Gore on the Croisette: The Cannes Film Festival

Gore on the Croisette: The Cannes Film Festival

Beauty, elegance, restraint. Films that made these qualities their métier were shunned on the Croisette this year. Notably, Jane Campion’s Bright Star, celebrating John Keats love for Fanny Brawne in a manner penetrative and balanced, was ignored. Bloodthirsty gods were not to be disappointed, propitiated by scenes of throat slashing, sexual explicitness, and the dismembering of prostitutes.

The festival, now over sixty years old, was scaled back this year, a sign that the dream factory can never escape the limits of economics. For Cannes regular and former Variety reporter, Rex Weiner, writing in the Huffington Post (May 12), this was certainly the case. Coverage, usually characterized by the business of a large press corps, reviewers and sales representatives, did not seem to be there in number this year. ‘The importance of Cannes has diminished in the film world over the years (when was the last time a Palme d’Or winner was also a hit at the US box office?), and now the lack of serious coverage by industry journalists may prove to be its death knell.’ Joan Dupont of the New York Times accused it of being somewhat incestuous, a family re-union of sorts; while others agreed with Weiner’s assessment.

The Pete Docter animated Up, presented in 3D hi-tech format, saw it off, and was appreciated in a manner unusual for that genre. Then came the light-hearted, the comical, and the gorgeous. Ken Loach entertained the notion of a postman seeking wisdom from football hero Eric Cantona in Looking for Eric. Pedro Almodóvar re-employed his muse, Penélope Cruz, in the sensuous Broken Embraces, itself a portrayal of the film industry.

The limelight was, however, reserved for other, grisly candidates, as the jury, headed by Isabelle Huppert, went on to reveal. Lars von Trier’s contribution headed the field, dividing audiences like a scythe. One description, offered by Variety: ‘Lars von Trier cuts a big fat art-film fart with Antichrist.’ Nor was he in the mood for explaining such artistic flatulence. ‘I don’t have to explain anything. You are all my guests here, not the other way around.’

The fart from this bad boy evidently worked, at least for the actress Charlotte Gainsbourg. Her role in Antichrist as a self-mutilating psychotic (not even her clitoris is spared), a response to the death of her son who perishes after seeing the parents make love, got her the best actress award. The best director in a festival of violent celebration went to Brillante Mendoza from the Philippines for Kinatay (‘massacre’), in which a prostitute is cut to pieces with kitchen knives. Its grotesque power is such that even the director has second thoughts ever wanting to see his work again.

The best actor prize went to Austrian Christoph Waltz for playing an SS officer in Quentin Tarantino’s otherwise awful Inglourious Basterds, marred by a considerably inglorious performance by Brad Pitt (and his insufferable smirk).

Those with reasons to smirk in the end were the Austrian director Michael Haneke, who won the Palme d’Or for his disturbing portrayal of rural Germany in the period leading to World War I, Das Weisse Band (The White Ribbon). Jacques Audiard won the Grand Prix for his Un Prophete (A Prophet), a gritty prison account of a young French Arab. But the grand thing about this occasion was, perhaps, its sanguinary salutes and blood-curdling notes. Some may find the festival less relevant than it once was, but the chatter around it suggests otherwise.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

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