Cannes race wide open as jury tries to pick winning film

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CANNES, France, May 25, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – The Cannes film festival ends
Saturday with the race for the Palme d’Or top prize wide open. With the jury
due to begin their deliberations in a villa overlooking the Mediterranean,
four films have been heavily tipped by critics as possible winners after a
vintage year of top movies.

The Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar has made the running almost from the
start of the 12-day marathon with his most personal film yet, “Pain & Glory”,
in which Antonio Banderas plays a ageing gay director not unlike the maker of
“All About My Mother”.

Almodovar, 69, has yet to win the Palme d’Or in six attempts, but has
brought up the big emotional guns this time, with Penelope Cruz playing his
mother.

Whether a jury led by the Oscar-winning Mexican tyro Alejandro Gonzalez
Inarritu of “Birdman” and “The Revenant” fame will be swayed by such an array
of Latin talent remains to be seen.

Nor is there much arguing with the star power of Quentin Tarantino’s “Once
Upon a Time… in Hollywood”, which brings Tinseltown’s two most dashing
leading men, Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, together on screen for the
first time.

– Is it Tarantino’s year? –

Many critics loved the rollicking odyssey through the Los Angeles of 1969
in the period leading up to the Manson family murders, particularly Pitt’s
performance as a hoary stuntman.

But there were haters too, and the French actress Emmanuelle Seigner fired
a shot across Tarantino’s bows by complaining that he did not consult her
husband, director Roman Polanski, whose murdered wife Sharon Tate is at the
film’s heart.

Tellingly, however, Tarantino — who won the Palme d’Or 25 years ago for
“Pulp Fiction” — has stayed behind in Cannes, prompting speculation that he
is set for a big prize.

He collected the Palm Dog prize Friday for Cannes’ best canine performance
at the festival, joking, “At least I do not go home empty-handed.”

French director Celine Sciamma could make history by becoming only the
second woman director ever to win the Palme after Jane Campion in 1993 with
“The Piano”.

– Time for a woman winner? –

Like that film, her period lesbian love story is a slow-burner which packs
a big emotional punch.

As well as being a worthy winner, it could please a jury which has three
female filmmakers, the American Kelly Reichardt, Italian arthouse star Alice
Rohrwacher and Burkina Faso’s Maimouna N’Diaye.

But the competition is stiff, no more so from the Korean master Bong Joon-
ho’s “Parasite”, a fabulously funny morality tale about the widening gap
between rich and poor in his native South Korea.

Stellar performances adds to its allure though some critics wonder if
Cannes will reward a second Asian film dealing with a roughly similar theme
after Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-Eda won last year with “Shoplifters”.

The movie website Indiewire insisted that outsiders, like Cannes debutants
Ladj Ly’s powerful look at his own high-rise home in the poor Paris suburbs,
“Les Miserables”, and Mati Diop’s Senegalese migrant ghost story,
“Atlantics”, might just get a foot in the door.

Diop has already made history as the first black woman director in
competition. Yet first-time filmmakers rarely win Cannes’ ultimate prize.

Although Cannes juries are notoriously difficult to call, this one is the
most cinephile in years, filled with strong personalities like Greek director
Yorgos Lanthimos and the passionate Pole Pawel Pawlikowski.

Even its baby, the 21-year-old American actress Elle Fanning, knows her
arthouse onions.

So with so many good films in the running, critics are expecting a quality
victor.

Yet Cannes’ winners can sometimes come out of messy compromises, with
Almodovar — who presided over the jury two years ago — admitting last week
that the most admired film doesn’t always win.

Indeed, like German Maren Ade’s “Toni Erdmann” in 2016, it can go home
empty-handed.