I’m thrilled that my own personal Palme D’or pick - the Roumanian film “Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days” by Cristian Mungiu - ended up winning the top prize at Cannes this year. For me it was between this film, and the Coen Brothers’ “No Country For Old Men“, and a lot of the international critics felt the same.

The Coens’ film, a genre-blender of cop chase and western based on a Cormac McCarthy novel, is an ingenious, suspenseful, and beautifully crafted picture about an aging sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones – no stretch there) trying to thwart an unstoppable serial killer, played by Javier Bardem. It’s a more serious and reflective movie than audiences might expect from the hyperironic directors of “Fargo”. Although there’s lots of bloodshed and some pungent comic bits, the movie delivers a serious and keenly elegiac portrait of a riven America in which law and order and wild-west morality have been replaced by drugs, greed and random violence.

“You don’t have to do this” is the question the victims keep asking Bardem’s nasty character, before he blows them away with a cattle-killing stun gun. It’s a good question to ask with the US still busy in Iraq.

The Romanian film is a pitch-perfect, utterly unsentimental drama about two college girls trying to arrange an illegal abortion in a small town in the final years of Ceausescu’s regime. Do not think of it, however as a “Romanian abortion film”, as everyone kept referring to it. It’s not about abortion so much as a portrait of individual powerlessness in the final brutal years of communism in Romania. The two girls must put themselves in the hands of an abortionist who is a clever, mercurial despot, toying with the power he holds over them. The acting is uncannily natural, there is a vein of mordant humor running through it and the film has a weight and dignity that lingers in the mind.

Most Impressive Movie Star:

Angelina Jolie. She does a terrific job of playing the role of Mariane Pearl, the widow of American journalist Daniel Pearl, in Michael Winterbottom’s film “A Mighty Heart“. Winterbottom faithfully recreates the investigation into the 2002 kidnapping and killing of the Wall Street Journal reporter in Pakistan, where he went to write about the so-called Shoe Bomber and his links with Al Qaeda. Jolie was also gracious and modest in the press conference that followed the screening. She’s got substance. It’s not her fault that she was beamed down from some Planet of Outrageously Beautiful Creatures.

Most Disappointing Film

“My Blueberry Nights“, by Wong Kar Wai, starring Jude Law and the singer Norah Jones, in her film debut. Every frame looks scrumptious, as one would expect from the neon-loving director of “In The Mood For Love” but there’s no story here, just more broken-hearted people who can’t connect – which makes it hard to connect to the ambitious story the director puts in motion. It’s a road story about a freshly dumped woman who hits the road, works in bars, learns a few life lessons in Vegas from a gambling girl (Natalie Portman), and finally wends her way back to the day-glo diner where her pie-guy - Jude Law – still patiently awaits her. I think I can give away the story, since it never really matters to us. Norah Jones acquits herself fine and Jude Law is his usual rakish self but the script if full of banalities. Alas, another European/Asian auteur falls in love with America’s deserts, diners and R&B (Wim Wenders did it too), and strays from the thing he does best.

Stars Most In Love With The Limelight:

Cannes perennial Sharon Stone, in a slinky gold and black gown, loitered long on the red carpet, basking, crinkling her tiny, tiny crows’ feet, blowing kisses, and giving what one local paper called “her signature wave”. In town to help host an AIDS fundraiser, she looked as if she might go up and down the carpet all night long. But that’s what the red carpet (actually a sort of day-glo deep pink, in order to read as bright red on TV) is for. And beloved French actor Alain Delon, now a dashing ruin with his hair flopping on his forehead, lingered long in the flashbulbs too.

Cannes-Ucks:

Among the Canadians at the Festival this year, actor/director Sara Polley, whose own movie, “Away From Here” has just opened in North America, is on the Cannes jury, joining Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk and jury head Stephen Frears, among others.

Director David Cronenberg was in town to be part of the anniversary special omnibus production “Chacun Son Cinema“; Cronenberg was one of 33 international directors, including Atom Egoyan, contributing three-minute films to the anthology. The very popular Quebec animated short “Madame Tutli-Putli” screened multiple times in the International Critics’ Week program, and Jennifer Baischwal’s much-admired documentary about Ed Burtinsky, “Manufacturing Landscapes“, screened in the Cannes Marche. Quebec director Denys Arcand will be on hand when his lasteset film, L’Age des Tenebres, wraps up the festival on Sunday night.

Movie with the Most Breasts and Penises on a Single Person:

“XXY“, an Argentinian feature by Lucia Puenzo, about a young hermaphrodite. The story focuses on a fifteen-year-old raised by her parents as a girl, who has a troubling secret: she was born with a penis, and now she has breasts, too. Her family tries to hide her away in a remote seaside spot, where her father, a biologist, rather too metaphorically studies sea turtles, an endangered species. Although the film’s a bit gloomy, Puenzo’s direction is delicate and the lead actress is tough and engaging. It also reminds us of how confusing sexual identity is for any fifteen year old, let alone someone born with mixed-up genitals. This was one of many Cannes films this year that explored the theme of sexual fluidity and sexual awakening. It’s as if the only alternative to national boundaries and political conflicts now is the question of sexual terroir.

Longest Single Take:

The opening shot of “Silent Light“, a gorgeous and glacially paced film by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas (”Japon”, “Battle of Heaven”). It lasts six minutes, and follows a starry night in the Mexican countryside as it slowly – very slowly – fades to first light, then to the stain of sunrise, then to brightening early morning. It’s what is known in the Cannes’ trades as a “demanding” film. I loved it. The story is about a married man in a Mennonite community of farmers in northern Mexico who has fallen in love with another woman, and must morally grapple with the “truth” of infidelity (in a manner that many French movies wouldn’t dream of doing).

Reygadas used “real Mennonites” rather than actors, and they are compellingly present on screen. The big surprise is the woman who plays the farmer’s wife - Winnipeg writer Miriam Toewes, author of the novel “A Complicated Kindness” (about a Mennonite teenager), in her first acting role. She’s fantastic in it. At two hours and twenty minutes, the film does require patience, but it felt like an oasis of natural beauty and rural rhythms in the Cannes environment of high-velocity editing.

Most Popular Press Conference:

For Winterbottom’s film “A Mighty Heart“. Angelina plays the lead, and Brad Pitt, also in town for his role in “Oceans Thirteen“, co-produced. The two stars sat at opposite ends of the long press table - not, it would appear, because they are bickering, but to keep the focus on the film, and on Daniel Pearl’s widow, Mariane Pearl, who was also present. When I saw the film, I had one skeptical reaction – right, female journalists all look like Angelina Jolie. Well, in this case, it’s true. Pearl and Jolie look remarkably similar, and share the same composed demeanour. The film is a faithful rendering of Mariane’s book about her husband, and although it gets a bit police-blotter procedural in places, it’s refreshing to see a movie in which potential enemies can work together to solve a political crime.

Most Expensive Party:

The AMFAR party, a fundraiser for AIDS, hosted by Liz Taylor and George Clooney, on a yacht. Tickets costs $25,000 each.

Silliest Party:

On a luxury yacht – is there any other kind - moored at the dock, for the actress-thingmabob Jessica Simpson. Guests milled about the upper decks awaiting the arrival of Simpson, who was in Cannes to promote her role in a forthcoming movie – as a movie star who gets fed up with the biz, and joins the Marines. NOTE: this is a film that has not been made yet. The event is therefore meta-publicity. The limo discharged Jessica into the clutches of the waiting press, where flashbulbs blazed. Then she deftly handled questions about her hair colour and career ambitions. Up close, she is the non-radiant type of celebrity. Then she walked the tiny, narrow red carpet onto the yacht.

Most Shameless Publicity Stunt:

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld, dressed as a bee, harnessed to cables, flew from the roof of the Carlton Hotel down to the beach, to publicize his project, Bee Movie.

Ou Sont Les Femmes?

I attended the black-tie screening of the omnibus film of shorts, “Chacun Son Cinema” and couldn’t help but note the obvious when the directors lined up on stage: this was the cream of the directorial world, all former Palme D’Or winners - thirty-two men, and one lone woman, director Jane Campion. It’s a funny thing, and difficult to analyse, but film-making continues to be a man’s game, with the odd exception. Campion wasn’t shy about commenting on this in her own eccentric short, which featured a woman dressed as a winged insect, madly dancing on stage until a large male shoe comes along and squashes her underfoot. Point taken.

Best Short Films:

Highlights of “Chacun Son Cinema” were the contributions by Walter Salles, Roman Polanski, The Coen Brothers, and Atom Egoyan. Egoyan’s thoughtful, witty short featured a couple sitting in separate movies, (”Jean d’Arc”, and Egoyan’s own “Adjuster”), text-messaging each other as they watch. While a number of directors seemed to be commenting morosely on the ‘end of cinema’ in their short films, Egoyan’s short took pleasure in layering the old with the new.

Most Abusive Waiter:

Cannes is wall-to-wall restaurants, bars, clubs and cafes, and I have no idea how they feed us all. Most of the waiters I encountered were more professional than many of the press. But one day the little guy in the spot I frequented lost his cool and loudly scolded me because, in my hunger and weakness, I had begged him for a menu and a glass of rose,if possible, at the same time. I think my deformed French accent drove him over the edge. He chewed me out, saying that I must first ask for the menu, and then place my order, not both at once. Tears actually came to my eyes. I then sulked and refused to speak to him for the rest of the meal, not that he noticed. These and other blood sugar disorders are rampant in Cannes, where there’s no such thing as snacking, or Twizzlers in the theatres, and line-ups for everything are the rule. I’m amazed there aren’t more physical confrontations between hungry people and professional waiters.

In the same restaurant, there was also a harried but hard-working waitress who, when you meekly tried to catch her eye, yelled “J’arrive, j’arrive!” like someone setting an attack dog on you. (This is cultural stereotyping. See the disclaimer above).

My Favourite Celebrity Moment:

Crossing paths with Jim Jarmusch, a tall, silver-haired cool drink of water who was gliding on his own through the Croisette crowds beside the beach. Somebody should cast him in something. Runner-up: almost colliding with French actress Jane Birkin, on her way to the screening of her own film, The Boxes.

Prettiest Sight:

On weekend nights, fireworks go off over the Croisette at midnight. It’s a lavish, gorgeous display, and of course no one thinks twice of the timing. In Cannes the night is still young at twelve o’clock.

Worst Film:

Of the 25-odd movies I saw, it had to be “Savage Grace“, starring Julianne Moore, directed by arthouse fave Tom Kalin (”Swoon”). The film is based on a true story, the biography of the woman who was heiress to the Bakelite fortune, who managed to destroy her poor schizophrenic son through a combination of drinking, casual incest and carelessness. It teeters on camp, taxes even the considerable talents of Juliane Moore, and makes Mommy Dearest look tasteful.

Most Expensive Hotel:

The Hotel du Cap, a half hour away, in Cap D’Antibes. Until recently, it did not accept credit cards. The main hotel, the colour of whipped cream, is set above a rocky point in the Mediterranean, surrounded by grounds the size of botanical gardens, with tall pines and cooing birds. I felt as if I had wandered in the Garden of the Finzi-Continis. This is where the stars stay, and where “intimate” press lunches are held – with the ungainly, unironed press hidden away in seaside cabanas. I sat beside the pool in my little Canadian jacket, and ordered a water. Voss, in a cool glass cylinder. Seven Euros.

Most Ironic Cannes Sight:

Cannes oozes cash. Little tiny dogs with expensively groomed eyebrows wear Burberry outfits and get walked on rhinestone leashes. The yachts are the size of small nations. And there are panhandlers, too - but they are Cannes beggars. They have style. When we were eating at an outside table, a young woman with a rather large child in a stroller came by, panhandling. She wore silver flats and a smart black embroidered jacket. I don’t think she said “Money for a manicure?” but on the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Marni Jackson
Senior Editor, The Walrus

(for more on Marni’s past adventures at Cannes, read “Snapshots from Cannes” first published in the September 2006 issue of The Walrus)

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