CANNES, France “The Square,” a Swedish
movie about the curator of a museum filled with grotesquely
pretentious conceptual art, beat stiff competition
to win the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday.Critics hailed the movie by writer-director Ruben Ostlund as
“high-wire cinema” that veers between comedy and thriller with
moments of pure surrealism.The film’s highlight is a dinner for the museum’s well-to-do
patrons, with a performance artist leaping from table to table
impersonating an ape in a bizarre, tense and ultimately violent
scene.”BPM (Beats Per Minute),” a French movie about AIDS
awareness campaigners in the 1980s, was favorite for the award
but had to settle for second place, taking the Grand Prize of
the Jury.Sofia Coppola won best director for “The Beguiled,” a remake
of the 1971 Clint Eastwood tale of sexual tension between an
injured soldier in the American Civil War and the women and
girls who take him in.Nicole Kidman, who starred alongside Colin Farrell in that
and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” missed out on
the best actress trophy but was awarded a special prize by the
Cannes jury, headed by Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar.Diane Kruger won best actress for her first German-speaking
part in “In the Fade,” as a woman trying to put her life back
together and get justice after her husband and young son are
killed in a bomb attack.Joaquin Phoenix was named best actor for his portrayal of a
psychologically damaged hitman in “You Were Never Really Here”
by Scottish director Lynne Ramsay, who shared
the prize for best screenplay with the writers of “The Killing
of a Sacred Deer,” Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou.
