Cannes’ Award Winners and Telluride 2019 / The Critical Final from Cannes

Welcome to today’s post Cannes MTFB...


CANNES AWARD WINNERS AND TELLURIDE 2019

The 72nd iteration of the Cannes Film Festival is in the books with the announcement of award winners Saturday night.  Taking the 2019 Palme d’Or was Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite.  The film was critically heralded and was considered among the favorites to win the top prize as the festival moved along.

Other Cannes awards presented by the competition jury led by this year’s president- Alejandro Inarritu- included:

Grand Prix: Atlantics
Jury Prize (tie): Les Miserables and Bacurau
Best Actress: Emily Beecham/Little Joe
Best Actor: Antonio Banderas/Pain and Glory
Best Director: Jean Pierre Dardennes and Luc Dardennes/Young Ahmed
Best Screenplay: Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Special Mention: It Must Be Heaven
Camera d’Or: Our Mothers

Honestly, my guess had been that Pedro Almodovar’s Pain and Glory would win the Palme.  Also, no glory for Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in...Hollywood which was a bit surprising given that it was probably the "biggest" film in the competition and also it was also the 25th anniversary of Pulp Fiction winning the Palme.

Also, a shutout for Terrence Malick’s generally well-received A Hidden Life was a bit of a surprise.
So, what are the TFF #46 chances for some of the winners?

First a reminder that winning the Palme itself is no guarantee that a film lands at Telluride.  Another reminder is that Cannes and T-ride share, on average, 7-8 titles each year but those titles can and do come from across all of the different sections of the Cannes fest.

Last year’s Palme winner, Shoplifters did play TFF but before that you have to go back to 2013’s Blue Is the Warmest Colour.

Other recent Palme winners that have played Telluride include:

Amour in 2012
The White Ribbon in 2009
4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days in 2007
The Child in 2005
That's six Palme winners in the last 14 years...

So, history suggests that Parasite’s Palme win doesn’t mean a TFF berth and seems to imply it may be less likely to be programmed.  Additionally, as Bong hasn’t been a presence at T-ride before, that also diminished its chances.

Boosting its TFF profile, however, is its very positive critical reception (see below) and its U.S. distributor: Neon which has been a recent presence at TFF with Border and The Biggest Little Farm screening last year.

I also feel like the directing win for the Dardennes (and their past with T-ride) probably boosted the chances for Young Ahmed.  I suspect Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Les Miserables might have a Telluride future as a result of the attention they received in France.

From other sections perhaps The Lighthouse and The Climb will make the Telluride program.

Here are some links to coverage of this year’s Cannes winners:

Variety

The Hollywood Reporter

Indiewire

The Playlist



THE CRITICAL FINAL FROM CANNES

As I have done for many years now, I've been tracking the critical consensus for films screening as a part of the 72nd Cannes Film Fest through the work of Reini Urban who compiles an incredibly exhaustive list of the critics' takes on films that play throughout every part of the of the French fest.

Now that Cannes #72 is in the rear view mirror here is some of what his work reveals...

First that the top critics' choice won the top prize (and I don't recall that happening before).  Bong Joon-ho's Parasite won the Palme this past weekend and lead all films in all sections in the combined critical summation with an 8.77 rating on a scale of 10 (with over 400 reviews counted).  That's mind blowing.

The runner-up?  Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse which won the FIPRESCI critics' award.  It had an 8.63 combined raring.  Third was Pedro Almodovar's Pain and Glory.

The complete listing of Urban's critical compilation is linked here.



I'll have more on Thursday.

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