The Nespressos are going cold, the Pellegrino's gone flat and the culinary puns are running increasingly dry as we reach the end of the 67th Cannes Film Festival. On paper it might have lacked the same oomph as last year's big name ballot but the selection this year has still left us thrilled and serene. It's been a competition which had a lot to say about money but which still found space for more organic fare, not to mention a 3D head scratcher from one Jean Luc Godard. So with the Palme d'Or ceremony just hours away lets attempt a quick punt at what should/could/will win and of course, far more importantly, our very own top 5.

Le Top 5

Honourable mention: Leviathan

Had we a touch more time to digest it, this marvelously crafted take on the book of job would most certainly have crept up the list. Strange, staggering and often darkly funny, Andrei Zvyagintsev (good luck with that) threw a late spanner in the works for most critics, and just maybe for the Jury too...



5. Whiplash

J.K. Simmons and Miles Teller go to war in a university jazz band for Damien Chazelle's Sundance conquering debut. The film is explosive. The ovation was too. A full review here.



4. Two Days, One Night

The Dardennes delivered a wonderfully tight story of a woman who is given a week to canvas her colleagues to ask they forego their bonuses so that she can keep her job. The brothers from Belgium are already two times winners here and while we doubt we'll be seeing a third for now, Marion Cotillard is surely a lock for her shrunken, brave lead role. Full review here.



3. Red Army

Gabe Polsky's defiantly nationalist documentary on the Soviet Union's Red Army hockey team might just be one of the most rousing, impassioned sport films to ever hit the screen. Polsky (a player himself of Russian descent) understands the politics of his subject but, far more importantly, the great beauty of their play too. The funny and charming maverick Vyacheslav Fetisov, the film's main focus, has a comet named after him. What more do you need to hear?



2. Foxcatcher

Bennet Miller not only made it three in row with his bleak, brilliant Foxcatcher but, with that great eye for the affluent American psyche, managed to improve on everything too. We expect awards tonight and many more come February. Full review here.



1. The Wonders

Oh the incomparable pleasure of the festival unknown. This writer entered the Salle Debussy with no knowledge of director Alice Rohrwacher, nor expectations of what her new film would bring, but left feeling transcendental and just plain old alive. An unexpected and devastating delight. Full-blooded, gushing review here.

L'Awards

Palme d'Or

Will: A near impossible call but twenty five year old Xavier Dolan's Mommy might just be ballsy enough to stand out from the crowd.

Should: The Wonders. Try and keep up.

Could: Anything from Mr. Turner, Leviathan, Foxcatcher or Winters Sleep

Grand Prix

Will: Mr. Turner

Should: Foxcatcher. Again, keep up.

Best Actor

Will: Steve Carell (Foxcatcher)

Should: Steve Carell (Foxcatcher)

Best Actress

Will: Marion Cotillard (Two Days, One Night)

Should: Marion Cotillard (Two Days, One Night)

L'Epilogue

Phew, well that's all folks. Off to skull a few overpriced domestic beers before the award show begins. Fingers will be crossed for Alice Rohrwacher (not to mention Athletico Madrid). Apologies for saturated news feeds and, as ever, thanks for tuning in. 

Beyond the Hills

The favourite son of Romania’s New Wave follows up his jarring, Palme d’Or-winning masterpiece 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, with another film about two quietly defiant young women- their struggles and their friendship. Cristina Fluter and Cosmina Stratan play Alina and Voichita, two orphaned friends whose troubled past we can only guess at. There are hints that abuse and paedophilia plagued the girls’ orphanage but still, they survived. They also fell in love. We pick up with Alina returning home from a working spell in Germany to find that Voichita has taken solace in the local Orthodox convent. Alina is distraught. She wants nothing more than for Voichita to join her abroad and so decides to fight the priest for her affections. She lashes out and throws fits but when it goes too far the nuns suspect possession. The leading ladies shared the acting plaudits at Cannes for two greatly complimentary performances with Stratan remaining distant and tender while Fluter writhes with fury and passion. Framed beautifully in the grey autumnal light, there’s a fitting coldness here too. Like 4 Months…, this is a film devoid of any sentimentality, there’s just no room for such indulgences. With all of this Beyond the Hills should feel like a horror but amazingly, it looks like real life. Indeed, the films of the Romanian New Wave have seldom told us how to feel. They simply tell us how it is. 

Chasing Ice

National Geographic photographer James Balog assembles a crack team and sets out to gain visual evidence of our planet’s retreating glaciers by painstakingly capturing time-lapse footage over a number of years. Director Jeff Orlowski shoots a travel log of the mission intercut with the usual ominous looking graphs and interviews with straight shooting intellectuals. Orlowski’s documentary can feel a little sparse at times but unlike many of its kind it chooses sentimentality over scaremongering, portraying these vanishing behemoths not as something to fear, but instead as an endangered species. 

                With Amour, Michel Haneke sheds cold harsh light on the indignities of dying. It may sound melodramatic, perhaps even depressing, but this is simply an honest and harrowingly beautiful portrayal of the day to day processes of losing someone.

                Anne and George (Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant) are an adoring, 80-something couple. Retired musicians; both share a lifelong passion for music and are still immersed in the classical music world. One day Anne suffers an attack and George must take on the roll of carer as she begins to fade both in body and mind. The deterioration weighs heavily on Anne’s pride and the couple’s bond eventually feels this strain too.

                Jean-Louis Trintignant delivers a terrific performance as George, bringing his limp and well faceted face to the mournful role, but as Anne, Emmanuelle Riva is simply astonishing. As her elegance and grace do battle with her worsening affliction the level of commitment Riva shows is staggering. Haneke has described it as “more than acting” and there is something otherworldly about it, the man has been known to put his performers through the ringer but this has an added layer; with both actors in their 80s the gruelling events they are playing out may soon be something very real for them. The fact seems to linger throughout Amour and gives their performances an earth shattering realism. Just how Haneke convinced them seems unthinkable but as Riva said herself “You just don’t say no to a film like Amour”.

                Death will always pose the greatest questions and, in true Haneke fashion, no answers are given. How do we measure the loss of a life? Of course it is in that person’s absence, but also in their lingering presence. George must cope with both, as Anne slowly drifts away in her bed he is left to wander the cavernous hallways of their apartment. A grand and tasteful Parisian home, every corner marked with the textures of a life well lived; the grand piano a now silent monolith at its centre. The glimpses of music we hear- some real, some from memory- serve as a devastating example of the passing of time, whole years seem to disappear as the notes ring out.

                Even before Amour picked up this year’s Palme D’or, his second on the trot, Haneke could very well have been regarded as the greatest European director of his generation, his most accessible work so far and perhaps his most sentimental, the film is a masterpiece of modern cinema and an elegant example of the raw power of images, Amour simply asks the type of questions that only great art can.