Cannes Look-back: "The Class"

As we await the Cannes closing ceremony with all its awards glamour, let's take a look back at a previous Palme winner which has connections to a competition entry this year.  Here's John Guerin...

The Class, Laurent Cantet’s 2008 Palme d’Or winner, left me both exhausted and inspired. An autobiographical chronicle of François Bégaudeau’s first year of teaching French language and literature at an inner-city high school in Paris, The Class is an entirely self-contained glimpse into the daily challenges, joys, dead-ends, nuisances, amusements, and tensions in one especially spirited classroom. Although The Class is spatially confined to the school building, the currents of the outside world frequently wash ashore and brush up against Bégaudeau’s attempts to lead a discussion of the imperfect tense or find meaning in The Diary of Anne Frank or do just about anything constructive.

Cantet and Bégaudeau, with the assistance of co-writer and editor Robin Campillo (director of the underrated 2013 Eastern Boys and this year's Queer Palme winner 120 Beats per Minute), smartly avoid clichés of the Exasperated Teacher genre and opts instead for ambivalence over didacticism; there is no breakthrough in Bégaudeau’s attitude from frustration to satisfaction, there is seldom a transformation of student rancor into exuberance, there is no “saving” exactly, but the film doesn’t descend into cheap cynicism either... 

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Cannes Prizes Pt 1: Sidebar Glories and Oscar Dreams

Congratulations to this poodle below from The Meyerowitz Stories who won the coveted Palme Dog

The Palme Dog is not an official prize from the festival itself but it's always fun to see who wins. Past years winners have been the utterly adorable bulldog from Paterson (2016), the Maltese from Arabian Nights (2014), Uggie from The Artist (2011) and so on. The Palme Dog people also gave an honorary to the bomb sniffing dogs working Cannes to ensure the safety of the industry professionals attending. 

But wait that's not all. Two of the official Cannes juries also named their winners in advance of tomorrow's main closing night ceremony. Read about them after the jump...

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120 Reasons to be excited about '120 Beats Per Minute'

by Murtada

Of all the movies that unspooled at this year’s ongoing Cannes Film Festival, the one that got this writer most excited is 120 Battements Par Minute (120 Beats Per Minute). The movie has gotten almost unanimous praise and is expected by many to nab a major prize at the festival. Update: And it won the Queer Palme award as expected. 

Campillo (center) and his cast at Cannes

Let’s count the reasons to be excited about it after the jump. I lied, not 120 reasons, but here are 9... 

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Cannes Day 9-10: A Gentle Creature, In The Fade, L'Amant Double

Cannes wraps this weekend. Only one competition film, Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here, is yet to screen before the jury makes their decisions for the history books (er, what do we say now that the history books aren't how you look up history?). 

Previously: Day 1, Days 2-4, Days 5-6, and Days 7-8
Fashion: French Divas and Kidmanifestations 1, 2, and 3

So let's check in with the four latest premieres including a new erotic thriller from François Ozon, a revenge drama from Fatih Akin, and a buzzy Robert Pattinson performance...

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Missing Italy

by Eric Blume

We’re not far from crowning a new Palme d’Or winner at the Cannes Film Festival, and part of the fun and excitement for international film lovers is seeing which country takes the top prize.  The last ten years has marked three winners from France (The Class, Blue is the Warmest Color, and Dheepan), and in fact France has won ten times since 1955 when the prize has been named the Palme d’Or (there was a ten year gap in 1964-74 where the top prize had a different name, for those into these technicalities).   

Winning just under that number, with nine trophies, remains Italy.  Once a mighty force on the international film scene, Italy seems to have fewer major filmmakers emerging.  The last Italian film to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes was Nanni Moretti’s film The Son’s Room in 2001...   

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