Spike Lee jumps the gun with Titane Palme d'Or reveal

CANNES • Titane, a wildly imaginative film about a serial killer by French director Julia Ducournau, won the top Palme d'Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival last Saturday - as revealed by jury head Spike Lee ahead of time in a gaffe at the ceremony.

In a moment of confusion when asked in French to reveal what one of the prizes was, the American film director read off a card and prematurely announced the best movie winner.

"No excuses, I messed up," Lee, 64, told a news conference after the event. "I'm a big sports fan, it's like the guy at the end of the game at the foul line, he misses a free throw, or the guy misses a kick."

It was not the first blooper moment at an awards ceremony. At the 2017 Oscars, musical La La Land was incorrectly announced as best movie, instead of Moonlight.

Ducournau, 37, became only the second woman to win the top award at Cannes. Her violent film, where the heroine has sex with a car, split critics, with some praising its originality but others put off by its frantic and messy approach.

"Ducournau's beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy is a nightmarish yet mischievously comic barrage of sex, violence, lurid lighting and pounding music," critics at the BBC broadcaster said. "It's also impossible to predict where it's going to go next."

Described as a "body horror" movie and based around a character with a titanium plate in her head, the film impressed with its energy.

"I've never seen a film in my life.... where a Cadillac impregnated a woman," Lee said.

Ducournau had previously found critical success with the horror film Raw in 2016.

The only previous female winner of Cannes' top award was director Jane Campion, who shared the prize in 1993 for The Piano with Chen Kaige, for Farewell My Concubine.

The world's biggest film festival returned to the French Riviera in one of the most unpredictable contests in years, after last year's hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The event drew stars such as Matt Damon and Sharon Stone to the red carpet, though attendance was down from previous years.

Once the awards were officially announced, other big winners included Leos Carax, picked as best director for Annette, a musical about two artistes in a twisted love affair.

Hamaguchi Ryusuke and Takamusa Oe of Japan won best screenplay for their tale of heartbreak and loss Drive My Car.

Norway's Renate Reinsve won best actress for her role in The Worst Person In The World by Joachim Trier, a modern-day romantic comedy that was a big hit with critics. Caleb Landry Jones, who starred in Australian film Nitram, won best actor.

Compartment No. 6 by Finland's Juho Kuosmanen, about a woman who embarks on a train journey across Russia, tied with A Hero by Iran's Asghar Farhadi, about a prisoner faced with a moral quandary, for the Grand Prix distinction.

The Jury Prize, another runner-up award for best movie, went to Ahed's Knee by Israel's Nadav Lapid and Memoria by Thailand's Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

REUTERS