Elephants On The Cannes Floor

"Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're gonnaget." Maybe that's what Forrest Gump would have said had he been present at the 56th annual Cannes FilmFestival. Primarily because Gus Van Sant's Elephanttook home the Palme d'Or and the much touted, Nicole Kidman starrer Dogvillewas left high and dry with no awards. 

Elephant, looselybased on the 1999 shootings at the Columbine High School in suburban Denver is"a musing about high school violence, about the elephant in the living room no one wants tomention", in the words of Van Sant. Shot in documentary style, the film had no professional actors, and while much appreciated, it wasn't thought to be in the race asMichael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, a documentary on the same theme had won a special anniversary prize at Cannes last year.

Both Dogville and Elephant had been panned by American criticsand charged with being anti-American. The jury, with Meg Ryan and Steven Soderbergh on it, did not presumablyhave any such problems.

Twenty four-year-old Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf'sAt Five In The Afternoon, a film about post-Taliban Afghanistangot the Jury Prize. One of the youngest directors to win the award, Samiracarried on Michael Moore's Bush-bashing tradition after getting the award. "My film is about an Afghan woman who has no power but who wants to be aPresident one day," she said. "I don't want to be a President myself if the best-knownPresident in the world is George Bush."

The Grand Jury Prize went to Distant, a Turkish film by Nuri Bilge Ceylan that explores the emptiness of life and loneliness in the city.Its male leads, Muzaffer Ozdemir and late Mehmet Emin Toprak , shared the Best Actor award.Ceylan dedicated the prize to his cousin Toprak, who married only weeks before he waskilled in a car crash, and had planned to honeymoon in Cannes. 

The Best Actress went toMarie-Josee Croze for her role as a heroin junkie who helps a dying man cope with his pain in The Barbarian Invasions. The French-language film also picked up the prize for Best Screenplay.

But the critics were their usual self: the selection of movies wasn't up to the mark, they alleged. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian was scathing: "The lineup of films at Cannes this year was so dismal that cynics will say that the 2003 Palme d'Or is devalued currency." 

The crowd behaviour seemed to vindicate the critics, at least when it came to American director Vincent Gallo's Brown Bunny, another movie withan animal in its name. Its graphic scenes with Chloe Sevigny left many in theaudience and most of the critics livid. That the camera focuses on Gallo's profile for minutes at a time as he drivesacross America in the movie didn't help matters either. But Gallo remained defiant: "I know you are calling it narcissistic behind my back. But I am not ... I am only interested in things I know, which are things about myself ... That's why I don't direct other people's scripts."

India had its share of the spotlight as it figured in the fevered industry negotiations. The festival saw bidding wars for the international rightsof Gurinder Chadha's Bride And Prejudice: The Bollywood Musical,starring Palme d'Or jury member Aishwarya Rai.  The Indian film industry is planning to make Goa the permanentlocation for the India International Film Festival. So, the next time you hearViva Il Cinema, it might just be tagging along with Chalo Goa.