Cannes( France) – The Cannes jury, which chooses the winners of the Palme d’Or and other awards, is led this year by Vincent Lindon, whose limber performance in last year’s Palme winner, “Titane,” was a highlight of that film.
The other juries: Asghar Farhadi, who was here last year as the director of “A Hero”; the British actress and director Rebecca Hall; Ladj Ly, who shared the jury prize (kind of a third-place, honourable-mention award) in 2019 for directing a film called “Les Misérables”; the American director Jeff Nichols; the Indian actress Deepika Padukone; Noomi Rapace, the star of the Swedish “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”; Joachim Trier, who directed last year’s crowd-pleaser “The Worst Person in the World”; and the Italian actress and director Jasmine Trinca.
Did David Cronenberg, the jury president in 1999, force his colleagues to bestow a unanimous Palme on “Rosetta,” which had screened so late in the festival that many critics didn’t even see it? (Cronenberg has denied these rumours, and in 2014, he agreed with Bilge Ebiri of Vulture that the Ardennes” subsequent career — they went on to win the Palme again in 2005 for “L’Enfant” — had shown that choice to be a good one.)
As Cronenberg pointed out in that interview, part of the problem is that journalists create a horse race narrative as the festival unfolds, predicting the winners, often wrongly. And the festival treats the jury members as the human equivalent of an armoured truck. Good luck getting an interview with them.
Even when the jury explains its choices, as in the closing news conference, its member doesn’t usually speak out of school. There are exceptions: William Goldman, in his book” “Hype & Glor”,” described what went on behind the scenes when he served on the 1988 jury.
Another peculiar facet of Cannes juries — chosen by the festival, not the jury president — is that nobody seems to care too much about the appearance of conflicts of interest.
Sean Penn judged ClinEastwood’s'” “Change” after Eastwood had directed him to an Oscar in” “Mystic River”.” Isabelle Huppert gave the Palme” “The White Ribbon”,” directed by Michael Haneke, who had worked with the hero” “The Piano Teacher” an” “Time of the Wolf”.” And Elle Fanning was a junior in 2019, judging” “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood”,” in which Dakota FanningElle’s sister has a supporting role. (The movie left empty-handed.)
The opening night ceremony is always an awkward mixture of glamour, sincerity, frivolity and accordion music — and so far, tonight is delivering as promised. But at roughly a length, it’s also pretty painless.