Cannes: Swedish Satire “The Square” wins Palme d'Or

The 70th anniversary Cannes Film Festival wrapped up on Sunday night, culminating with an unconventional awards ceremony in which Pedro Almodóvar and his jury bestowed a couple of unexpected bonus prizes, including a tie for screenplay and a special award to Nicole Kidman, who appeared in four projects in this year's official selection.

The fabled Palme d'Or went to Swedish director Ruben Östlund's cutting art-world satire “The Square”, which dares to bring aspects of conceptual and performance art into the sphere of cinema. The choice came as something of a surprise, if only because the masterful, 142-minute film has divided audiences so far, and jury prizes rely on consensus.

Östlund's follow-up to Un Certain Regard winner “Force Majeure”, “The Square” centres on a posh museum curator who is perfectly comfortable wining and dining wealthy donors, but must step outside his comfort zone after having his pockets picked on the way to work.

The Grand Prix went to “BPM (Beats Per Minute)”, French director Robin Campillo's wrenching, deeply humanistic look at the early-'90s war on AIDS, set on the front lines of the French gay-rights movement.

Best director went to Sofia Coppola for “The Beguiled”, a fresh adaptation of Thomas Cullinan's female-driven Civil War novel, about a wounded Union soldier who takes refuge in a Virginia girls' school.

In the press conference following the awards, jury member (and French multi-hyphenate) Agnès Jaoui expressed her disappointment at how few films in competition passed “the Bechdel test” — which asks whether at least a film contains two or more female characters who talk to one another about something other than a man.

In what is essentially the third place, the Jury Prize went to “Loveless” by Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, who uses the search for a missing child to take a cold, hard look at all that is rotten in modern-day Russia — and the world.

Diane Kruger earned best actress for her role in Fatih Akin's “In the Fade”, a powerful performance in which the German-born actress tackled her first starring role in her native language. A stunned-looking Joaquin Phoenix accepted best actor honors for “You Were Never Really Here”. The actor transformed himself for the role, assuming the look of a grizzled war veteran you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley.

Almodóvar's jury bucked tradition by awarding a tie for best screenplay(s) to “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” (co-written by Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou) and “You Were Never Really Here” (penned by its director, Lynne Ramsay).

The Camera d'Or, awarded to best first film from any section of the entire festival, went to Léonor Serraille for “Jeune femme” (Montparnasse-Bienvenüe), which premiered in Un Certain Regard.

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