French director Justine Triet has won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for her courtroom thriller Anatomie d’une chute. The Grand Prix, or second prize, went to Jonathan Glazer’s gruesome Auschwitz film The Zone of Interest.
Triet is the third woman to win the Palme d’Or, after Jane Campion The Piano in 1993 and Julia Ducournau with titan in 2021. With that, the 76th film festival experienced an ideal finale to a competition that was rich in female directors – seven of the nineteen – and complex, toxic female roles.
Anatomie d’une chute (anatomy of a trap) is a virtuoso designed maze. When the blocked writer Samuel lies dead in the snow in front of his chalet, the question is whether he jumped or was pushed. Wife Sandra is capable of violence, Samuel is deeply depressed. The truth gradually sinks into rival scenarios and as a viewer you involuntarily choose sides: team Sandra or team Samuel. Passionate even: in a press presentation, two journalists almost came to blows after one of them happily shouted “gotcha bitch!” cried as the prosecution scored a point against suspect Sandra.
Broadly speaking, the focus of this year’s Cannes was on psychology and relationships
Artistically it was an even bigger sensation The Zone of Interest, named after the area around Auschwitz where camp commander Rudolf Höss, his wife Hedwig and their five children live in their dream house, with terrified Jewish staff, a wealth of fur coats, jewelry and lingerie and a model garden that flourishes through the ashes of the crematoria. A cold, in-depth research-based masterpiece that shows how screwed up banal evil is. Razor-sharp images of an SS family rub uncomfortably with the background noise of the death camp. We hear the Final Solution. We see an Aryan idyll.
Because the German actress Sandra Hüller played the leading role in both winning films, she could not legally win the prize for best actress. It went to the Turkish actress Merve Dizdar for a strong supporting role: in About Dry Grasses she plays a village teacher who lost a leg in a suicide bombing and finds herself caught between two petty, infantile guys.
The 76th edition of Cannes was one without scandals, unless director Thierry Frémaux almost attacked a police officer who forbade him to cycle on the sidewalk. The competition was strong, but not exceptional. Political or social issue films were rare this year, 86-year-old Briton Ken Loach single-handedly manned the barricade with his frail The Old Oak, where Syrian refugees and depressed miners overcome racism. Also queer issues and sex were scarce. Although the immersive debut that won the Un Certain Regard talent competition – How to Have Sex – about teenager Tara who discovers the subtle margins of consent on a screaming, hosing and drinking holiday in Crete. But broadly speaking, the focus this year was on psychology and relationships. Young filmmakers showed a certain tendency towards magical realism, religious ecstasy and apocalyptic shudder.
Veterans
Of the many veterans in the Cannes main competition, the Finn Aki Kaurismäki (66) won the Jury Prize – say: bronze – with Fallen Leaves. A proletarian boy meets girl in a Finland frozen in the seventies of bare interiors, gloomy drinkers, dry one-liners and rock ‘n’ roll. A Kaurismäki is a genre in itself, it does not innovate: thank God, say its fans. Kaurismäki wrapped Cannes with a witty press conference before disappearing into thin air. No one was surprised that he was missing from the closing ceremony. Aki does what Aki does.
Another veteran – 77-year-old Wim Wenders – watched with moist eyes as his Japanese actor Kôii Yakusho, who made his global breakthrough in 1997 with the world hit Shall We Dance?won the Best Actor award. In Perfect Days, which started as a documentary about toilets in Tokyo, Yakusho plays a kind of monk who calmly enjoys his routine: cleaning – never too dirty – toilets, cassette tapes, books, a bathhouse. The minimalist Perfect Days is a lovely lukewarm bath, but the mindfulness doesn’t get coquettish; the finale – a completely random conversation – is moving. After ten years of struggle, 2023 will be such a fabulous year for Wenders: Cannes also screened his impressive 3D documentary Anselmabout the gigantomaniac German artist Anselm Kiefer.
The Palm for Best Director went to Vietnamese filmmaker Tra Ahn Hung for Pot Au Feu, a sensual, culinary film: the first three quarters of an hour consists of preparing a nineteenth century French gourmet meal with fond, rich sauces, fish, meat and ice cream cake from the oven. French bourgeoisie who draped ortolans with a napkin over their face with bone, entrails and all ground up makes this film less suitable for vegans.
The award for best screenplay went to Sample by the Japanese maestro Hirokazu Kore-Eda, who won the Golden Palm in 2018 with Shoplifters. This time he filmed a beautiful script by Yûji Sakamoto, a kind of combination of Rashomon and Close who looks at a situation alternately through the eyes of a concerned mother, a teacher and two students. Everyone sees the other all too quickly as a monster.
These are just a few of many excellent films that also saw the light at Cannes this year. More than thirty of them can be seen in the film theaters next year.