Critics lauded the Cannes film festival jury for awarding director Michael Haneke’s ‘Love’ (‘Amour’) the coveted Palme d’Or for best picture, justifying its status as favourite going into the awards ceremony. Slow and understated, ‘Love’s portrayal of an elderly French couple facing the last stages of life had audiences in tears and critics rushing off to write five-star reviews. Conspicuous in their absence from the awards ceremony that wrapped up the 12-day festival were US productions, five of which made it into the main competition of 22 entries. Not even the acting talent of A-listers Nicole Kidman and Brad Pitt, alongside hot emerging Hollywood names like Jessica Chastain, Tom Hardy and Zac Efron, was enough to win over the judges. Cannes critics were cool towards most US productions, although New Zealand-born Andrew Dominik’s ‘Killing Them Softly’, starring Pitt as a mob enforcer in a recession-hit US city, was reasonably popular. The other big loser on the night was French-born director Leos Carax’s ‘Holy Motors’, an audacious and surreal film about a man, played by Denis Lavant, who adopts 10 alternative lives in a single day. In addition to Haneke, two other former Cannes winners were awarded-Briton Ken Loach won third prize for Scottish comedy caper ‘The Angels’ Share’ and Romanian Cristian Mungiu won best screenplay for exorcism drama ‘Beyond the Hills’. The movie’s stars, Cristina Flutur and Cosmina Stratan, were surprise dual winners of the actress prize, while Danish star Mads Mikkelsen scooped the best actor prize for his portrayal of a man wrongly accused of child abuse in the harrowing drama ‘The Hunt’.
