26/05/2002 - Heart of Film resides here

Without a shadow of a doubt, this year´s winner of the Palme d´Or, The Pianist, was the most eagerly awaited film of the 55th edition of the Cannes.. This is a multi-layered film that covers issues like the Shoah, the rootless Roman Polanski´s origins and the power of the French film industry set against the tempestuous times at Canal Plus. The Pianist is above all a European, or rather, a French film, as the fast-thinking Polanski reminded us when he invited his two producers, Alain Sarde and Robert Benussa to join him on the stage, and included Pierre Lescure in his list of people to thank. This Palme is also a reward for a film industry with the guts to stand up to Hollywood, in terms of infrastructure and stories, an industry that embraces the Europe of the future: the East, as personified by «the hundreds of Polish extras and their infinite patience that made this film possible».
Not all the journalists present were Polanski´s supporters but he received a very warm round of applause from the audience in the Salle Lumière. In his opening speech, this year´s jury president David Lynch said, «It has been a privilege to work together with my colleagues. We agreed on all the awards and only wish there were more of them to give out». Perhaps to give visibility to important, but partly misunderstood films like My Mother´s Smile or Cronenberg´s Spider.
The Cannes result almost totally reflects Frémaux and Jacob´s original selection of titles and acknowledges the importance of a European film industry that stretches far beyond Polanski´s Palme. In some surprising ways. The award to Kaurismaki for his Man Without A Past was unanimously greeted. (The director was so laid back that he thanked «himself and then the jury» in under thirty seconds); as was the shared Grand Prix to a rank outsider like Kati Outinen, a melancholy blond whom Aki´s fans will recognise from The Little Match Girl.
Kati speaks in Finnish, a language almost nobody understands here and so the evening´s funniest running joke was lost on us. The joke was started by Michael Moore, the winner of the 55th Anniversary Award for his excellent Bowling for Columbine, a documentary that was sold almost the world over. Moore hails from Michigan but insisted on speaking the French he remembered from high school. Unfortunately, it was not exactly the French that most French people intend! Sharon Stone was so embarrassed that she wanted to crawl under a stone. Elia Suleiman, who followed Moore onto the stage, saved the day and got everyone laughing when he opened with, «Don´t worry, I promise I won´t speak French... or even Arab». Suleiman dedicated his award for Divine Intervention to his French producer, Humbert Balsan «for stopping me from censoring myself».
Paul Laverty who won the best screenplay award for his friend and colleague Ken Loach´s Sweet Sixteen spoke in Scottish about the age-old ties between Scotland and France. He joked about President Bush who had just arrived in Paris, and thanked Cannes for their resolute defence «of the diversity of European film» . Paul Thomas Anderson -who shared the best director award with Korea´s Im Kwon-Taek - managed a few words in French and said that every American director, including Woody Allen, knows that France is the best place to present a film. With Olivier Gourmet who plays the carpenter in the Dardennes´ Le Fils, and endures the camera focusing on the back of his neck for a full ninety minutes and still manages to put in a great performance, we finally heard some proper French as he dedicated the award to a seemingly interminable list of Belgian actors that nobody has ever heard of. Memories of Moretti last year. What a night!

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