The rest of the awards certainly proved that. Early buzz suggested that awards might go to such mainstream movies as the Coen brothers’ wry, violent “No Country for Old Men,” which stars Javier Bardem, or Natalie Portman for her blazing performance as a scatter-shot Las Vegas gambler in “My Blueberry Nights” or David Fincher as best director for “Zodiac,” but all went home empty handed. The jury instead went small and esoteric in its choices, causing some festivalgoers to scratch their heads.
The jury awarded the Grand Prize—the festival’s equivalent to a silver medal—to Japanese director Naomi Kawase for “Mogari No Mori” (“The Mourning Forest”), a ponderous drama about a caregiver and an elderly man suffering from dementia. It so failed to impress audiences that scores of viewers walked out during screenings. The festival’s third-place Jury Prize was a tie between “Persepolis,” an animated feature about a young woman coming of age in Iran, by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, based on Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novels, and “Stellet Licht” (“Silent Light”), an overlong but visually striking tale about adultery in a Mennonite community in Mexico, by Carlos Reygadas. American artist Julian Schnabel won the best-directing award for “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” a devastating story about a French fashion-magazine editor who suffered a stroke and was completely paralyzed except for his left eye. Schnabel made the movie in French, which outraged French critics. Why, they wailed, didn’t a French director do it?! The award no doubt added to the sting.
Turkish-German director Fatih Akin won the screenplay award for “Auf der Anderen Seite” (“The Edge of Heaven”), a laborious ensemble piece about love and tragedy, and American indie director Gus Van Sant was given a special 60th-anniversary prize for “Paranoid Park,” his movie about disaffected teenage skateboarders who don’t take responsibility for their actions, even when fatal. Van Sant won the Palme d’Or in 2003 for “Elephant,” his study of a Columbine-like school shooting, made primarily with nonactors. “We wanted to give the prize not only to a director whose movie we admired in the festival but whose body of work we admired,” explained the Australian actress Toni Collette, a jury member.
It was the best-acting awards that caused the most consternation. Jeon Do-yeon, a much-lauded young actress from South Korea, won for her portrayal as the mother of a child who is kidnapped and murdered in Lee Chang-dong’s interminable “Secret Sunshine.” “Not Portman?” critics buzzed. “How could it not be Portman?” And to the amazement of critics and viewers alike, Russian actor Konstantin Lavronenko took home best actor for his role as a cuckolded husband in Andreï Zviaguintsev’s second feature, “Izgnanie” (“The Banishment”), a shallow melodrama loosely based on William Saroyan’s “The Laughing Matter.”
“Why didn’t you choose Javier Bardem for best actor?” a reporter asked Frears and the jury at the post-awards press conference.
“He’s terrible, absolutely dreadful,” Frears cracked, then, after pausing for dramatic effect, added, “Why did we not give it to Javier? He owes me 500 pounds. In the end, it’s very painful. You vote. It’s secret. I don’t know.”
And that is Cannes: you never know.
