And the “Grands gagnants” (“Big Winners”) of the 2011 Cannes Festival Are…
Posted on 22. May, 2011 by Hichem in Culture, Film, News, People, Vocabulary
Twenty prétendants (pretenders) to la Palme d’or were nervously holding their souffle (breath) just a few hours ago, when the ceremony of the 64e édition of le Festival de Cannes debuted… Unlike the previous years, the competition proved to be particularly fierce, but the members of the jury, headed by Robert De Niro, were able to reach a verdict: Ils ont finalement tranché (they finally came to a decision.”)
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Palme d’or for “L’Arbre de vie” (“The Tree of Life”)
* Not une surprise hallucinante (a mind-blowing surprise), the Palme d’or went to “L’Arbre de vie” (“The Tree of Life”), starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn.
Bill Pohlad, one of the movie producteurs (producers), went on stage to accept le prix (the prize) instead of the nicknamed “l’homme invisible” (“the invisible man”), Terrence Malick, the 67 year-old notoriously “camera shy” director, who hasn’t had a photo taken of him, we’re told, in nearly trente ans (thirty years.)
Terrence Malick is based in Waco, Texas, and was for a time an MIT philosophy professor, noted for his expertise of, and even affinity with, the rather “unsavory” Weltanschauung of Martin Heidegger, the infamous German philosophe with unequivocal Nazi affiliations…
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Jean Dujardin, who left the jury “speechless”, so to speak, in the film muet (silent movie) “The Artist”, here resorting to the fine art of la psychologie inversée (reverse psychology) to promote a movie of his—”Sacré Hubert, you are so French!“
And speaking of les nazis, the recipient of le Prix de la meilleure interprétation masculine (The Award of the Best Male Performance) turned out to be none other than Jean Dujardin, the French comedian who gunned down countless Nazis sur le grand écran (on the big screen) as a spoof spy character named “OSS 117.“ He received this year’s Cannes award for his role as a struggling star of the cinéma muet (silent film), in the movie “The Artist“, purposefully shot in noir et blanc (black and white.)
Kirsten Dunst won the Prix d’interprétation féminine (Best Actress Award) for the Sci-Fi drama “Melancholia”, co-starring Charlotte Gainsbourg (Serge’s daughter)
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Maïwenn Le Besco, perhaps better remembered as the blue freaky alien “Diva Plavalaguna” (but who could really tell?) of Luc Besson’s “Fifth Element”, wins in 2011
Unfortunately for her, Luc Besson, who met her when she was only 15 -yes, 15- and married her a year later -yes, a year later- “l’a plaquée” (“ditched her”) soon afterwards, preferring his new found “femme écarlate“, the “read-headed star” of the “Fifth Element”, Milla Jovovich, whom he married for two years after that
*The Prix du Jury went to “Polisse” of Maïwenn Le Besco, who received the prize les larmes aux yeux (with tears in her eyes.) Her daughter, she told the audience, had already admonished her: “T’es pas capable de chercher un prix sans pleurer” (“You can’t go get a prize without crying”)
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“Il était une fois en Anatolie” (“Once Upon a Time in Anatolia”)
“Le gamin au vélo” (“The Kid with a Bike”), with the deceptively mal nommée (misnamed) actress “Cécile de France”—Indeed, she’s not French, she’s actually Belgian (like the directors of the winning movie)
* “Once upon a Time in Anatolia” of the Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan and “Le gamin au vélo” (“The Kid with a Bike”) of the two Belgian frères (brothers) Dardenne received the Grands Prix “ex-aequo” (“tied”, that is.)
