The 2006 Cannes Film Festival Awards

The Wind That Shakes the Barley, Ken Loach Palme d'Or.
This year the Palme d'or winner film is about the Irish struggle for independence led by the IRA against the British Black and Tan soldiers. The story is set in the early 1920s. According to Loach upon accepting his award, the film deals with "the British confronting their imperialist history". It can also be seen as an allegory for the current situation in Iraq. The Cannes selection skillfully blends art with politics and the awards are known for profiling superior films that reveal the complexities of today's issues on screen. Loach is one of Europe's leading auteurs and the award was well deserved. His films are frequently selected to Cannes, and the jury decision to award the film the Palme d'Or was unanimous since the first time they saw the film early in the week.

According to Helena Bonham Carter: " Ken Loach's film came very early on and that absolutely shattered and broke, so intense and viscerally moving. There's no explaining it; it hit us all profoundly. It was one of five films about war. It was not only a fantastic education about the Irish problem, but it also was emotionally for me because I could understand something that I thought I could never understand. It led me to believe how somebody could kill his own brother. For me, it had tremendous humanity. I can't explain our mass reaction; we were just all profoundly moved."

Patrice Leconte agreed: "When I saw Ken Loach's film the first day, it filled me with enormous emotion that has never left me. And when we'd see other films day after day, we talked together about what we had felt. In a corner of our hearts, The Wind That Shakes the Barley remained there, as strong as ever. That is why, this morning, in the space of a very short time, this film was unanimously chosen to be the Palme d'Or."

Or ask Tim Roth : "I discovered from Ken's movie on that I am a complete weeper. I just cried a lot in these movies. Normally, when I'm acting in films, they blow stuff in my eyes and I cry. These films really took me and took my heart."

Although the film may be a surprise to some of the critics, notably those which have issues with the social realist that Ken Loach is, or those just flabbergasted that they hadn't counted in this film as a strong contender, rest assured that the jury wanted this film from the beginning, and it wasn't a lifetime achievement award.

Palme D'Or The Wind That Shakes the Barley Ken Loach, Ireland/U.K./Germany/Italy/Spain
Grand Prize Bruno Dumont Flandres France
Special Jury Prize: Andrea Arnold, The Red Road, UK/Denmark
Screenplay Pedro Almodovar Volver, Spain).
Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu Babel,US
Best Actor: ensemble cast from Rachid Bouchareb Indigènes (Days of Glory): Jamel Debbouze, Samy Naceri, Sami Bouajila, Roschdy Zem and Bernard Blancan, a film about four North African soldiers who helped France fight against the Nazi's during WWII. France/Morocco/Algeria/Belgium
Camera d'Or Prize (debut film): Corneliu Porumboiu - A Fost sau n-a fost? Romania
Palme d'Or- Short Film: Bobbie Peers, Sniffers Norway
Un Certain Regard Grand prix award: Wang Chao Luxury Car China-France
Un Certain Regard special jury prize: Rolf de Geer Ten Canoes Australia
Actress Dorotheea Petre How I Spent the End of the World Romania/France
Actor Don Angel Tavira The Violin, Mexico).
Jury President's Award Murderers Patrick Grandperret, France

Fipresci Awards
Competition Climates Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey-France
Un Certain Regard Paraguayan Hammoc Paz Encina, France/Argentina/Netherlands/Paraguay/Spain)
Directors' Fortnight Bug William Friedkin, USA

Cannes Gives Andrea Arnold Special Jury Prize

Andrea Arnold, the UK director acclaimed for her innovative Oscar winning short Wasp, won the Cannes jury over and received a special prize for The Red Road, a film about a woman who works for the Glasgow council closed circuit television and one day notices a man from her past. The Red Road is the first of three films in a dogme like conception called Advance Party. The other segments are scheduled to be directed by two other helmers -Morag McKinnon and Mikkel Norgaard who will be using the same characters and also set in Scotland. The award was announced at the closing ceremonies of the Cannes Film Festival this evening (28 May) .

Pedro Almodovár won the best screenplay award for Volver. The Spanish director is claimed to have revitalized cinema in Spain after Franco primarily with gender benders. The ensemble cast of the film won the best actress award: Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas, Chus Lampreave, Yohana Cobo and Blanca Portillo, presented by French actor Jean Rochefort. Cruz said that the prize belonged to Almodovár: "Thanks for what you do for women all over the world."

Beyond being nominated for a Palme d'Or there hasn't beeen such an innovative period piece since Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. The main criticism against the film was that Sofia Coppola left out the French Revolution. But she never said that was what her aim, nor was it her intention to show the execution of Antoinette. That exclusion may make it "petit bourgeois" for some French reviewers, but in terms of style, Marie Antoinette is a ground-breaking film with a film score that includes teen rock hits. Since its Cannes debut, according to surveys, it is the film that most viewers want to see. Sofia Coppola, a young auteur reknowned for soulful explorations of the territory of young women, was considered a top contender for an award along with Pedro Almodovár for Volver, and Alejandro González Iñárritu, for Babel, who won the best director prize. The 35- year old director also wrote the script, adapted from Lady Antonia Fraser's novel on the Austrian woman who became a French regent. As for the French cold shoulder, according to Fraser "Marie Antoinette wasn't French, and neither am I".

"I think it's a good year for women," reported Samuel L. Jackson, member of the nine-member jury.

The Sacred Feminine in Cannes

There may not have been much to chew on in Ron Howard’s The Da Vinci Code but there are stronger signs of female power at Cannes making this festival one of the best. First of all there is the veteran actor- the magnifique Gena Rowlands featured in Paris, Je T'Aime in Un Certain Regard and who will be giving a Master Class. Almost everything that comes out of the mouth of this veteran actor is inspirational and provocative:

"We actors do not need to die to be reincarnated, we for that is what we do each and every day. But what freedom! We all have thousands of characters within us. Only actors and madmen (whom we are often taken for) can give them expression and body, and defend them. With complete impunity".

Rowlands remarked how rewarding it was to work on Paris, Je T'Aime, a film made by 18 directors about the arrondissement in Paris they love, especially because of the integration of age spans. We need to know that love exists, she remarked about the role she has in the section directed by Olivier Assayas.

Monica Bellucci who serves on the official jury made a marvellous statement at the start of the festival that we can say to earth pods whey they ask us why we watch SO much cinema :

""If I was not an actress, I would then be a big cinemagoer. I love cinema and I could not deprive myself of movies one way or another. It is through cinema that quality encounters between cultures can take place and their various expressions meet."

Actresses typically are to be found on the international jury, rarely directors. This year the Argentine director Lucretia Martel is a part of the feature film jury, whose film The Holy One has received international acclaim since its debut at Cannes in 2004. Agnes Varda was on the jury in 2005. Several women have served as presidents of the jury, all actresses: Liv Ullmann (2001) Isabelle Adjani (1997), Jeanne Moreau(1995 and 1975) , Ingrid Bergman (1973) , and Sophie Loren (1966).

Actresses are typically the "Madame of Ceremonies", - such as Monica Bellucci, Charlotte Rampling and Sophie Marceau but this year in a gender bender, the French actor Vincent Cassell was selected. He heralded the multiculturality of France, adding that in addition to the spiral formed arrondissement of Paris, there are 177 communities!

The artistic director of Cannes, Thierry Frémaux was interviewed by Dagens Nyheter ( 14 May) and declared that each Cannes selection is a global snapshot of the world. "We are not the UN and we don't have quotas. For example, we don't take a film from Sweden that is half good just because Sweden may be underrepresented. Jamais". By the same tack Frémaux said that films by women although appreciated are not sought after. He can put together an entire program without women with no qualms. Although he appears to have no insight into why it might be so he declared, "Men make more films than women, and this is reflected at Cannes". Since we have no reason to expect women selected to the international competition, this year a HOLY TRINITY of female power was selected much to our delight.

Sofia Coppolas's Marie Antoinette is the story of the young Austrian woman who became regent. A period piece is expected from directors with two or three successes under their belt. However, in this respect Coppola has modernized the historical epic, with rock music and an occasional converse footed actor. The film is adapted by the novel by Lady Antonia Fraser, married to that rebel rousing Nobel laureate Harold Pinter. Coppola seems to be keeping interesting company.


Question: Although it is fiction, of course, what do you make of The DaVinci Code and its suggestion regarding the Holy Grail as feminine icon?

Lady Antonia Fraser: Haven't read it. No plans to do so.

We are also spared from the demise of Marie-Antoinette in new pic! Au contraire the film, like other work by Coppola concerns the pressures of life for young women.

"For me, Marie Antoinette has remained, first and foremost, the symbol of a totally decadent style. I didn't realise to what point these people, who were called upon to govern a country, were in point of fact no more than teenagers. Daily life in the Château de Versailles is also, for these adolescents, a form of apprenticeship set in a tense, difficult environment. It is this position and the complexity of the character of Marie Antoinette which interested me."

Nicole Garcia who served on the Cannes jury with several well made films has been invited to present Selon Charlie, an multi-arc film with seven--and a surprise eight- men. Previous films include Place Vendôme starring Catherine Deneuve who plays an alcoholic that has lost her husband. Deneuve won an acting prize at the Venice International Film Festival. L'Adversaire was shown in Cannes in 2002, the story of Jean-Claude Romand man who murdered his wife, children and parents in 1993.

The Oscar winning Wasp director Andrea Arnold brings us the first part of a dogma inspired trilogy concerning a woman who works in closed circuit television studio in Glasgow: The Red Road. Pic has already engendered enthusiastic acclaim for the international competition for its film form and message. The project is called "Advance Style", where three directors will create films based on the same characters by Lone Scherfig and Anders Thomas Jensen--all set in Scotland.

Leonardo Who ? or Symbols of the Sacred Feminine

I missed the frenzy around Dan Brown's best seller last year, The Da Vinci Code recommended by a respected Zen Buddhist teacher in Sweden--before all the media frenzy. All last summer my friends spoke about it in Skala Eresssos on the island of Lesbos on my holiday for it takes up how Mary Magdelene may have been one of the disciples of Jesus . I even bought the book which awaits my scrutiny. Tonite, the film adapted from the book will open the Cannes Film Festival. I saw it several hours earlier today. I am glad I saw the film before I read the book. Because as filmmaker Maya Deren declares: if cinema is to develop its own language it must create a vocabulary of filmic images. It should reject horizontal linear development and create vertical cinematic time and space. That said, Ron Howard's The Da Vinci Code is a horizontal potboiler. There are few instances of cinematic magic. Granted there are several teams that worked on special effects , with colorful code names such as Brainstorm Digital, Double Negative, Rainmaker and The Senate. However, there is little to conjure up "sacred symbols of the feminine" even if the mystery concerns tracing theories about the history of Mary Magdelene. Howard said the theme fascinated him because he has a strong willed wife and three daughters. But this is not the theme of this film. Its an ordinary crime mystery saga, like the novel, with lots of detectives, preyed upon innocents and arch enemies.In just the opening minutes of the film I was confronted by the profundity of the following "symbols".

• Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is giving a lecture in Paris. He asks - in English - what certain symbols mean for the students. They answer all too quickly like a cadre of Harvard hotshots, nearly all in English. This does not happen in Paris student lectures. Students are contemplative and take their time responding, however brilliant. Granted in the book these are students at the American University in Paris, but in the film, these are French students, admonished to speak in English. The lecture has changed title from "The Symbology of Secret Sects" and "Ideograms"--to the "Sacred Feminine". The precipice of the film, with little to show for it.Later, Bezu Fache (Jean Reno) of the Paris police, questions Langdon about what the symbols mean on the chest of the dead curator of the Louvre - Jacques Saunière (Jean Pierre Marielle). Right in the middle of a book signing in Paris. This kind of public ventilation of the details of a criminal investigation ----just does not happen..... Then, we only get to hear about 10 seconds of Serge Gainsbourg's La Javanaise (The Javanaise Woman) on the taxi radio when Robert is left off at the Louvre to meet Fache and observe the curator's body. Quel dommage!
  
• History: Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tatou) , a French government crytographer doesn't like history but Harvard professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) says that is because she may not like "her story". Considering the fanaticism around The Da Vinci Code maybe we would like our history better if it were not surpressed and buried. So, who killed her grandfather, the curator at the Louvre. The symbols on his chest and several anagrams and cryptic numbers reveal a story of power in the Christian Church. His death comes after he assumedly reveals the location of the keystone to the Holy Grail to Silas (Paul Bettany), a deranged flagellator - or did he? The stone marks the site of the "best kept secret of the Catholic Church", on the "Rose Line", a Prime Meridian that passed through Paris before the Greenwich Median was established. Hence an old rivalry is evoked of the two neighbors on the English Channel. In order to present the historical arches of Brown's novel several scenes are rather quickly recreated from biblical and early Christian history - including the modern operations of the Priors of Sion, a "secret" gnostic brotherhood, and the ultra-conservative Catholic sect Opus Dei. which includes Bishop Aringarosa (Alfred Molino). To impart a dated feel to the material, these scenes are blurred, including a fuzzy mass of departed souls ascending the steps of the Temple Church in England. The history of Sophie's grandfather, is given ample room. He was one of the Priors of Sion. She was unknowingly groomed as an apprentice until a fallout. But more is revealed. In the end when Robert cuts himself shaving and the blood forms a Fleur de Lis in his Ritz hotel room sink, he realizes that the Rose Line goes from Rosslyn Chapel in England (which took only 40 years to build!) to " the scar of Paris" as Bezu Fache calls it-- IM Pei's pyramid outside the Louvre. It turns out the Holy Grail is none other than the remains of Mary Magdalene, a real threat to the patriarchal order of the Church. This makes sense when we realize how many thousands of women were burned at the stake and executed with the dawn of Christianity and the bloody Crusades. Da Vinci offers us the clues. The chalice or Holy Grail is Magdelene's womb, the vessel of the blood of Jesus, symbolized in the emptyV-shaped space between Mary Magdelena and Jesus in Da Vinci's Last Supper(shown above). Inversely, each V-stripe on the soldiers of military officers is a male symbol, declares Sir Leigh Teabling (Ian McKellan), a Grail scholar, who cunningly use Robert and Sophie for his own selfish purposes in his quest for the Holy Grail.

Further profundities

• "I never knew a girl whose grandfather gave her a cryptex. My grandfather gave me a wagon". Langdon to Neveu. Lines like these create little chemistry between the two characters and are notable throughout the entire film.
  

• Sophie's "grandfather" and "grandmother" indulged in rituals of the Priors where men and women recreate the carnal passion of Jesus and Mary Magdelena. This scene is reminiscent of Kubrik's desparate Eyes Wide Shut when Tom Cruise disguises himself and observes masked men and women in ritualized orgies. Sophie on a surprise visit home as a college girl quickly cuts her ties to her grandfather after witnessing this event. Clipped at the wings in Howard's adaptation is a rich pageant of esoteric knowledge and French history. Beneath every calling card is a better, truer story. Brown may have been sued for plagiarizing the novel, but the information is out there in the public domain for modern tropes, however twisted.
  

• Sir Isaac Newton was famous for his scientific inventions but left the ultimate interpretation of them to God. Now that's gravity.

• Mona Lisa by Leonardo DaVinci is a very small portrait kept under glass at the Louvre and is strictly forbidden to be touched or photographed. Another Leonardo worthy of mention is Leonardo Pisa Fibonacci whose numbers were a roadmap to sacred places, possibly even the tomb of Mary Magdelene, if such a place indeed exists. His numbers were used to calculate immaculate conceptions. In this film they are superficially used to access a Swiss banking vault.
  
• The "Fleur de Lis" (introduced in The Da Vinci Code as a pendant left at the Louvre by Jacques Saunière) is the symbol of the Virgin Mary and was used by the Kings of France. The earliest were the Merovingians who established the City of Paris on a vortex point, Rose Line if you will. They also worshipped the goddess Diana. Pont and Place de l' Alma are the sites of underground chambers of worship in her name. Below Place de l'Alma Princess Diana was killed in a tunnel. (Briefly, Ron Howard shows a car ride in a tunnel- and The Ritz where Diana was moments before). The Fleur de Lis is adorned on French churches. The unoffical tour of the Notre Dame de Paris, not sanctioned by the Catholic Church has information with Fleur de Lis prominantly displayed. Hoards of tourists climb the steps to the tower of the Notre Dame. Here if they know what to look for, they will find two languages in stone - one esoteric, such as a statue of an alchemist, a pelican and an elephant and the other Christian, with all the saints and Jesus. At the bottom of the Great Port is a woman-the sacred feminine indeed, holding a book of esoteric and exoteric knowledge, and a series of stone carvings of the stages of alchemy described by Fulcanelli. Secret societies of freemasons and alchemists historically met in the Church honoring these stones. France has a powerful history of esotericism, much carved in stone, and is awaiting cinema for worthy explorations. Ron Howard's The Da Vinci Code does not do it very well.