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Cannes: ‘Class’ Act Takes Palme d’Or
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Realism won the day, or rather the week, at Cannes. Laurent Cantet’s ‘The Class’ took home the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s the first French film to do so in over a decade.
For film that’s light on story, heavy on talk, basically sticks to one room, and comes in at 129 minutes, it flies by. Cantet’s fly-on-the-wall approach feels more like a documentary than a fictional pic about an urban French junior high school.
The director uses real students and teachers, including Francois Bagadeau, whose 2006 autobiographical novel is the film’s source. It follows an entire school year through his eyes.
Cantet sets three cameras in the room and lets the actors improvise, making the classroom a microcosm of the larger multi-cultural French culture. There are questions about why the teacher always uses “white” names in examples, teasing about differences in looks and accents, and altercations which grow in intensity as the narrative slowly and unobtrusively takes shape.
The film is a fascinating study in character. It also has universal appeal to all societies dealing with multi-cultural conflict.
The runner-up Grand Prix went to another documentary-style film, ‘Gomorra,’ Matteo Garrone’s chilling adaptation of Roberto Saviano’s bestselling expose’ of Neapolitan crime.
Palo Sorrentino’s ‘Il Divo’ took the jury prize. The brilliantly exuberant bio-pic of seven-time Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti presents its over-the-top subject in an often hilarious, appropriately over-the-top cartoonish manner reminiscent of ‘Moulin Rouge.’
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MAJOR PRIZES OF THE 61ST CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
PALME D’OR
‘The Class (Entre les murs)’
GRAND PRIX
‘Gomorra’
SPECIAL PRIZE FOR 61ST CANNES FESTIVAL
Catherine Deneuve, ‘A Christmas Tale’
Clint Eastwood, ‘The Changeling’
JURY PRIZE
‘Il Divo’
BEST DIRECTOR
Nuri Bilge Ceylan, ‘Three Monkeys’
BEST ACTOR
Benicio del Toro, ‘Che’
BEST ACTRESS
Sandra Corveloni, ‘Linha de Passe’
SCREENPLAY
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, ‘Le Silence de Lorna’
