Cannes and the French Open

CANNES: THE WINNERS

German director Michael Haneke won the top prize, the Golden Palm, at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival for The White Ribbon, a study of violence and the rise of Fascism set in a small Protestant village in northern Germany on the eve of World War I, and filmed in black and white. Haneke has previously won two awards at Cannes, as Best Director for Hidden in 2005 and the Jury Prize in 2001 for The Pianist, for which this year’s jury president Isabelle Huppert also won the Best Actress award.

The festival’s Grand Prize went to A Prophet, by French director Jacques Audiard, and the Jury prize was shared by British director Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank and Thirst from South Korea’s Park Chan-wook.

Veteran French director Alain Resnais, who will be 87 in June, won the Special Prize for The Wild Grass; Best Director went to Brilliante Mendoza of the Philippines for his controversial and violent Kinatay; Best Actress to Charlotte Gainsbourg for the even more controversial and violent Antichrist, by director Lars Von Trier; and Best Actor to Austrian Christoph Waltz as the multilingual Nazi villain in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds—not quite so controversial but sufficiently violent.

Left out of the prize list were such impressive and non-violent entries as Jane Campion’s Bright Star, about the 19th-century love affair between British poet John Keats and Franny Brawne; Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces with Penelope Cruz, and Ken Loach’s Looking for Eric, with soccer star Eric Cantona.

SPORTS SUNDAY

As the Cannes Film Festival wound up with its plethora of prizes on Sunday, the French Open at the Roland Garros stadium in Paris got off to a fine summer day’s start, with last year’s singles champion Ana Ivanovic winning her first match, as did Marat Safin, Leyton Hewitt and Andy Murray. Rafael Nadal, aiming to win his fifth straight French open title, plays Brazil’s Marcos Daniel in their first round tomorrow, while Venus Williams will take on fellow American Bethanie Mattek-Sands, Andy Roddick will play France’s Romain Jouan and Maria Sharapova faces Belarus’s Anastasiya Yakimova. Watch it on TV5 Monde.

And also on this sports lovers’ Sunday, Jenson Button driving for Brawn GP won the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Monaco, making it five wins out of six races for him so far this season. His Brawn teammate Rubens Barrichello was second, just as he was in their one-two finish two weeks ago in Spain, and Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa took third and fourth.