Cannes 2017 Winners

The Cannes Film Festival awarded its coveted Palme d’Or award to Ruben Ostlund’s Swedish comedy The Square on Sunday, while Sofia Coppola became only the second woman to win the best director award. Coppola won best director for The Beguiled, her remake of Don Siegel’s 1971 Civil War drama about a Union soldier hiding out in a Southern girls’ school. Hailed as Coppola’s most feminist work yet, the remade thriller told from a more female point of view stars Nicole Kidman and Kirsten Dunst, with Colin Farrell playing the wounded soldier.

Diane Kruger was named best actress and Joaquin Phoenix best actor as the festival celebrated its 70th anniversary. Kruger was honoured for her performance in Fatih Akin’s In the Fade. She played a German woman whose son and Turkish husband are killed in a bomb attack. Phoenix was recognized for his role in Lynne Ramsay’s thriller You Were Never Really Here, in which he played a tormented war veteran trying to save a teenage girl from a sex trafficking ring

Girlhood (2014)

Girl power comes from French cinema in this classic coming-of-age story; female centric and empowerment driven, Girlhood is centered around 16 year old Marieme and her struggles with peer pressure and self discovery. While the tale may be repetitive, director Céline Sciamma gives fresh visuals and dramatic flare to the film, which is captivating from the very start. Set in the lower class suburbs of France, Girlhood is as much an emotional journey as it is a visual one, and a satisfying film from beginning to end.

First I might disclose that I do have a weak spot for movies dealing with female friendships. The friendship between Vic and Lady is especially touching, from Lady taking Vic on as a young shy protegé, to them bonding after Vic's victory in the fight she fought for Lady or for Lady's acceptance of Vic leaving.  The scene where they are dancing all together or playing mini-golf reminds me of some of the few good scenes of The Bling Ring and perhaps The Spring Breakers, that unquestioning best friend kind of relationships that are never as strong as during your teenage years.

Foxcatcher (2014)

Channing Tatum stars as Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz. When we first meet him, he's already reached elite status by winning a gold medal. But the achievement hasn't allowed him to escape the shadow of his older brother, Dave, also a gold medalist. The younger Schultz wants more. He wants to be the best. His past prize also doesn't pay the bills. After training sessions, he's eating ramen noodles. All that changes, however, with a phone call from du Pont (Steve Carell) who offers to pay him and set him up in a first-class training facility on his Pennsylvania estate.

Steve Carell is going to get an Oscar nomination for this. He has finally proved to audiences that he can undertake and perfect dramatic acting. There is not one specific scene in the film that showcases this talent rather his performance as a whole. He is John Du Pont. They plaster on him a fake nose, make him look much older, and voilà you have Steve Carell looking like Du Pont. Next, he masterfully had to act like Du Pont. His struggle to prove to his mother he can do something and his sickening obsession with Mark and Dave give us that eerie feeling he is up to no good. Steve Carell freaked me out in this film. If it were up to me, I would absolutely give him a nomination and probably the Oscar.

Mr Turner (2014)

We always knew that "Mr Turner" would not be a conventional costume picture any more than it would be a conventional biopic. It is, after all, a Mike Leigh film and Mr Leigh doesn't do 'conventional'. Of course, he normally concerns himself with the vagaries of contemporary middle-class culture, poking fun at, and then finding the bleeding heart of, the little people who inhabit his very personal world. (Leigh is, perhaps, the only writer/director who can crack us up and break our hearts simultaneously).

"Mr Turner" isn't the first time he has looked to the past nor to real historical figures for his material. With "Topsy-Turvy" he created the world of Gilbert and Sullivan and 'The Mikado'. As musical biopics go it is, perhaps, unique. Now with "Mr Turner" he takes us deep into the life of William Turner, arguably the first great 'modern' painter and almost certainly the greatest of all English painters, and in doing so has created the least stuffy costume picture I have ever seen. Of the several masterpieces Leigh has given us "Mr Turner" may be the finest.