Beyond the Multiplex

The Cannes Film Festival jury doles out the awards, in a bracing ceremony as notable for who didn't win as who did.

By Andrew O'Hehir

Read more: Andrew O'Hehir, Cannes, Movies, Movie Reviews, Arts & Entertainment, Reviews, Beyond the Multiplex

Photo: Andrea Raso Source: LaPresse City

Cristian Mungiu receives his award for "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" at the Cannes winners photocall during the 60th Cannes International Film Festival 2007.

May 28, 2007 | CANNES, France -- Bienvenue à Cannes, where Romanian cinema rules the earth. I know nothing about Romanian moviegoing habits, and damn little about the country at all. (How did a Romance language get stuck in Eastern Europe, anyway?) But I feel pretty confident that Romanian films are feeling more love in this French resort town right now than they feel in Bucharest.

On the closing weekend of the 60th Festival de Cannes, the limpid, near-summer heat of the French Riviera was washed away by a rainstorm, which was followed by that whipping, punishing Mediterranean wind known here as "le Mistral." Apparently it swept the streets of Cannes clean, like the New York of Travis Bickle's dreams. On Sunday the movie stars had disappeared and the day was breezy and brilliant, with whitecaps chopping crisply across the Baie des Anges. When the jury handed out its prizes, later that night, the results were nearly as bracing.

It was really no surprise that English director Stephen Frears and his jury awarded the Palme d'Or, Cannes' biggest prize, to Cristian Mungiu's film "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days." That is, the only surprise is that the jury hewed pretty close to conventional wisdom. Mungiu's picture -- which tracks the grim adventures of two girls in Ceausescu-era Romania, one of whom seeks an illegal abortion -- is an outstanding work of low-budget craftsmanship, with exactly the kind of aesthetic rigor and moral seriousness that appeals to festival audiences. (IFC First Take will release the film later this year in the United States, both in theaters and via pay-per-view cable.)

Officially, it's just a coincidence that the grand prize in the Certain Regard category, generally reserved for younger directors or left-field projects, went to another Romanian, Cristian Nemescu, for his film "California Dreamin'." And that last year's Caméra d'Or (Cannes' best-first-film award) went to Corneliu Porimboiu's comedy "12:08 East of Bucharest," and that Cristi Puiu's 2005 film "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu," which launched Romania's international cinema moment, began at Cannes that year and conquered festivals all over the world. If somebody in Romania does a remake of "Footloose," will it be at Cannes in 2008?

That's facetious, of course; the whole point of this new Romanian cinema, or whatever we should call it, is that it bears zero relationship to Hollywood filmmaking or the business model of the American entertainment megaliths. (Linguists, please: A useful Romanian phrase or two to throw around at film-world parties?) The air of earnest cinephilia around this year's Palmarès, the Oscar-like ceremony that precedes the closing-night film, was about 97 percent refreshing and only 3 percent precious. The evening ran virtually on schedule, and all the major awards went to resolutely noncommercial films.

There was much talk when the festival began about the heavily American flavor of this year's Cannes competition slate, which included David Fincher's "Zodiac," Joel and Ethan Coen's Cormac McCarthy adaptation "No Country for Old Men," James Gray's New York cop thriller "We Own the Night" and Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof" (formerly known as the second chapter of "Grindhouse"). But those guys all went away empty-handed. It would be overstating the case to call this jury's verdict anti-American; the jurors simply behaved as if mainstream American cinema did not exist.

If Cannes programmers wanted to throw a 60th birthday party that celebrated the festival's global reach, eclectic nature and loyalty to the values of art cinema, they succeeded, despite the fact that many of the films that premiered here from name-brand international directors were deemed disappointments. Consider this list of the major award winners: A French film made by an Iranian, and another made by an American. A Mexican film shot in an obscure German dialect. A German film made by the son of Turkish immigrants. A Japanese film whose director remains little known in Japan. A Russian actor who has spent most of his career doing underground theater in Moscow, and a Korean actress who had hardly left her country before coming here. Two Romanian films, and exactly one film made in the U.S. by an American director.

Next page: The return of Schnabel's bad-boy routine