Cannes Film Festival: Julia Ducournau's “Titanium” at the top of a surprising but balanced prize list

The winners of the Cannes Film Festival are like Christmas presents that fall around 7.15pm. We have only thought about that all day, festival-goers, whether they are actors, directors, producers, organizers or simple editors like us, cannot wait any longer. There are always surprises, films that we had not asked for, even a gift that we would like to return, but a price cannot be exchanged, and conversely, the joy of seeing one or two of our favorites. These films that we had checked off at the top of our list. The end of a very long day, of a twelve day marathon.

The Saturday of the closing ceremony is marked by all the fantasies and rumors surrounding the deliberations of the jury chaired by the American filmmaker Spike Lee in an undisclosed location.

But now the gods of cinema and the Croisette have spoken.

Or rather thundered with the enormous surprise “Titanium”.

Palme d'Or: “Titane” by Julia Ducournau

Spike Lee had mistakenly whispered the Palme d'Or from the first seconds of the ceremony.

It's a shock, a huge surprise, the second film by the French Julia Ducournau, 37, nourished by Tarantino and a visual universe of crazy inventiveness.

We adhere or not to "Titanium", but we take full eyes, mouth full.

A young woman, Alexia (played by Agathe Rousselle), multiplies the murders and hides under the identity of a young man who would have disappeared as a little boy, whom the father, captain of a fire station played by Vincent Lindon, believes recognize. There is fire in every shot. Violent scenes, never free, gory but also stuffed with wacky humor, punctuate this scathing which reinvents a totally innovative cinema, inspired by the genre of horror film but which totally surpasses it.

To give the palm to "Titanium" is a poetic manifesto, an ode to the incandescence of images, and encouragement to a young filmmaker who also knew how to tell a story, that of a traumatized young woman - we do not will never know why - who sails from feminine to masculine.

A plunge into a great and sometimes nightmarish mystery of having a body, its impulses, its secretions.

Sensual and morbid, "Titane" does not take the lead but takes the guts.

Already in theaters.

Grand Prix ex-aequo: “A hero” by Asgar Farhadi and “Compartment n ° 6”

The Iranian filmmaker, revealed by "A separation", and back in his country, signs a very beautiful film on an anti-hero rather. A man who dreams of getting married, is looking for money, and will let himself be caught in a dark trap. Diabolical scenario, cruel and lucid analysis of the ravages of social networks even in poor Iranian neighborhoods.

Released on September 22.

"Compartment n ° 6" is our favorite.

The second film by young Finnish filmmaker Juho Kuosmanen, crossed by train all over Russia to the tune of Desireless's “Voyage voyage”, the song the heroine listens to over and over.

A young Finnish archaeologist who wants to visit a site by the Arctic Sea.

On board the Moscow-Murmansk, a never-ending train that sometimes stops overnight, she finds herself in a sleeping compartment with a Russian already quite annoyed by vodka, vulgar and badly trimmed.

He is clumsy.

But wait for the rest, melodrama to make you cry.

Release date not communicated.

Best Actress Award: Renate Reinsve for "Julie (in 12 chapters)"

We screamed with joy, we admit it.

For her beauty, her light, her tears when she received her prize.

Julie wants everything, Julie wants nothing, she is loved, she loves, she wants to do everything, gifted for everything, but unstable.

It is the role of a life, of all the facets of a solar and neurotic woman.

We will never forget Renate Reinsve, 33, who illuminates “Julie (in 12 chapters)”, the Norwegian film by Joachim Trier.

The actress and the director had known each other for almost ten years, in Oslo, "a very small world," she said.

She has mainly performed on television and in the theater in Norway.

For his first very big role in the cinema, a star was born.

Released October 13.

Best Actor Award: Caleb Landry Jones for "Nitram"

An American in an Australian film.

Caleb Landry Jones, 31, actor but also musician, who played in "X Men First Class", "The Florida Project", bursts into this role of a young man out of focus, drawn from a true story and a news item that marked Australia in the 1990s. Nitram is the nickname of this unsuitable man-child who loves firecrackers and guns too much.

What is fantastic in his interpretation is to make us believe at every moment that his character on the edge of madness could come out of it.

A film set in Tasmania, in an Oceanian paradise where neuroses and psychoses are lurking at the bottom of large gardens of pretty estates.

With his slightly crazy young Klaus Kinski air, Caleb Landry Jones splashes the film with his disturbing but endearing presence.

No release date announced.

To read also "I saw all the films": in the skin of a juror in Cannes

Jury Prize ex-aequo: “le Genou d'Ahed”, by Navad Lapid and “Mémoria” by Apichatong Weerasethakul

The Israeli Navad Lapid signs a beautiful film set in the middle of the desert, where a committed filmmaker character comes to present his new film in a lost village, at the request of a cultural mediator working for a repressive government.

A vitriolic critique of Israeli society, all in the grace of a sulphurous game of seduction between the man who represents rebellion and the young woman who embodies authority.

Released on September 15th.

As for "Memoria", with Tilda Swinton, film by Thai Apichatong Weerasethakul, already crowned with a Palme d'Or for "Uncle Boonmee", this long film speaks of "vibrations of memories", said the director when receiving his prize. .

A film set in Colombia, without intrigue, that for our part we found boring beyond imaginable.

Exit not known.

Best Director Award: “Annette” by Leos Carax

The great return of Leos Carax, rare and mysterious filmmaker, undoubtedly a great director, creator of images of dazzling formal beauty.

Always surprising, since Carax was seen in the streets of Cannes long after the screening of "Annette" on July 6, but did not come to collect its prize.

"He had a problem with his teeth," said the musicians of the Sparks, an American cult duo which is at the origin of this comedy, or rather tragedy, musical about a celebrity couple who is sinking, with Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver, curiously.

Already in theaters.

Best Screenplay Award: "Drive my car" by Hamaguchi Ryusuke

Screenplay prize, not without logic for a film adapted by the world-famous Japanese author Murakami. Telling the story would be a shame. A singular bond will be created between an actor and theater director who has lived through several tragedies, and clings to… his car, an old Saab that he maintains with more than meticulous care. Engaged in a theatrical residence in Hiroshima, he is housed on an island and must entrust his keys to a young driver, also with a tragic past. A very long film (three hours), very beautiful, by a filmmaker noted in France for "Senses" and "Asako I and II".

Released August 18.