, Miles Teller and J.K.
Simmons, were at an emotional loss. Nonetheless, as far as standing ovations go at
Cannes, we might now be at a place where youre nobody if you havent had one.
During the festival, the French trade magazine Le Film Franais publishes a daily
issue as does its foreign counterparts that includes a grid featuring 15 of the
countrys major critics and their evaluations of the two main competition lineups,
represented by a frowning emoticon, one to three stars, or a yellow palm frond. The
frond is an unsurpassable measure of enthusiasm. In past years, thered typically be
one main-competition film Amour or Blue Is the Warmest Color to hit the
jackpot and win a near boulevard of palms.
Of the 18 films up for the 2014 Palme dOr, Luc and Jean-Pierre DardennesTwo
Days, One Night came closest with eight palms. What we were facing going into
Saturdays ceremony was the lack of a decisive winner. No one seemed to know what
Jane Campions jury was going to do. No one seemed concerned, either. Every year
we come looking for the film of the festival or, come the final days, a masterpiece
to save it.
This wasnt the year for that. And it turned out to be refreshing not having a single
film or director suck all the oxygen out of Cannes. Instead, a not-insignificant
amount of time was devoted to talking about animals. It was an extraordinary year
for beasts. A woman turned into a bird, a gang of dogs turned on Budapest. A cow
was speared, a hog shaved, a goat garroted, a camel domesticated, and a pet dog
almost stole a Jean-Luc Godard movie. So by the time people started streaming
down the red carpet for Saturdays closing ceremony, suspense and surprise were in
the air. Often, when you see the casts and directors of competition films heading
6/2/2014 Cannes Diary, the Last Days: This Is Your Red Carpet. These Are Your Winners.
http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/cannes-diary-the-last-days-this-is-your-red-carpet-these-are-your-winners/?print=1 3/11
inside the Grand Thtre Lumire, it means theyve won one of the seven prizes.
About a half an hour before the show started, Kawase walked in. She wore a creamy
gown with something dark and botanical-looking spurting up and down the bodice.
As a juror last year, she wore a kimono with more drama than any film shes made.
This years dress was simpler than her movies tend to be.
Before the festival began, Kawase generated a lot of attention, some of it mocking,
for declaring her new movie a masterpiece and saying shed be satisfied with
nothing less than the Palme. Maybe Campion agreed. In the meantime, Kawase was
having a moment. For the duration of the festival, the pillars in the Lumire lobby
were decorated with large photos of the directors in the official selection, most of
whom are in the main competition. Kawase happily stood beside hers and had her
companion take several photos. She caught me watching her, and rather than run
off in embarrassment, she widened her smile, did one of those va-va-voom shakes,
and kept posing. When I find myself nodding off at her next adventure in erogenous
spiritualism, Ill treat that shimmy like a can of Red Bull.
Kawase wasnt gone a minute when three women made their way over to her panel
on the column and started snapping away. Then two handsome, handsomely attired
men did the same. What was going on? The two men turned out to be the producer
of Timbuktu and Abel Jafri, who plays the most charismatic of the films
suffocating jihadist hypocrites. They didnt seem to know why exactly they were
there. We hope its good,Jafri said. So did I.
6/2/2014 Cannes Diary, the Last Days: This Is Your Red Carpet. These Are Your Winners.
http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/cannes-diary-the-last-days-this-is-your-red-carpet-these-are-your-winners/?print=1 4/11
Timbuktu was one of the strongest films in the main competition. Its a patiently
done work of impressionism set in the Malian city of the title. Armed Islamists have
come to town and dropped the hammer of Sharia law. Denial filters out like a virus,
casting a pall over all pleasure. No adultery? Fine. But no music or soccer, either?
Its hard to do a film like this, a tragic farce. Theres something about the
melancholic tone that allows the Islamists vivid ideological contradictions to
resonate without resorting to blatancy. Abderrahmane Sissako conjures one lyrical
scene of ironical outrage after another, the most evocative being a full-field soccer
match played by boys kicking an imaginary ball. A character is tried for murder (he
did do it), but your heart breaks because the arbiters seem to kill for sport.
Musicians are publicly lashed, children rendered orphans. A fishmonger offers to
have her hands sliced off rather than do her job in gloves. Its absurd! The desert
setting leaves your eyes dry of tears, but all this oppression beneath an oppressive
sun manages to boil your blood.

Before the closing show, I parked myself in front of the lobby photo in which
Godard smokes a cigar so hilariously foregrounded that it seemed more accurate to
say that its smoking him. Every 10 minutes or so, a wave of sacrilege would come
over me, and Id ashamedly step around the column to stand in front of whoever was
on the other side (my apologies to Zhang Yimou). But that was the right vantage to
see the actor Daniel Brhl laugh as he struggled for a good 60 seconds to find his
ticket; and to catch Bruce Wagner, the bald screenwriter of David Cronenbergs
Maps to the Stars, shuffle in, wearing big black glasses, tattoos on his fingers, and
carrying an e-cigarette. If smoking is bad for your health, smoking electronically is
proving bad for your style.
6/2/2014 Cannes Diary, the Last Days: This Is Your Red Carpet. These Are Your Winners.
http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/cannes-diary-the-last-days-this-is-your-red-carpet-these-are-your-winners/?print=1 5/11
Some men, like Brhl and Jafri, looked like a million bucks. Adrien Brody looked as
if hed just lost that much at the casino. For some reason, hed folded the cuffs of his
shirt over the sleeves of his tuxedo jacket. That svelte carriage and exotically
fatigued visage of Brodys gave him a lick of emergency style it all said, In my
country, we do like this. Still, if the look were an ice-cream flavor, itd be Rat Pack
Schvitz. He was somewhat calmer than he was a couple of nights before, when he
appeared to be having the time of his life on and off the red carpet during the
premiere of Yimous new weepie, Gui Lai. Brody wore a tux and smiled and danced
and, for a relatively long time, took selfies on the Croisette. (Mind you, hes not in
Yimous movie. Gong Li is). Brody would pose, look up at the giant monitor, double
over cracking up, then move on. On Sunday night, he simply made it to the top of
the stairs and, in front of all the photographers, proceeded to snuzzle with the
woman hed brought; that went on for a relatively long time, too.
The evening climaxed with Sophia Loren. At 79, she still has a nonsensical beauty.
Its neither scarily inappropriate nor unduly surgical. It simply is what it is. She
arrived with Edoardo Ponti, her son with the legendary Italian producer Carlo
Ponti. She wore beaded black Armani and had a pair of sunglasses on her pillowy
orange mane. Theres an easy law for sunglasses worn atop the head: no. But Loren
has diplomatic plates and can do as she pleases.

Not much later, the show was under way, with Lambert Wilson returning from the
6/2/2014 Cannes Diary, the Last Days: This Is Your Red Carpet. These Are Your Winners.
http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/cannes-diary-the-last-days-this-is-your-red-carpet-these-are-your-winners/?print=1 6/11
opening ceremony as the MC. He had better material this time and a better trim suit
(it was the color of a tablecloth after it has absorbed a glass of Ctes du Rhne). He
introduced Abbas Kiarostami and the singing actress Yuchun Li, who wore a white
blouse that looked like cloud shavings up close, but from the stage gave the
impression that it had come from the Sesame Street slaughterhouse. The sartorial
winner was Simn Mesa Soto from Colombia, who captured the short-film prize for
Leidi.
Wilson brought out Campion, who introduced her jury. One by one they took the
stage and sat in one of the nine white chairs stationed to the right of the house. They
never stop being funny, those chairs. They have an intergalactic tribal council
quality. The long, dapper Dane Nicolas Winding Refn came out first and was
followed by Hatami, the Chinese director Jia Zhangke, Sofia Coppola, the Korean
actress Jeon Do-yeon, Gael Garca Bernal, Carole Bouquet, and Willem Dafoe, who
remains boyish in height, countenance, and haircut.
Then out came Jacob and the French actress Nicole Garcia. For Jacob, the audience
rose and clapped for a good long time. He has been at or near the top of the festival
since 1979. As kid, I remember how much he seemed to be the festival, standing
with all the stars at the entrance of the Palais, shaking their hands and kissing their
cheeks. Hes 83 now, and in the year since I last saw him, hes grown frail. Had he
not motioned for an end to the applause, it probably wouldve gone on all night.
Jacob spoke briefly, let Garcia announce that the winner of the Camera dOr (the
6/2/2014 Cannes Diary, the Last Days: This Is Your Red Carpet. These Are Your Winners.
http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/cannes-diary-the-last-days-this-is-your-red-carpet-these-are-your-winners/?print=1 7/11
prize for first-time directors) went to the trio that made the Un Certain Regard
opener, Marie Amachoukeli, Claire Burger, and Samuel Theiss Party Girl. The film
is a kind of biographical docudrama about a 60-ish French nightclub hostess (played
by Theiss own mother) who surprises herself by marrying a sweet bulldog of a man.
I wasnt crazy about it the filmmaking is shaggy but it does have heart, and
people seemed genuinely moved by it. That programming category is a Jacob
concoction, and some years the films it comprises are better than whats in the
main competition. After Amachoukeli, Burger, and Theiss speech, Jacob began his
labored exit, and back to its feet went the audience. He walked alone, with a
deliberate gait, until he was fully out of view. A few of the staffers wiped away tears.
Next Monica Bellucci arrived to the hoots and cheers of men in the audience.
Bellucci still has the kind of beauty that can bring out the worst in an otherwise
classy man. She became an international star, in part, courtesy of movies that
degraded her, and Ive always wondered if theyve compromised her reception in
some way. In any case, she helped Wilson and Campion award Timothy Spall the
male acting prize for playing the painter J.M.W. Turner in Mike Leighs Mr.
Turner. There was talk that Steve Carrell, in Foxcatcher, had become the favorite,
but theres more to what Spalls done. Its a primal, almost bestial piece of acting.
The energy is simultaneously high and low. Carrell is good, but this is a different
league of performance.
Spall took a while to get to the stage. Upon reaching it, he failed to find his speech,
which was on his phone, which was off. Also: Where were his glasses? He
improvised until the phone had powered back on, then thanked Leigh, the jury, his
wife, the cinematographer Dick Pope, and God. When Leighs Secrets & Lies won
the Palme dOr in 1996, he missed it because he was having chemotherapy. He said
he had the audacity not to die. His speech on this night began by mentioning that
he understood exactly two French phrases. One of them was vin rouge, which at
the moment might have been working its magic.
Daniel Auteuil was on next to say a few words and toss it to Wilson, who tossed it to
Campion, who tossed the female acting prize to Maps to the Starss Julianne Moore,
who wasnt there. Wagner accepted for her and kept calling her Julie. There was
real competition for that award (there always is here): Marion Cotillard in the
Dardennes movie, Suzanne Clment for Mommy, Hilary Swank in The
Homesman, and Juliette Binoche, who gave the most emotionally and
6/2/2014 Cannes Diary, the Last Days: This Is Your Red Carpet. These Are Your Winners.
http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/cannes-diary-the-last-days-this-is-your-red-carpet-these-are-your-winners/?print=1 8/11
psychologically rich performance of the festival as a famous international actress in
Olivier Assayass equally complex Clouds of Sils Maria. But Moore, as an altogether
trashier, nuttier kind of actress, goes out on a longer, funnier, more gonzo limb.
The actress Paz Vega helped give the screenwriting prize to Andrey Zvyagintsev and
Oleg Negin for Zvyagintsevs epic satire of Russian bureaucracy,
Leviafan. Zvyagintsev was there to accept. The movie screened toward the tail end,
and it divided a lot of us. Were its politics too obvious? Too self-congratulatory? Too
timely? I dont know: With Russia, as with most countries, the question of whether
the system is failing its citizens feels timeless. Youd need a weight belt to lift this
script that, or nine jurors. There were other strong screenplays, but this had a
grim literary grandeur that cant be denied.
Next came Brhl to assist with the Jury Prize, which was a tie, a gimmicky but
exciting one: Xavier Dolans comic-melodrama, Mommy, and Godards latest
theoretical thumbing of the nose, Goodbye to Language. At 25 and 83, respectively,
Dolan and Godard are the youngest and oldest filmmakers in the competition, and
the prize seemed to be about their forward-thinking approaches to what movies can
be and how they can look. In accepting his prize which for most winners is a
rolled-up certificate tied with a red ribbon Dolan could barely contain himself. He
gave Brhl a double cheek kiss that had more passion than you tend to see at award
shows or on the street. He breathlessly switched between English and Quebec-
accented French to send a message to the kids of Earth: You can change the world.
Then he turned to Campion and paid her a substantial, moving tribute that
amounted to this: You made me a feminist director! She left her seat to give him a
hug and he didnt seem to want to release her.
Meanwhile, the producer Alain Sarde, who waited off to the side to accept on
Godards behalf, wore a look of bemusement as Dolan emoted. Like his movies,
Dolan was lugubrious, but the lugubriousness wins you over. Sardes behind too
many great art films to count, but hes done a handful for Godard, whod never
previously won anything at this festival.
Soon Brody was bounding out to greet us, his sleeves still turned up. He was handling
the directing prize, which, in a mild shock, went to the American director Bennett
Miller for Foxcatcher. Millers certainly deserving. The film has an even,
foreboding tone; its a sort of psychological horror film. But the competition
seemed stiff enough to make you want to file a request for a transcript of that
6/2/2014 Cannes Diary, the Last Days: This Is Your Red Carpet. These Are Your Winners.
http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/cannes-diary-the-last-days-this-is-your-red-carpet-these-are-your-winners/?print=1 9/11
portion of the deliberation. This is a man who can go back to Los Angeles and
actually say, I beat Godard!
The runner-up prize the Grand Prix went to 33-year-old Alice Rohrwachers
The Wonders. This was a total shock. The movies a coming-of-age story about a
rural family of beekeeping Italians. As the festival wore on, I ran into people who
liked it, but emotionally it didnt stick with me, and theres a scene so good and
strange toward the end that it exposes the rest of the movie as rather ordinary.
Evidently, it moved the jury, and the prize moved Rohrwacher. She took the stage
with a translator, but her presenter happened to be Loren, who seemed happy to
stand beside a fellow Italian. Loren got a robust ovation and greeted a projected
photo of her frequent costar Marcello Mastroianni. Her sunglasses were gone.
So were Quentin Tarantinos. He and Uma Thurman had arrived to present the
Palme dOr. What were they on? Earlier, on the red carpet, they danced and posed.
The fans screamed for him. The photographers screamed for her. At the top of the
stairs, they waved some more. Thurman seemed to be in higher spirits than she was
the previous night when she, Tarantino, and John Travolta introduced a beach
screening of Pulp Fiction, which won the Palme dOr 20 years ago. Onstage,
Tarantino reeled off a list of Palme winners, all of which were American, which was
surprisingly parochial coming from him. With his steaky build, shell of dark hair,
and that hopped-up way of addressing the public, he seems to be easing into self-
caricature.
6/2/2014 Cannes Diary, the Last Days: This Is Your Red Carpet. These Are Your Winners.
http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/cannes-diary-the-last-days-this-is-your-red-carpet-these-are-your-winners/?print=1 10/11
Anyway, the winner was Nuri Bilge Ceylans Winter Sleep, a Turkish movie with as
much talking as a Tarantino picture. Ceylan didnt stick around long. He dedicated
the prize to the young people in Turkey and those who lost their lives, presumably
the ones injured and killed in the countrys ongoing anti-government protests.
The film is set in and around a Turkish boutique hotel and takes up matters of moral
philosophy. Ceylan is one of the worlds great filmmakers at the moment the
Palme is his fourth award at this festival. His seriousness and intelligence are
legitimate. Its a movie you find yourself arguing with and over. You treat it with
respect because it was made with respect for ideas and audiences, even if,
ultimately, you respectfully regret where Ceylan takes you or, in this case,
doesnt.
Ceylan headed to the front of the stage to have his photo taken as fellow winners
joined Wilson, the presenters, and the jury for an unruly photo session. You never
quite know where to look, but I noticed Brody talking up Bellucci, who seemed
indifferent until she wasnt, and Thurman congratulating Spall and making him
laugh. It all felt unusually anticlimactic. Maybe anointing Ceylan the winner was
inevitable after all.

Profundity isnt why you come to the jurys post-show press conference. Well,
maybe it is, but you learn that its unachievable. It lasts for half an hour, and this
year, time for journalists questions was clipped to answer inquiries from Twitter
and Facebook. Thankfully, the ones selected yielded short answers. Or maybe:
Thankfully, Nicolas Winding Refn was on hand to respond to some of them.
Question: Did you see any movie twice?
Refn: No.
Question: Was giving Dolan and Godard the Jury Prize a gimmick?
Refn: We finally shut Godard up and gave him a prize.
Dafoe barely disguised that the deliberations were tense and impassioned. Thats
me reading between the lines, since what he really said was that it was an
interesting process. But you could detect rue in his voice as he spoke. And Bouquet
6/2/2014 Cannes Diary, the Last Days: This Is Your Red Carpet. These Are Your Winners.
http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/cannes-diary-the-last-days-this-is-your-red-carpet-these-are-your-winners/?print=1 11/11
said she loved listening to the other jurors fight for the films they loved.
Someone asked skeptically about Rohrwachers film, and it was Coppola and Refn
who came together and rose to its defense. Refn said The Wonders made him cry,
which is like hearing a professional wrestler say he loves ponies. You want the
Kleenex submitted as evidence. But Refn, in his flippant way, didnt seem to be
kidding: You should see it again. Hatami spoke a lot, in French, but in light of her
recent headaches back home, the frequent adjustment of her hood, which kept
slipping, said more.
But it was Campions night, if not as a jury president then as an institution. At the
show, while Rohrwacher was receiving translation, she stepped back and bowed to
Campion, who blew a kiss back. With that and Dolans weeping and the warm
thanks Ceylan offered her, Id never seen so much affection and elated respect
returned to a jury president. For her part, Campion seemed relaxed. If there are
rehearsals for this show, she also seemed as if she might not have attended them.
She started to make her pronouncements before Wilson had finished asking her to
do so. Her repeated attempts to say Andrey Zvyagintsev were the equivalent of
watching someone try to get up from a patch of ice.
But there was no doubt she meant something to these winners and that they
meant something to her. Dolan was a genius, and Ceylan made a three-hour-and-
20-minute movie that, for her, wasnt long enough (for different reasons, I agree).
When a reporter asked Campion to defend Ceylans female characters, she seemed
to have no idea what the problem was. She said she loved the women. Hes
ruthless with all of them. Over and over, she mentioned how liberated these
filmmakers were. This is a free man, she said of Godard. That word came up
adoringly more than once during those 30 minutes: free. Thats actually what comes
through in the best movies here, and you hope its the sensation the artists on the
jury remember to shove into their luggage for the trip home.