The French delivered their own version of shock and awe last night when the American film Elephant won the Palme d’Or in the biggest turn-up for the books for years at the Cannes film festival .
Gus Van Sant also took the best director prize for his film about the Columbine high school massacre which US critics had attacked as ”pointless at best and irresponsible at worst”.
But the biggest shock was the jury’s dismissal of Lars Von Trier’s Dogville, the hot favourite, which had enraged American critics for its perceived criticism of their country. Nor was there anything for its star, Nicole Kidman — whose first notable performance was as a murderous weather presenter in Van Sant’s satire To Die For.
Todd McCarthy, Variety magazine’s influential lead reviewer, had described the shooting rampage at the end of Elephant as ”gross and exploitative”, and criticised the way in which the killers were shown to be ”gay-inclined Nazis”.
Van Sant, who is gay himself, refused to rise to the bait, though he admitted he had taken a break from the Croisette after it got ”a little hot”. With his compatriots calling for the festival to be overhauled amid accusations of the French favouring their own films, Van Sant celebrated his victory by declaring ”Vive la France!”
But he denied that Elephant — whose title was borrowed from the late British director Alan Clarke’s short film about random murders in Northern Ireland — could be construed as anti-American.
”It is a musing about high school violence, about the elephant in the living room no one wants to mention,” he said, adding: ”Maybe drama is not supposed to bring these issues out into the open. It is just criticising the urge to conform in a bland way [in the US], forgetting the diversity that Canada might encourage.”
Another film about the killings, Michael Moore’s documentary Bowling for Columbine, won the Palme d’Or last year.
Anti-American sentiment ran high in some quarters, with 24-year-old Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf criticising George Bush after winning the jury prize for Five in the Afternoon.
”My film is about an Afghan woman who has no power but who wants to be a president one day,” she said. ”I don’t want to be a president myself if the best-known president in the world is George Bush.”
Canadian Denys Arcand’s film The Barbarian Invasions also had US world dominance as its backdrop, and took two prizes: best actress for Marie-Josée Croze as well as best screenplay.
The most touching moments in a night of surprises came with the two prizes awarded to the Turkish film Uzak (Distant). Its director, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, got the grand prix and best actor was shared by his cousin Mehmet Emin Toprak — who died in a car crash the day after the film was selected for Cannes — and his co-star Muzaffer Ozdemir, both amateurs.
Ceylan dedicated the prize to his cousin, who married only weeks before he was killed, and had planned to honeymoon in Cannes. He also paid tribute to his fellow Turkish director Yilmaz Guney, who after winning the Palme d’Or for Yol in 1982 was exiled by Turkey’s military rulers.
With critics up in arms about the main competition entries, most of the highlights were in the Director’s Fortnight and Un Certain Regard sections .
There was joy for Britain when Roger Michell’s low-budget The Mother shared the top prize in the Director’s Fortnight with the Norwegian comedy, Kitchen Stories. Michell had lambasted the Film Council for refusing to fund his story of a grandmother who rediscovers her sexual appetite. Until the BBC stepped in with £1,5-million, ”no one in London wanted this film to be made”, he said.
The Scottish director David MacKenzie’s Young Adam also attracted praise. Peter Greenaway made a return to form with his Tulse Luper Suitcase trilogy which closed the official selection but he was left wondering aloud if it would survive the multi-media age. – Guardian Unlimited Â