Titane has won Cannes Festival’s top prize.
Gatekeepers News reports that Titane has made French director Julia Ducournau the second female filmmaker to scoop the Palme d’Or prize in the festival’s 74-year history.
Titane, a wildly imaginative film about a serial killer who has sex with a car, has won the top honour at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday.
While the violent film split critics, some praised its originality, others were put off by its frantic and messy approach. It was described as a “body horror” movie and based around a character with a titanium plate in her head, the film impressed with its energy.
Critics at the BBC broadcaster said, “Ducournau’s beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy is a nightmarish yet mischievously comic barrage of sex, violence, lurid lighting, and pounding music.
“It’s also impossible to predict where it’s going to go next.”
The jury president Spike Lee mistakenly announced Titane’s win at the top of the closing ceremony, unleashing a few moments of confusion.
Ducournau, however, held back to accept the award until the formal announcement at the end of the ceremony.
The early hint was unable to diminish her emotional response while she receives the award.
She said, “I’m sorry, I keep shaking my head. Is this real?”
Ducournau appreciated the jury for “letting the monsters in” and afterward, acknowledged her place in history to reporters. She, however, noted that her win “can’t be boiled down to just being a woman.”
While admitting that more women will come after her, she said. “There will be a third, there will be a fourth, there will be a fifth.”
Ducournau’s win comes after Jane Campion who was the only previous female filmmaker to win Cannes’ top honour — among the most prestigious awards in cinema. Campion won the award for her film – The Piano in 1993.
In recent years, women have spoken out about gender parity at Cannes. In 2018, 82 women — including Agnes Varda, Cate Blanchett, and Salma Hayek — protested against gender inequality on the Cannes red carpet. Their number signified the total number of movies by female directors selected to compete for the Palme d’Or, which was 82 against the 1,645 films directed by men.
This year, four out of 24 films up for the Palme were directed by women.
The Cannes Film Festival is the world’s biggest and returned to the French Riviera this year after a 2020 recess due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 2021 event drew the attention of stars such as Matt Damon and Sharon Stone to the red carpet, with moviemakers and actors delighted to be back though attendance was not as huge as previous years.
Other big winners at the 2021 awards included Leos Carax, who won the best director for Annette, a musical about two artists caught in a twisted love affair.
The Compartment No 6 by Juho Kuosmanen, about a woman who embarks on a train journey across Russia, and A Hero by Iran’s Asghar Farhadi, which features a prisoner faced with a moral quandary shared the second-prize Grand Prix.
Meanwhile, Hamaguchi Ryusuke and Takamusa Oe of Japan won the best screenplay for their tale of heartbreak and loss Drive My Car.
It was also a memorable night for the Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve, who was previously unknown. Reinsve was rocketed to stardom by her role in Joachim Trier’s Worst Person in the World. The film is a modern-day romantic comedy that was a big hit with critics.
Caleb Landry Jones, who starred in the Australian film Nitram, won the Best Actor award.
Ahead’s Knee by Israel’s Nadav Lapid and Memoria by Thailand’s Apichatpong Weerasethakul were both runner-ups for the Jury Prize of the best movie.
