CANNES, France — Swedish director Ruben Ostlund’s satire “The Triangle of Sadness” won the Palme d’Or at the 75th Cannes Film Festival on Saturday in a ceremony here. A blunt, ugly broadcast of class politics, the film had critics sharply divided.
The awards ceremony lasted a relatively painless roughly 90 minutes, another reminder that the focus at Cannes remains on the films themselves, not the circus that comes with it. Held at the magnificent Grand Lumière Theater in the festival’s headquarters – with the nine-member jury watching from the stage – the awards lend critical legitimacy and generate much-needed public relations for films that, years in the pandemic, are heading for a still- difficult world for art cinema.
The Grand Prix, the festival’s second prize, was split between ‘Close’ by Belgian director Lukas Dhont and ‘Stars at Noon’ by French author Claire Denis. “Stars at Noon” was derided by critics, but it wasn’t quite a shock that it won an award: Vincent Lindon, this year’s jury chairman, appeared in several of Denis’ films. ‘Close’, a critical and audience favorite about two 13-year-old boys whose friendship is tragically tested, received a warm round of applause from the Lumière audience.
The Jury Prize, the third prize, was divided between two very different dramas: “EO”, a heartthrob about a donkey by the Polish author Jerzy Skolimowski, and “The Eight Mountains”, a coming-of-age story by the Belgian filmmakers. Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch. Skolimowski, 84, began his acceptance speech by thanking (and naming) all six of his donkeys, including a little beauty named Taco. For her part, Vandermeersch seemed to surprise her co-director and partner by kissing him repeatedly before beginning his acceptance speech.
South Korean director Park Chan-wook won the director’s award for “Decision to Leave,” an entertainingly suspenseful thriller (that riffs on Hitchcock’s “Vertigo”) that was a critical favorite. “This is so cool,” Park said in English as he took the stage, though he added an expletive as well.
The screenplay award went to Swedish director Tarik Saleh’s compelling (and chatty) drama Boy from Heaven. The film follows the political intrigue surrounding a young Egyptian student, a Sunni Muslim, shortly after he begins studying at a powerful religious university. After receiving his award, Saleh dedicated his award to young Egyptian filmmakers: “Raise your voices, and tell your stories.”
In one of the bigger surprises of the evening, Best Actress went to Zar Amir Ebrahimi, the star of Iranian-born director Ali Abbasi’s widely hated true crime drama ‘Holy Spider’. She plays a journalist who faces the indifference and misogyny of the police when she tracks down a serial killer. The Best Actor award went to Song Kang-ho, the brilliant South Korean actor (“Parasite”), for his sensitive, soulful performance as a baby smuggler in “Broker”, the latest version by Japanese author Hirokazu Kore-eda.
A special prize commemorating the 75th anniversary of the festival was awarded to Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who once again competed with “Tori and Lokita”, about two undocumented African immigrants in a cruel, deeply inhospitable Belgium. The Dardennes are among the most rightly honored filmmakers in Cannes history, winning the Palme twice (for “Rosetta” in 1999 and “The Child” in 2005). This award was well deserved.
