Apichatpong’s new film shares jury prize at Cannes film festival

A film by famous Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul was co-winner of the Jury Prize, third prize in the Best Film category, at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday.

Apichatpong Memory shared the prize with Ahed’s knee by Israeli Nadav Lapid.

The Thai filmmaker won the first prize, the Palme d’Or, in 2010 with Uncle Boonmee who can remember his past lives.

Memory is his first feature film in over a decade and his first shoot outside of Thailand.

It is also his first with an internationally recognizable star in Oscar-winning British actor Tilda Swinton.

Shock-fest Titanium won the top prize at Cannes on Saturday, revealed early at the closing ceremony in an embarrassing error by jury chairman Spike Lee.

French director Julie Ducournau is just the second woman to win the award, for a film that has been one of the craziest, sexy and most violent to ever screen at the Cannes film festival.

“This is the first movie where a Cadillac got a woman pregnant. It blew me away!” Lee said. “It’s genius and madness together.”

Titanium tells the story of a woman who has sex in cars and kills carefree, with brutal scenes that had many moviegoers shielding their eyes on opening night.

Spike Lee jumped on the ad

Lee, the first black man to head the jury, read the winner at the very start of the awards ceremony, rather than presenting the evening’s top prize for best actor.

After an awkward hiatus and regrouping, the Best Actor award went to American actor Caleb Landry Jones for his chilling performance in Nitrame on Australia’s worst mass shooting.

Making a film about the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, in which 35 people died, drew heavy criticism of director Justin Kurzel in Australia.

But the critics were conquered during the Cannes premiere, Variety calling it a “devastating study on atrocity” which shows “a discreet respect for the dignity of the victims”.

It was also a huge night for the hitherto unknown Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve, who rose to fame thanks to her role in The worst person in the world.

Her role as a young woman in her twenties in search of her identity and freaking out through relationships caused a stir and caught the 33-year-old completely off guard.

“Nobody saw me in anything,” she told AFP after the premiere. “The other day I woke up and threw up. And today I woke up and cried.”

When it finally came time to announce the Palme d’Or for real, Lee said, “I apologize for spoiling your mistake.”

But then he almost remade the presentation, starting to announce the winner rather than presenter Sharon Stone, how much Ducournau was laughing in the audience.

She broke down again during the official announcement and told the crowd: “This night has been perfect because it has been imperfect.

“Thanks for letting the monsters in.”

The only other woman to win the first prize was Jane Campion for “The Piano” in 1993.

Other winners of the evening included Leos Carax as Best Director for Annette, the flamboyant rock opera starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, and written by eccentric Los Angeles pop duo Sparks.

The second Grand Prix prize was split between Iranian two-time Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi (A hero) and the Finnish Juho Kuosmanen (Compartment n ° 6), while the best scenario went to the Japanese Hamaguchi Ryusuke and Takamasa Oe for Drive my car.

The race had been wide open this year, with critics pointing to many possible successors to Parasite, the South Korean hit that won the last Palme in 2019 before making history by triumphing at the Oscars.

Last year’s festival was canceled due to the pandemic.

Jury members watched a lot of sex this year, lesbian nuns in Paul Verhoeven’s salacious Benedetta to a pornstar back in a small town in Texas in Red rocket, which scored well with critics.

There were doubts at the start of the festival about the logistics of Covid, with some festival-goers disgusted by the sputum tests required every 48 hours, and criticism on social media of unmasked attendees in theaters during premieres.

The restrictions were tightened, the party reduced, and while the stars couldn’t quite help but hug and kiss each other on the red carpet, the festival appeared to be going without a major outbreak.

But there was still a lot of star power.

Swinton, who starred in Memory, was omnipresent on the red carpet, appearing in five films of the official selection.

But she was clear that her proudest moment was receiving the Palm Dog Award on behalf of her three spaniels, who appeared with her in the memory part 2.

“Honestly, this is the prize to be won,” she said at the dog show on Friday, as she tied the prize for the red collar around her neck.