French 'Prophet' leads race at Cannes

By Emma Charlton – May 23, 2009

CANNES, France (AFP) — A gripping French prison drama led the pack of contenders Saturday for Cannes' coveted Palme d'Or as the 12-day film frenzy headed into its finale with a row over gothic thriller "AntiChrist."

As the jury set about picking the best of the 20 films from the world's top directors, festival director Thierry Fremaux denounced an "anti-prize" attributed to the film by Denmark's Lars Von Trier for alleged misogyny.

The gong, from a Ecumenical Jury which each year hands out a prize to a Cannes film celebrating spiritual values, was slammed by Fremaux as a "ridiculous decision that borders on a call for censorship."

"AntiChrist," which closes with a shot of a clitoris being sliced off with rusty scissors, provoked jeers and gasps and caused at least four people to faint at a press screening this week.

The top Palme d'Or prize was due to be awarded at a gala ceremony on Sunday.

Bleak prison drama "A Prophet" by France's Jacques Audiard, about a six-year jail sentence for an Arab youth that turns into an education in crime, remained the hottest ticket in Cannes, according to a foreign critics panel.

A win for Audiard would be a triumph for French cinema, a year after high-school docu-fiction "The Class" became the first French movie in more than two decades to pick up the Palme.

But foreign critics also gave a frontrunner slot to Austrian director Michael Haneke's "The White Ribbon", a chilling black-and-white portrait of a Protestant German village on the eve of the World War I.

Haneke's stark drama, which kept critics glued to their seats, ranks second alongside Jane Campion's ode to John Keats, "Bright Star", according to a critics' panel in trade magazine Screen.

Critics were also impressed by Pedro Almodovar's drama "Broken Embraces" and Ken Loach's feelgood football comedy "Looking for Eric."

That film scored an early goal Saturday by picking up the Ecumenical Jury's official prize.

French reviewers meanwhile had high hopes for veteran director Alain Resnais for "Wild Grass" and for Quentin Tarantino's Nazi-slaying caper "Inglourious Basterds."

Closing the official competition late Saturday, Spain's Isabel Coixet takes viewers on a trip around the Japanese capital in "Map of the Sounds of Tokyo," about a young woman's double life as contract-killer and fishmarket worker.

The seedier side of Tokyo was also on display Friday in the new film by France's Gaspar Noe, "Enter the Void," a psychedelic trip to the afterlife that provoked a love-it-or-hate-it reaction from Cannes audiences.

Seven years after a rape scene in his previous film "Irreversible" sparked walk-outs in Cannes, Noe's new work follows a young American drug dealer's journey after death.

The film takes in its stride Eastern concepts about sex and reincarnation, as the character's spirit leaves his body to retrace his life and watch over his stripper sister.

Palestinian director Elia Suleiman also unveiled "The Time that Remains," a bitter-sweet farce on his family and the history of the Israeli Arabs, inspired by the diaries and letters of his mother and resistance fighter father.

For the festival finale, the Paris Louvre offered its first foray into film production, an arthouse work by Malaysian-born Taiwan director Tsai Ming Liang, but the movie flopped at a preview ahead of its Saturday premiere.

"Visage" (Face) is about a Taiwan director making a film at the Louvre based on the myth of Salome and is intended as tribute to French New Wave cinema.

But the film's series of static tableaux -- played by a French cast including top model Laetitia Casta and Jean-Pierre Leaud, who starred in New Wave classic "The 400 blows", fell flat.