Cannes: The critics' verdicts

Timothy Spall picked up the best actor award (above) in the titular role of Mr Turner. Photo / AP

Prizes might have been awarded but what really had Cannes talking this year? Jonathan Romney reports.

So what was the buzz among critics in Cannes this year? The buzz was actually the sound of snoring in press shows. It wasn't because the films were dull, but because a competition densely packed with A-list names - plus several films running way over the two-hour mark - made this year's festival unusually exhausting.

In fairness, this was a solid but unexceptional Cannes. There were plenty of fine films, such as Mike Leigh's superb Mr Turner, which won Timothy Spall the best actor prize, but some of the best were by auteurs doing their trademark satisfyingly, without providing many surprises.

Tommy Lee Jones's solemn western The Homesman rang intriguing changes on the theme of "righteous-schoolmarm-meets-grizzled-old-coot" (respectively, Hilary Swank and TLJ himself), but you suspect the film would have been sparkier if Clint Eastwood had made it 20 years ago.

The other heavyweight US contender was Bennett Miller's Foxcatcher, an offbeat drama about a blue-collar wrestler (Channing Tatum) and his eccentric sponsor (Steve Carell).

Foxcatcher addresses themes of class and power with self-conscious earnestness, and while the acting is brilliant, especially Carell's, the film, which won Miller the best director prize, smacks of Oscar-season prestige rather than Croisette maestria.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Palme d'Or winning Winter Sleep was a punishing three-and-a-quarter-hour workout from the Turkish master with themes of sibling rivalry, mortality and ethics. It's superbly acted, and a substantial film, but it feels rather like being made to sit down and digest a heavyweight modernist novel in one sitting.

Similarly literary and pensive was Clouds of Sils Maria, in which France's Olivier Assayas combined themes on the internet, celebrity gossip, superhero movies, ageing and female rivalry. It's an All About Eve-style drama about a successful film actor (Juliette Binoche) whose relationship with her PA (a startlingly good Kristen Stewart) begins to duplicate the anguished dynamic of the stage play she's rehearsing.

Variations on the theme were explored to rather livelier effect in David Cronenberg's Tinseltown satire Maps to the Stars. This caustic ensemble comedy is about a neurotic actor (Julianne Moore) haunted by her dead mother, a repellent Bieber-esque teen star (terrific up-and-comer Evan Bird) and a deranged waif (Mia Wasikowska) with a dark past. With a mischievous script by Bruce Wagner, Maps breaks little new ground but it was the best, most scabrous fun to be had here.

Also providing mischief was Goodbye to Language by Jean-Luc Godard - a flash-fry of sounds, texts, images and gags, in 3D. What with its accentuated colours and textures, watching Goodbye to Language was pretty bracing - the cinematic equivalent of sticking your finger into a light socket for 70 minutes.

It wouldn't be a proper Cannes without flops. Director Michel Hazanavicius and wife Berenice Bejo's The Search, involves a traumatised war orphan, the human rights worker (Bejo) who takes him in, and a young Russian soldier who receives his training in military violence at a boot camp that makes Full Metal Jacket look like Hi-de-Hi.

The Search contains perhaps 45 minutes of very compelling cinema but plummets into well-meaning kitsch, not least because of Bejo's excruciatingly gauche performance.

Even greater contempt was showered on Lost River, the directorial debut by Hollywood golden boy Ryan Gosling. This grisly slice of hipster Gothic is set in a magic-realist version of modern Detroit, and involves a long-suffering single mom (Christina Hendricks) who falls into the clutches of a ruthless bank manager (Ben Mendelsohn).

The incoherent stew of stylistic borrowings and gruesome chic was enthusiastically booed.

Two magnificent films turned up at the end. Russian entry Leviathan, by Andrey Zvyagintsev, is about a family who fatally tangle with a crooked official. The winner of the best screenplay award, it's a film of ferocious political rage, railing against Russia's corrupt masters, but it's also mysterious and poetic.

Finally, a Ukrainian film entirely in sign language, without subtitles. The Tribe is set in a boarding school for deaf children and teenagers, where prostitution, gangsterism and brutal revenge are high on the curriculum.

Director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy manages to juggle brute realism, dry comedy and a potent streak of eroticism. I was on the jury that awarded The Tribe one of three awards it scooped in Critics' Week, and for me, the film is the great discovery of this year's festival. In a noisy 12 days, The Tribe's silence spoke as loudly as anything.

Prizewinners at the 67th Cannes Film Festival

Palme d'Or: Winter Sleep, Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Best Director: Bennett Miller, Foxcatcher
Best Actress: Julianne Moore in Maps to the Stars, by David Cronenberg
Best Acwtor: Timothy Spall in Mr Turner, by Mike Leigh
Best Screenplay: Andrei Zvyagintsev and Oleg Negin for Leviathan
Grand Prix (runner-up to Palme d'Or): The Wonders, by Alice Rohrwacher
Jury Prize: Mommy by Xavier Dolan and Goodbye to Language, by Jean-Luc Godard

- Observer