Cannes hangover.

By Alison Willmore on 05/31/2006

At Salon, Andrew O'Hehir churns out what's totally our favorite Cannes wrap-up.

Perhaps the only thing more startling than Loach's Palme d'Or was the list of films that went totally unmentioned, either during the Palmarès or the subsequent press conference. The jury members had plenty of opportunity to discuss favorite films they couldn't quite find awards for; we heard about how much Tim Roth loved Chinese director Lou Ye's "Summer Palace," and how much Samuel L. Jackson was affected by Giacomo Rizzo's performance as a cynical loan shark in Paolo Sorrentino's "The Family Friend." Everybody waxed eloquent about Portuguese director Pedro Costa's "Colossal Youth," a docudrama set amid the African immigrant population of Lisbon.

But nobody brought up Israel Adrián Caetano's political thriller "Buenos Aires 1977" or Guillermo del Toro's fairytale of fascist Spain, "Pan's Labyrinth," even though those, along with "Volver," were probably the most buzzed-over pictures among the press corps. If the atmosphere at the press conference wasn't exactly hostile -- after all, this was a roomful of entertainment reporters facing a gaggle of celebrities -- it possessed some other, less definite, quality. Mystification, maybe. It was as if the questions we really wanted to ask Wong, Roth, Jackson, Leconte, Suleiman, Monica Bellucci and company were: Why have you ignored our expert advice? Or: How dare you remind us that all our hard-earned gossip and punditry don't mean anything?

The Village Voice has a post-Cannes package that includes J. Hoberman summing up "Marie Antoinette" and others and then covers the prizes; Mark Peranson catching up with a "bruised but not beaten Richard Kelly" and discussing the edits he'll have to make to "Southland Tales" (and either borrowing from Mike D'Angelo or coming up independently with the headline "Goodbye, 'Southland,' Goodbye," and aren't we all just so fucking clever?); and Peranson also chatting with Richard Linklater about his (wanly received) Cannes double punch.

Meanwhile, in British tabloid The Sun, columnist Harry MacAdam has called "The Wind That Shakes The Barley" the "most pro-IRA film ever," with a plot "designed to drag the reputation of our nation through the mud." At BBC News, Loach responds:

"Nonsense," he told BBC Breakfast. "We could have shown things that were much worse than are actually in the film."

He also said accusations that his film could be seen as a recruiting tract for the Irish Republican Army were "a cheap shot" and "barely worth answering".

At the Guardian, Stephen Moss ponders the possible meanings of the director's triumphant clenched fist when accepting the Palme d'Or, while at the Independent, Cahal Milmo reconsiders "Cinema's own Red Ken."

And at his blog, Anthony Kaufman puts his Cannes viewing in order (that would be best to worst).

+ Beyond the Multiplex: Cannes (Salon)
+ Before the Revolution (Village Voice)
+ Golden Loach (Village Voice)
+ Goodbye Southland, Goodbye (Village Voice)
+ Double Vision (Village Voice)
+ Loach rebuts 'anti-British' claim (BBC)
+ What's in a clenched fist? (Guardian)
+ Ken Loach: Cinema's own Red Ken (Independent)
+ Cannes 2006: From Best to Worst (Anthony Kaufman's blog)