Cannes Film Festival 2013: Palme d'Or Predictions Leading to Steven Spielberg Announcement
The 66th Cannes Film Festival will finish with Steven Spielberg and a nail-biter to see who gets the festival's coveted award.
The prestigious Palme d'Or, the festival's top award, will be given to one of 20 films in competition Sunday night in Cannes. In recent years there has often been an obvious winner by the end of the festival but this year, there is reportedly no obvious frontrunner for one of cinema's highest honors. Spielberg is leader of the nine-member jury that chooses the winner of the Palme.
Abdellatif Kechiche's lesbian coming-of-age tale Blue is the Warmest Color, an explicit story about two French women, ranked the highest in critical polls. It was also predicted that Asghar Farhadi's domestic drama A Separation of the Past will take the award. Others believe it will go to the Coen brothers' 1960s folk tale, Inside Llewyn Davis.
"Usually by this point in the Cannes Film Festival, the race for the Palme d'Or has narrowed itself down to one or two clear frontrunners," Variety magazine's senior film critic Justin Chang wrote.
Chang also noted about Warmest Color, it would be a relevant win due to the fact that France legalized gay marriage just last week. The film is a three-hour love story and has attracted attention for its performance from actress Adele Exarchopoulos as well as its explicit sex scenes.
If they win, the Coen brothers, who wrote and directed Llewyn Davis, would take home their first Palme d'Or since they won in 1991 for Barton Fink. The film's star Oscar Isaac plays the Dylanesque singer of the title, who navigated New York's folk music scene in the 1960s. Isaac was predicted to win the best actor prize. The film also stars Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan and Max Casella, of the series Doogie Howser, M.D.
Asghar Farhadi has followed up his Oscar-nominated 2011 drama The Past, a drama that features an acclaimed performance by French actress Berenice Bejo, previously best known for her role in the silent film The Artist.
The winner will ultimately be decided by the jury on Sunday.
