The Cannes showdown between the world s greatest film directors comes to a close Sunday with a bleak prison drama tipped to let France take the top prize for the second year in a row.
The notoriously extravagant festival toned down the glitz for this year s crisis-era bash and was lighter than usual in star power, but it still saw celebs like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie sashay up the fabled red carpet.
Billed from the start by movie magazine Variety as the biggest heavyweight auteur smackdown in recent years, the 12-day movie marathon mostly lived up to expectations.
And scandal came in the form of Lars Von Trier s Antichrist, which provoked fainting, gasps and boos and on Saturday received an anti-prize that the festival director angrily denounced as an attempt at censorship.
Four previous Palme d Or winners – Quentin Tarantino, Jane Campion, Von Trier and Ken Loach – squared up against the likes of Pedro Almodovar, Michael Haneke, Johnnie To and Park Chan-wook for Sunday s award.
Penelope Cruz – a hot tip for best actress award for her role in Almodovar s flick – was among the A-list celebrities at the annual French Riviera bash, who also included Martin Scorsese and Jim Carrey.
As the jury headed by French actress Isabelle Huppert deliberated on which of the 20 films will scoop the Palme at the gala awards ceremony later Sunday, a French jail film was among critics favorites.
Jacques Audiard s A Prophet, about a prison stint for an illiterate French-Arab youth which turns into an education in crime, instantly takes its place alongside the greats of the crime movie genre, said The Times.
A win for Audiard would be a triumph for French cinema, a year after high-school drama The Class became the first homegrown movie in more than two decades to pick up the Palme.
Critics were citing as another possible winner the Austrian director Haneke s The White Ribbon, a chilling black-and-white study of malice in a German village on the eve of World War I.
New Zealander Campion s Bright Star ode to the poet John Keats was also being touted, as was Broken Embraces by Almodovar, which recounts a tragic love affair between a young actress and an ageing director.
Loach s comedy Looking for Eric – starring soccer legend Eric Cantona – also impressed critics, while French reviewers had high hopes for veteran director Alain Resnais for Wild Grass.
Tarantino s march up the red carpet – flanked by Pitt and his wife Jolie – for the world premiere of his long-awaited Inglourious Basterds on Wednesday provided the biggest celebrity buzz of the 12-day festival.
But the director of Pulp Fiction divided critics with his war story of Jewish-American soldiers on a mission to murder Nazis.
The festival opened on May 13 with Disney-Pixar s 3D cartoon caper Up – screening out of competition – but it quickly delivered movies not at all suitable for kids.
Blood and guts were aplenty in Tarantino s work, while Von Trier s gothic thriller dished up the gore in his latest work which provoked much hostility at a press screening early in the week.
Antichrist sparked further controversy on Saturday when an Ecumenical Jury, which every year hands out a minor prize here, was so shocked it felt the need to award a special anti-prize for alleged misogyny in the film that shows a clitoris sliced off with rusty scissors.
Festival director Thierry Fremaux reacted furiously, calling it a ridiculous decision that borders on a call for censorship.
Blood also flowed freely in a tale of a Korean vampire priest in Park Chan-wook s Thirst.
French director Gaspar Noe s Enter The Void – set in Tokyo – sparked controversy and a few walk-outs with its explicit sex and a close-up of an aborted fetus.
Palestinian director Elia Suleiman unveiled The Time that Remains, a bitter-sweet farce on his family history and the daily life of Israeli Arabs.
And Ang Lee brought sex and drugs and rock n roll to the festival with Taking Woodstock. The film on the iconic music festival of 1969 was well received but judged to be a low-wattage offer from the Oscar-winning director.
The late Heath Ledger s unfinished stint in Terry Gilliam s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus was screened out of competition, while Spider-Man director Sam Raimi returned to horror with his new flick Drag Me To Hell.
