J. Sperling Reich offers an up-close look at the Cannes jury's awarding of the Palme d'Or to a groundbreaking drama.
After 12 days that served to highlight the major aesthetic, narrative and commercial differences between modern American and European movies, Blue Is the Warmest Color, an entry from the latter, took home the top prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival.
Rather than awarding the Palme d'Or solely to the movie's French-Tunisian filmmaker, Abdellatif Kechiche, the festival jury headed by Steven Spielberg took the unusual, and possibly unprecedented, step of including the film's two lead actresses, Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux, when handing out the trophy. To anyone who has seen Blue Is the Warmest Color, such a move will make perfect sense.
Based on Julie Maroh's graphic novel of the same name, the film tells the story of Adele (Exarchopoulos), who at the outset of the story is a 17-year-old high-school student struggling with her own sexuality as she enters adulthood. Adele soon meets and falls in love with Emma (Seydoux), a blue-haired art student just a few years older. Over the course of three years, their intense love affair promots a sexual awakening and understanding in Adele that ultimately leads to her own self-awareness and heartbreak.
Kechiche has the audience spend nearly three hours with his characters, often framing Exarchopoulos and Seydoux in tight shots where all of the emotion in a scene must be captured through facial expressions. Based on the extended and graphic sex scenes, which in no way could have been simulated, there was no room or escape for either of the actresses, who had to fully commit to their roles. One journalist I spoke with from Lille, France, where the film was shot, said that she witnessed Seydoux mentally deteriorate during the course of production as she tried to please the demanding and obstreperous Kechiche.
The performances are so powerful, Exarchopoulos and Seydoux seemed a lock to share the Best Actress award at the festival. That's why when Bérénice Bejo (best known for her Academy Award-nominated turn in The Artist) was announced as the winner for her role in Asghar Farhadi's The Past, everyone, including the actress, seemed surprised.
The jury's decision to name Exarchopoulos and Seydoux in awarding the Palme d'Or may dampen the praise for Kechiche as the auteur behind Blue Is the Warmest Color, but, as Spielberg pointed out in Cannes after the awards ceremony, it was absolutely necessary. "It was such an obvious important inclusion because of the synergy created by the maître en scène and the characters of Adele and Emma," the jury president said. "If the casting had been three-percent wrong, it wouldn't have worked like it did for us. Had anything been just a little bit left of center, it wouldn't have had such a positive resolution. It was the perfect choice between those two actresses and this incredible, very sensitive and observant filmmaker. We really felt, all of us, that we needed to invite all three artists up on the stage at the same time."
Which is precisely what the jury did. The jury also included the likes of actress Nicole Kidman, actors Daniel Auteuil and Christoph Waltz and filmmakers Ang Lee and Cristian Mungiu. Though none would talk specifically to the decision-making behind specific awards, the selection of Blue Is the Warmest Color for the Palme d'Or and the inclusion of the actresses in the prize seemed to be unanimous.
That a film most in Cannes referred to as "the three-hour lesbian movie" should win the top prize during a year in in which gay marriage is being debated all over the world and legalized in France in the midst of the festival is merely coincidence, according to Spielberg. Rewarding Blue Is the Warmest Color with the Palme had nothing to do with what the press has dubbed a "pink revolution."
"Politics was not a companion in our decisions and in our discussions about any of the films. Politics was not in the room with us," Spielberg insisted.
Romanian filmmaker Mungiu agreed. "We were trying to give awards for cinema and the stories and not for any kind of political statements. We decided the Palme d'Or because we saw a lot of truth there [in the film]. We never talked too much about the subject, if it's important that it's a gay film or not. It's not a gay film at the end. The cinema is wonderful in the film. HIs understanding of cinema. His desire to go beyond the regular limits of cinema and to test the limits of what a filmmaker can do."
And does a film featuring extensive nudity and graphic sex have any chance of being seen in certain parts of the world, including America? Spielberg said the jury didn't even take such issues into consideration. "For me, the film is a great love story," he observed. "It's a great love story that made all of us feel like we were privileged, not embarrassed, to be flies on the wall, privileged to have been invited to see this story of deep love and deep heartbreak evolve from the beginning in a wonderful way where time stood still because the director didn't put any constraints on the narrative, on the storytelling. He let the scenes play as long as scenes play in real life. We were absolutely spellbound by the brilliance of the performances of those two amazing young actresses. We didn't think about how it was going to play. We were just really happy that somebody had the courage to tell the story the way they told it."
Spielberg and company didn't completely ignore films from the Americas and Asia when selecting award winners. The Coen Brothers' widely praised Inside Llewyn Davis, set amidst the world of the emerging New York folk-music scene in the 1960s, was honored with the Grand Prix, generally considered to be the runner-up prize in Cannes. The Prix du Jury went to the switched-at-birth drama Like Father, Like Son from Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda. Best director was given to Amat Escalante of Mexico for Heli, which was a bit of a shocker given that the film seemed mostly derided in Cannes. The ambitious A Touch of Sin by Chinese director Jia Zhangke was tapped for best screenplay.
Best Actor, which many festivalgoers had predicted would go to Michael Douglas for his portrayal of Liberace in Steven Soderbergh's Behind the Candelabra, went instead to Bruce Dern for his noteworthy performance in Alexander Payne's black-and-white drama Nebraska. The film features Dern as an aging alcoholic who winds up on a road trip through his old hometown with his grouchy son. Don't be surprised if Dern's name is mentioned more frequently as next year's Oscars roll around.
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