What a surprise during the closing ceremony when Titanium was announced as the film that won the Golden Palme of the 74th Edition of the Cannes Film Festival. A real shock among film critics and festival -goers. Some had even started to shout: “But what did you do there Spike Lee?” ».
It is true that forecasts did not give Titanium by Julia Ducournau winning. A large part of criticisms and journalists rather thought of A hero by Asghar Farhadi. Others preferred Annette from Leos Carax …
It is also true that Spike Lee, president of the jury, had loved the film. He had said it himself during the press conference which followed the festival closing ceremony: “I saw a lot of films in my life, but it is the first film where a Cadillac puts a pregnant woman. I wonder what Cadillac it is?! But it seemed extraordinary to me, it was genius and madness at the same time. These two things together correspond well ”.
But it is not enough for Titanium wins this golden palm. There are also more objective factors.
We often forget that sometimes the choices of juries are the subject, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, of considerations other than the quality of the film, but also obey the aspirations of the moment, changes in mentalities, political events, public debates … Art in general, is in relation to the transformations of society. He accompanies them, sometimes he even precedes them. It is normal that he is therefore in line with what is going on.
The Cannes Film Festival is not isolated from these societal debates, and it has been the best representative of these developments in society, sometimes of politics, and often of life for decades. We can remember, for example, the 2013 golden palm, awarded to the film Adèle’s life of Abdellatif Kechiche, in full debate on marriage for all
Cannes 2021 – Palme d’Or for “Titane”
Currently, the whole world talks about gender, parity and equality. The Cannes Film Festival, like all the major film festivals in the world, had to make arrangements to try to achieve gender equality and try to put the spotlight on the greatest possible number of female hopes, all the more since until recent years, cinema festivals were unfair to them, their work and the proportion of their representation.
In May 2018, 82 professional cinema women had protested against sex inequality on the Red Cannes carpet. Their number was equal to the number of films of directors selected to compete for the Palme d’Or: 82 against 1,645 films made by men
During this same 2018 edition, the festival had also signed the Charter for inclusion and diversity in the cinema and the audiovisual of the 50/50 collective which had been launched by the association Le Second Regard and supported by 300 cinema personalities, both actors, as directors, producers, distributors and technicians.
As part of this charter, signatory festivals, were committed, among other things, to work for parity men women in their teams, including during the recruitment of volunteers, to improve the transparency of film selections and to publish statistics for this purpose.
We must not forget either the #MeToo movement, and the effects he had on the international artistic community, forcing it to respect ethics and imposing conditions of processing between the sexes in a way that ensures equality between them and to prevent one from predominant in any case on the other. The #MeToo movement was a revolution in the cinematographic environment, and made it possible to have debates and public discussions on the subject.
However, despite all this, and although Thierry Frémaux, general delegate of the festival would have declared that between two films of the same quality, one directed by a man and the other by a woman, he would always choose the film directed by a woman, there was in the official competition of feature films, that 4 films out of 24 made by women !!
Cannes 2021 – Members of the Jury Longers
Faced with this new reality, the Cannes Film Festival had to present women at all levels, and to try to enhance them, for example by choosing a jury for the official competition of female female films (5 out of 9 members were women) or by devoting a documentary film on the American actress Olivia de Havilland, who in 1965 was the first woman to chair the jury, even If out of the 74 editions, they were only 11 women to do so: Sophia Loren (1966), Michelle Morgan (1971), Ingrid Bergman (1973), Jeanne Moreau (1975 and 1995), Françoise Sagan (1979), Isabelle Adjani (1997), Liv Ullmann (2001), Isabelle Huppert (2009), Jane Campion (2013) Blanchett (2018).
In addition, it was clear that the women were omni present in the selected films. The female character has become more active, playing important, influential and distinctive roles, which resemble the roles that women really play in society. Films in official competition although made by men, were based on women, such as for example Benedetta by Paul Verhoeven, France of Bruno Dumont or Lingui by Mahamat Saleh-Haroun.
If in this atmosphere, the jury wanted, consciously or unconsciously awarding the Palme d’Or to a woman director, Titanium It was perhaps, among the 4 films made by women, the one who deserved it most.
Indeed, even if during his first projection, there were reactions of rejection and even people who passed out, Titanium stands out on several levels including the audacity and originality of the script, its very particular universe, a language specific to its director and the extraordinary performance of Agathe Rousselle, of which it is the first role in a feature film of fiction. Titanium is violent, disturbing, but he does not leave indifferent. We leave the projection by being perplexed, trying to analyze, interpret and even assimilate the film, wondering if we liked it or not, to realize that ultimately, there is not much to understand, but that it is a concentrate of emotions to feel … or not!
A film on love, a love that goes beyond the kind of characters, their origins, as if we were at the beginning of a new and different world.
We go from Alexia to Adrien and Adrien to Alexia, therefore from feminine to masculine and male feminine, in a completely natural way, including through this pregnancy, this maternity, in this androgynous body, which claims its share of masculinity and femininity, sweetness and brutality, weakness and strength. And which in addition introduces a new genre, a hybrid between human and machine, or the monster as the director herself said during the closing ceremony.
Cannes 2021 – Julia Ducournau and La Palme d’Or for her film “Titane”
Jessica Hausner said at the press conference that followed the closing ceremony: “I would like to add that during our discussions, whether you believe it or not, we have never mentioned the fact that the director is a woman. It was the film on which we agreed. It is only after we said yes, that in addition that it is a woman made us even happier ”. But it is very likely that the fact that the director is a woman has greatly influenced this choice. Choice which probably conforms to everyone’s deep desire to see a woman win the golden palm. And alone for the first time in the history of the festival. Indeed, in 1993, Jane Campion had won the Palme d’Or for her film The piano lessonin ex aequo with Goodbye my concubine by Chen Kaige.
Neïla Driss
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