Cannes Roundup

So you'll notice we haven't been blogging about Cannes over the last week because, well, we didn't get to go and we're just a little bitter about it. Now that it's all wrapped up over there, we can bring you the bitesize reflection rather that the blow by blow account.

So the Palme D'Or went to Entre Le Murs (The Class) a docudrama about a the drama that unfolds over the course of a school year in one class. Sounds a lot like Etre Et Avoir which was a bare bones documentary about the same thing. This was a surprise win in as much as anything is at the ever-unpredictable Cannes. It hadn't been toted as a winner by the press during the festival.

Benicio Del Toro won best actor for Steven Soderbergh's Che making him an early front runner for the Oscars next year. The film (or rather 2 films, shown in one sitting) was generally well received but did split some critics who, one can only assume, had sore arses after the 4 and a half hour running time. Apparently the film paints a fairly complimentary picture of the controversial revolutionary so get ready for a flak-fest upon its U.S. release.

Click here for the rest of the long list of winners. We won't go through them all. Ultimately the awards are secondary to the buzz and hype that is generated around certain films in Cannes. Of those, Clint Eastwood's latest The Changeling seems to have been popular and while not a realistic Cannes contender, it does have the ingredients of an Oscar favourite.

Waltz with Bashir seems to have been a huge hit and it does look striking (see the trailer we posted here a while back). The South Amreican invasion was notable and Walter Salles and Fernando Mareilles's new films were a bit more divisive but still garnered some ecstatic reviews.

The Italian realist mafia film Gomorrah was another buzz movie that shows the dark and unglamourous side of organised crime. Charlie Kaufmann's directorial debut is apparently Lynchian in it's sheer 'what the fuck-is-going-on' free-form style. This is being called his weirdest film yet (which is saying something) and some branded it impenetrable nonsense, while others declared it a near masterpiece. We'll have to see for ourselves.

The sole Irish interest came from the film Hunger. Though this is essentially a British movie made by Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen (insert Great Escape or 'no not that one' joke here), it is about what the British call 'The Irish Question' (like we just needed a really clever nerd to come up with the answer) and more specifically the hunger strikes. It was also written by Enda Walsh, the hugely talented Irish playwright behind Disco Pigs. There was hype and buzz around this one and it even picked up the Camera D'Or for best directorial debut. Expect it to get a decent release now, which can only be good news.

In other good news, all the wankers who got to go to the festival are home to the wind and rain now.