I wonder if Nanni Moretti is feeling just a tiny bit envious of Steven Spielberg right now. A year ago, the Italian filmmaker — then wrapping up his stint at the president of the Cannes Film Festival — politely grumbled that the awards hadn’t gone entirely as he and his jurors would have liked. So enraptured were they by their universally well-received Palme d’Or choice, Michael Haneke’s “Amour,” that they wanted to throw it an extra award or two, particularly for its remarkable veteran leads Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant.

That’d have fallen foul of a relatively recent, restrictive festival rule that prevents the top prizewinner taking any additional awards — introduced at some point after Gus van Sant’s “Elephant” took the Palme and Best Director in 2003. (2000’s “Dancer in the Dark,” meanwhile, is the last Palme winner to take an acting award.) Moretti and his jury duly complied, but the awards carried an unavoidable whiff of compromise to them.

Only a year later, jury president Steven Spielberg appears to have found himself in the same situation, as the film that emerged as the buzz title of the festival on the eighth day of Competition – and duly won the Palme d”Or – was similarly performance-powered. To hand a prize to Abdellatif Kechiche”s remarkable romantic drama “Blue is the Warmest Color” without acknowledging the contribution of 19-year-old lead Adele Exarchopoulos would feel an oddly incomplete gesture. Not only a galvanizing presence on her own terms, the actress, together with co-star Lea Seydoux, was a committed and creative collaborator in its development, and the director has been insistent that he can”t claim sole ownership of the film.

Such was the hype at the festival surrounding Exarchopoulos”s breakout turn that, when Berenice Bejo was named the Best Actress winner for her very fine work in Asghar Farhadi”s “The Past” – a spiky, commendably unsympathetic turn that, prior to the premiere of “Blue,” had been the racing favorite for the award – the entire press room began composing their “Kechiche wins the Palme” headlines 15 minutes before the news was made official.

This is indicative of the critical conviction elevating Kechiche”s film by the end of a festival that didn”t want for worthy competition. If anything, the Coen Brothers” morose folk-scene comedy “Inside Llewyn Davis,” which took the runner-up Grand Prix, was even more broadly liked – though there”s a sense in some quarters that the Coens, amply rewarded by Cannes in the past, can be taken for granted these days – which made this very popular win still somewhat surprising to me.

But if “Llewyn” was a hit, “Blue” was the kind of feverish phenomenon that can only occur at major festivals – however well it does upon release, it will probably never seem quite as mighty as it did in the days following its first screening. Such phenomena are almost always fueled by a degree of controversy, and for all its overriding tenderness and humanity, “Blue” had it: its lengthy, rawly explicit same-sex love scenes were a point of discussion and debate even before it screened, while its sympathetic anatomy of a homosexual relationship clearly hit home with the French media just one week after the country”s legalization of gay marriage. Its three-hour running time was by far the longest in Competition this year; the film could hardly have been positioned as more of a special snowflake in the lineup.

“Blue is the Warmest Color” is now the most erotic film ever to take the Palme d”Or; it is also the first that might immediately be classified as queer. (Funnily enough, it lost the separately juried Queer Palme award to Alain Guiraudie”s even steamier gay-cruising thriller “Stranger by the Lake”; between those films and Steven Soderbergh”s superb Liberace biopic “Behind the Candelabra,” it”s been a vintage Cannes for LGBT-focused cinema.) But it also set a third precedent last night that was entirely the jury”s doing: with Spielberg”s team unable to give Best Actress to Exarchapoulos and/or Seydoux, they decided the actresses should at least get a Palme d”Or for their pains.

“Blue ” thus becomes the first film ever to have its Palme formally presented to more than just its director. It”s a sweet acknowledgement of a film made in a spirit of genuine collaboration – an anomaly from this most auteur-driven of festivals. It”s also a clever, somewhat cheeky way of defying a rule that Cannes brass should realize creates more problems than it solves. Rather shockingly, this means Exarchopoulos and Seydoux now join Jane Campion as the only women ever to accept a Palme d”Or. And if the festival”s current selection policy continues, it may be a while before a female filmmaker joins them – the less said about Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi”s weightless, tone-deaf comedy of One Percent manners “A Castle in Italy,” inexplicably the only female-directed film in Competition, the better.

Meanwhile, whether you think Exarchopoulos deserved her own award or not, it’s hard not to be happy for Bejo, who may have received an Oscar nomination two years ago for “The Artist,” but was written off by many as an insubstantial coattail candidate enjoying a brief moment in the sun. “The Past” proves her to be both a star presence and a dramatic actress of considerable grace and subtlety. If Sony Pictures Classics play their cards right, she could even return to the US awards circuit far sooner than most would have suspected. But even if they don’t, this is a proud moment for the French-Argentinian actress. Leaving the press room after the ceremony, I walked past her husband, Oscar-winning director Michel Hazanavicius, waiting patiently in the corridor while his wife basked in the lights of her photo call outside. It was a sweet sight — I bet she had to do her own fair share of such waiting two years ago.

The festival has courted Spielberg for long enough that he could likely get away with more massaging of the rules than they”d permit most festival presidents; when he first announced that the award would be presented to three artists, a lot of bewildered journalists wondered for a split second if he was proposing a three-way tie between films. It”d have been outrageous, though with such passionately supported critical favorites as James Gray”s “The Immigrant” (which I adored) and Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Great Beauty” (which I did not) set to leave the festival empty-handed at that point, it wasn”t entirely inconceivable. Some had speculated that picking Spielberg as president would result in a series of bland, mainstream-tilting choices, but he and his remarkable panel proved them wrong in spectacular fashion: aside from their youthful, adventurous pick for the Palme, this year”s slate of winners proved pleasingly diverse, and occasionally dangerous.

The presentation of the Best Director award to young Mexican provocateur Amat Escalante for his surreal drug-running drama “Heli,” for example, wasn”t greeted with mass approval – but it”s nothing if not a bold choice. The film, which crescendos with a scene of graphic torture that gives new meaning to the lyrics of a certain Kings of Leon hit, is supremely accomplished in its construction, even if its message is rather thin. One wonders whether the jury was aware that the very same award had been presented the previous year to Escalante”s mentor, Carlos Reygadas, to similarly raised eyebrows from the press. Mexican new wave cinema can do no wrong on the Croisette, it seems, even when the critics decide otherwise.

The selection of Jia Zhangke”s “A Touch of Sin” for Best Screenplay was also on the daring side. A surreal, four-chapter blend of Chinese social critique and highly bloody genre elements, the film enjoyed a mixed reception even among the Jia faithful; I found myself more intrigued by it than I”ve been by his more wholegrain work, though I wouldn”t say its strength particularly lay in its writing. (As ever at Cannes, the screenplay award seems to have been used more as a consolation prize for a film with at least some keen jury support.)

A safer Asian choice was Jury Prize winner “Like Father, Like Son” from beloved Japanese humanist Hirokazu Kore-eda, which many, including myself, had pegged for the Palme. Though I thought this teary melodrama, about two families from opposite sides of the class divide faced with the discovery that their six-year-old sons were switched at birth, was Kore-eda”s least nuanced and most calculated film to date. Japan doesn”t often go with the obvious when selecting their foreign Oscar submission – but if they pick this one, watch out. (Incidentally, I reviewed both “A Touch of Sin” and “Like Father, Like Son” for Time Out London.)

We”ll never know for sure whether Spielberg was the driving force behind it or not, but a sentimental streak within the jury also led to Bruce Dern taking Best Actor for his grizzled turn in Alexander Payne”s “Nebraska” – a film that, following an initial rush of the kind of acclaim to which Payne is accustomed, is turning out to be rather more divisive. (I’m on the less enthusiastic end of the spectrum.) It’s an award many had predicted would go to a flashier American veteran, Michael Douglas for “Behind the Candelabra,” and it would have been nice to see Steven Soderbergh”s superb supposed farewell film rewarded in some capacity, 24 years after he won the Palme in a jury move at least as fresh and forward-thinking as this year”s “Blue is the Warmest Color” triumph.

Taken on balance, then, last night”s results represent about the most exciting outcome we could have wished for from a Competition lineup that was arguably more solid than spectacular. There were few outright bombs (the misfires, including “Jimmy P.” and this year”s annual snoozy French costumer “Michael Kohlhaas,” were mostly dull rather than embarrassing), but few head-spinning, what-the-hell-was-that triumphs in the “Holy Motors” vein either; just a number of highly satisfying new films from established, A-grade directors, and that”s good enough for me.

Given that I reviewed “Blue is the Warmest Color” for Time Out rather than on these pages, many of you may not realize how happy this win makes me. In the four years that I”ve been attending Cannes, this is the first year that my festival favorite aligned with that of the jury; for my money, it”s the strongest Palme d”Or winner since (at least) Laurent Cantet”s “The Class” in 2008. There will be more time to discuss this very special film (and the inevitable debates it”s already generating) when more of you have a chance to see it, but for now, I”ll simply say you have a lot to look forward to. The signature song of the festival may have been the jaunty “Inside Llewyn Davis” ditty, “Please Mr. President”; when it comes to Spielberg, it seems more appropriate to thank him.

By the way, we haven’t quite wrapped up our Cannes coverage just yet: look out for more video content from me and Greg Ellwood, as we’ll be rounding up the best and worst of the fest later. 

CANNES – For a man who spent the better part of a year under house arrest between 2009 and 2010, it’s odd that Roman Polanski seems to have subjected his own art to the same punishment ever since. “Venus in Fur” is his second straight film — after 2011’s largely forgettable “Carnage” — to fashion an economical stage play into clammy real-time cinema that doesn’t leave the confines of a single interior space.

It’s not a movement without precedent in the 79-year-old director’s career: his 1994 adaptation of Ariel Dorfman’s “Death and the Maiden” was the first, and remains the best, of these  seemingly offhand chamber pieces. But one could argue that the recent revival of his interest in them is indicative of a director increasingly unwilling to engage with the outside world — whether due to age, practical production wherewithal or the unusual media scrutiny that has plagued Polanski for over half his life. Polanski made his last, and perhaps final, substantive personal statement over a decade ago with his indirect Holocaust memoir “The Pianist”; since then, it’s all been arch, sometimes enjoyable exercises in evasion — his passionless, oddly interior adaptation of “Oliver Twist” included.

These exercises don’t come archer or more evasive than “Venus in Fur,” a faithful-to-the-point-of-transcription film of American playwright David Ives’s Off-Broadway-to-Broadway hit that, only last year, won a Best Actress Tony for young star Nina Arianda. A spry, witty play-within-a-play riffing on the erotic 19th-century novel-within-a-novella “Venus in Furs” by Austrian writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, it’s a text that strikes sparks on paper (and presumably on stage too) without going much deeper than said foolscap folio.

In Polanski’s hands, it hasn’t become anything much more or less: he’s kept the theatrical environment, for starters, though you’d have thought transferring this smoke-and-mirrors material to a film-industry context would have been easy enough. Translating it into French and relocating the action (so to speak) to a Parisian theater, meanwhile, adds little more than a light cosmopolitan foam to what is effectively a single cinematic espresso: short and invigorating while the buzz lasts.

After a giddying opening shot that whooshes down a stormy Parisian boulevard to the accompaniment of Alexandre Desplat’s ominously jaunty score, we’re whisked into a ramshackle theater from which the film will not stray — and where it seems Mathieu Amalric’s protagonist Thomas may remain indefinitely. He’s in the process of casting the lead for his radicalized stae adaptation for von Sacher-Masoch’s novel, but has found every auditioning actress inadequate for the role of the sexually strident, persuasive Vanda.

He initially thinks the same about the coarse, seemingly none-too-bright Vanda (Emmanuelle Seigner), a scatty, unannounced late-arrival who shares a name with the character (or so she claims), but not much else. As she blithely overrides his protests to proceed with her surprisingly nuanced, well-rehearsed reading, however, she becomes so attuned to the role that reality and fiction begin to blur: is she seducing Thomas as the novel’s Vanda, or as her own woman?

Either way, she’s good at it:. As with her literary namesake, it’s not long before conventional gender roles are being heavily challenged in their on- and off-script dialogue, and the power balance between master and slave, teacher and student, or indeed director and star, is reset. And yes, some kinkier reversals are on the cards — masochism was named for von Sacher-Masoch, after all — as Vanda resolves to give Thomas a taste of the objectified female experience. Or perhaps that should be Severin, Thomas’s 1870 alter ego, as the transitions between the text and the inner text grow harder to determine.

It’s frisky, funny stuff, unavoidably slight but given considerable verve by the game performances; Seigner, in particular, locates a certain snap, a kind of fizzy anger, in Vanda that we haven’t previously seen from the actress. Both actors are considerably older than their stage counterparts, which implies a different kind of hunger, and a greater degree of knowing, behind Vanda’s motivations in particular. Meanwhile, it’s high time Polanski worked with Amalric, his closest physical counterpart: watching him flirt, fight and verbally tussle with the director’s wife on screen, it’s tempting to wonder just how much we are being told about their marriage.

Then again, “Venus in Fur” finds Polanski repeatedly thumbing his nose at armchair psychologists too quick to find overarching themes in this (or any other) work. “How can you play her so well and be so fucking stupid about her?” fumes Thomas, when Vanda suggests the play is in fact “all about child abuse.” It’s enough to make you briefly wonder how many Polanski classics we’ve misread by the director’s standards; not that this flavorful diversion invites repeated readings in the first place. He’s having palpable fun here, but I’m ready for him to go play outdoors.

It wouldn’t be too apt to call the Coen brothers the Kings of the Croisette or anything. They have amassed five awards at the Cannes Film Festival throughout their career, but Lars Von Trier, the Dardenne brothers, Michael Haneke and, certainly, Ken Loach have all won more.

However, with today’s announcement of awards at the 66th annual fest, the filmmaker siblings did enter a bit of rare air with their latest film, “Inside Llewyn Davis”: Joel Coen joined Haneke and Wim Wenders as the only filmmakers to have netted a Palme d’Or, a Grand Prix and a Best Director award at the festival. A few have won two of the three, from Buñuel to Clouzot* to Antonioni* to Altman (and Malick, too), but only Haneke, Wenders and now Coen have scored the hat trick.

Here’s a look back at the Coen brothers’ history with Cannes…

The first time the Coens found themselves in Competition was at the 44th annual fest in 1991, and things couldn’t have gone any better. The film was “Barton Fink” (one of my personal favorites from the Coens along with 2009’s “A Serious Man”), and the awards were plenty. It picked up the Palme d’Or in a rare unanimous decision from Roman Polanski’s jury (which also included actress Whoopi Goldberg, filmmaker Alan Parker, cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and composer Vaneglis). But the love didn’t stop there. The film truly dominated the top honors as Joel Coen won Best Director and John Turturro won Best Actor.

In 1994 “The Hudsucker Proxy” was in Competition but went home empty-handed. 1996’s “Fargo” would be the next Coen film to land an award at the festival, with big brother Joel winning Best Director yet again. As for the Palme, the film yielded to eventual fellow Best Picture nominee “Secrets & Lies” from director Mike Leigh. Francis Ford Coppola was the jury president, joined by actress Greta Scacchi, cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, filmmaker Atom Egoyan and costume designer Eiko Ishioka, among others.

“O Brother, Where Art Thou?” played in Competition four years later, though unlike “Hudsucker,” it would walk away from the year with a little bit of Oscar recognition (for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Cinematography). But a year later, the Coens would be back in the fray with 2001’s “The Man Who Wasn’t There.” Liv Ullmann’s jury (featuring actresses Charlotte Gainsbourg and Julia Ormond as well as filmmakers Terry Gilliam and Edward Yang) ended up torn on Best Director between Joel Coen and “Mulholland Dr.” helmer David Lynch. So they conceded a tie. “The Man Who Wasn’t There” didn’t make a lot of noise outside of cinematography notices during the awards season, but Lynch went on to a Best Director Oscar nomination. This was, however, the year Coen broke René Clément, Sergei Yutkevich and Robert Bresson’s shared record for Best Director wins at Cannes, a record he still holds.

RELATED: A brief history of the Coen Bros. at the Oscars

There wasn’t much to write home about when 2004’s “The Ladykillers” played in Competition, though actress Irma P. Hall was afforded a special commendation by Quentin Tarantino’s jury in the form of a Jury Prize. Three years later, “No Country for Old Men” made a big impact on the landscape, though not on Stephen Frears’s jury; the group, featuring actresses Maggie Cheung, Toni Collette and Sarah Polley, snubbed it entirely. However, that wouldn’t phase the film and its dedicated awards push come Oscar season. The buzz was properly bottled and manipulated until the fall when the film scooped up critics award after critics award en route to Best Picture and Best Director wins at the Oscars.

And now, “Inside Llewyn Davis.” It’s probably the biggest story coming out of the festival this year as far as those of us with an eye toward awards season are concerned. Steven Spielberg’s jury (featuring the likes of filmmakers Ang Lee, Christian Mungiu and Lynne Ramsay, as well as actors Christoph Waltz and Nicole Kidman) handed the film the second place prize — the Grand Prix — rounding out the siblings’ three big honors over the years and putting them in the company of Michael Haneke and Wim Wenders in that regard. But it has angles on the Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Original Screenplay races, to say nothing of the crafts departments.

As Greg Ellwood pointed out in his analysis of Oscar players coming out of the fest, CBS Films will be particular with this one, and superstar campaigner Terry Press (the former DreamWorks publicity maven who also had a hand in last year’s “Lincoln” push), along with the Coens’ producer, Scott Rudin, will certainly be gunning for recognition in the season. If the history of the Coens and Cannes awards are any indication, they should find their way to at least a few categories.

We’ll see how it shakes out when the season hits in a few months time. The film will likely travel to the Telluride and Toronto fests to stoke the flames a bit more, but for now, it’s secured a unique place for the Coens in the history o the Cannes Film Festival.

“Inside Llewyn Davis” is set for limited release on December 6.

*Clouzot won the Special Jury Prize for “The Mystery of Picasso” in 1956, while Antonioni won the Jury Prize for “L’avventura” in 1960 and the Special Jury Prize for “L’eclisse” in 1962. Prior to the creation of the Grand Prix in 1967, these awards served as “second place” honors at the festival.

CANNES – There were those who suggested that a Cannes jury headed by Steven Spielberg might be responsible for a lot of safe choices, but the Hollywood legend sure proved us wrong. Not only did did he present the Palme d’Or to “Blue is the Warmest Color,” Abdellatif Kechiche’s edgy, erotic epic about first lesbian love, but he also made history by handing the award jointly to Kechiche and the film’s two young stars — an unprecedented move that brazenly dodges the festival’s recent, restrictive rule that the winner of the top prize can’t also take an acting award.

The Coen Brothers took the runner-up Grand Prix — their fifth Cannes win — for the critically beloved “Inside Llewyn Davis,” while other winners in a diverse slate included controversial Mexican drama “Heli” and violent Chinese social allegory “A Touch of Sin.” Acting awards — the official ones, at any rate — went to two relatively big names: Bérénice Bejo for “The Past” and Bruce Dern for “Nebraska.”

More analysis to come; full list of winners below.

COMPETITION AWARDS

Palme d’Or: “Blue is the Warmest Color,” Abdellatif Kechiche, Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux

Grand Jury Prize: “Inside Llewyn Davis,” Joel and Ethan Coen

Best Director: Amat Escalante, “Heli”

Jury Prize: “Like Father, Like Son,” Hirokazu Kore-eda

Best Screenplay: Jia Zhangke, “A Touch of Sin”

Best Actress: Bérénice Bejo, “The Past”

Best Actor: Bruce Dern, “Nebraska”

Camera d’Or (Best Debut Feature): “Ilo Ilo,” Anthony Chen 

Palme d’Or (Short Film): “Safe,” Moon Byoung-gon

UN CERTAIN REGARD AWARDS

Prix Un Certain Regard: “The Missing Picture,” Rithy Panh

Jury Prize: “Omar,” Hany Abu-Assad

Best Director: Alain Guiraudie, “Stranger by the Lake”

Talent Award: Ensemble cast of “La Jaula de Oro”

Avenir Future Award: “Fruitvale Station,” Ryan Coogler 

FIPRESCI AWARDS

Competition: “Blue is the Warmest Color,” Abdellatif Kechiche

Un Certain Regard: “Manuscripts Don’t Burn,” Mohammad Rasoulof

Directors’ Fortnight or Critics’ Week: “Blue Ruin,” Jeremie Saulnier

ECUMENICAL JURY AWARDS

Ecumenical Jury Prize: “The Past,” Asghar Farhadi

Honorable Mentions: “Like Father, Like Son,” Hirokazu Kore-eda; “Miele,” Valeria Golino

DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT

Art Cinema Award: “Me, Myelf and Mum,” Guillaume Gallienne

SACD Award: “Me, Myelf and Mum,” Guillaume Gallienne

SACD Special Mention: “Tip Top,” Serge Bozon

European Cinemas Label Award (Best European Film): “The Selfish Giant,” Cio Barnard

CRITICS’ WEEK

Grand Prize: “Salvo,” Fabio Grassadonia, Antonio Piazza

Special Mention: “Los Duenos,” Agustin Toscano, Ezequiel Radusky

Visionary Award: “Salvo,” Fabio Grassadonia, Antonio Piazza

Best Screenplay: “Le Demantlement,” Sebastien Pilote

Queer Palme: “Stranger by the Lake,” Alain Guiraudie

CANNES – I say it every year: trying to predict the Cannes Film Festival awards is a fool’s errand. Unlike, say, the Oscars, you aren’t making educated guesses about a large, consistent body of voters with plenty of precedent and precursor information to go on. The Cannes jury is tiny, highly idiosyncratic and changes every year; you’re effectively trying to read the minds of nine individuals with no voting track record. Who knows whether Nicole Kidman harbors a quiet passion for Mexican new wave cinema, or if Steven Spielberg is an unlikely Jim Jarmusch devotee? Perhaps not even them, until they see the films in question.

Every time you decide a certain Palme d’Or contender seems too obvious (Michael Haneke’s “Amour”) to win, that’s precisely the route they’ll go; every time the stars seem to have aligned perfectly for one film (Haneke again, with”Cache”), the jury will crown a far less talked-about title.

But here’s something else I do every year: predict the Cannes Film Festival awards. Because, hey, it’s fun, and absolutely nobody expects you to be right. Least of all this year, when the race for the Palme d’Or seems particularly open. In the last few days, one film (Abdellatif Kechiche’s intimate epic “Blue is the Warmest Color”) as emerged as the critical favorite of the festival, leading all polls and scooping the FIPRESCI Award — but it hardly stands head and shoulders above the competition in a solid lineup where very few films misfired. (I think we can safely discount “Jimmy P.” from the conversation.)

“Inside Llewyn Davis,” “Like Father, Like Son,” “The Immigrant,” “The Great Beauty” and “The Past”are just some of the films that have found devoted bands of admirers on the Croisette in the last 12 days — any one of them could be The One. Could Steven Soderbergh mark his supposed retirement with second Palme d’Or, 24 years after winning for his debut? Which Frenchwoman will emerge victorious in a highly Gallic-flavored Best Actress race — or can an outsider elbow her way in? And how many awards will “Only God Forgives” rack up? Okay, we know the answer to that one. But never say never. It’s Cannes.

Click through the gallery below for my thoughts on who will win — and who should win — in each of the seven Competition award categories. Who do you think is taking the Palme d’Or?

CANNES – With screenings having wrapped here at the Cannes Film Festival, all eyes are on tomorrow’s big awards. I’ll preview those in the morning, but in the meantime, we received the first Competition bellwether in the form of the FIPRESCI Critics’ prize, which went to Abdellatif Kechiche’s three-hour lesbian romantic drama “Blue is the Warmest Color” — currently the bookies’ favorite for the Palme d’Or.

I haven’t yet had a chance to discuss Kechiche’s film here, though it’s perhaps my favorite in the Competition lineup. (If you’re curious, you can read my review of the film for Time Out here.) I’d be thrilled to see Kechiche repeat this victory tomorrow night, though before we get too excited, it’s worth noting that the Cannes jury disagrees with FIPRESCI more often than not. The last time they overlapped was in 2009, when Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” took FIPRESCI and the Palme d’Or; last year, however, FIPRESCI’s choice, Sergei Loznitsa’s “In the Fog” won nothing from Nanni Moretti’s Competition jury.

FIPRESCI certainly disagreed with Thomas Vinterberg’s jury in the Un Certain Regard section. While the critics opted for politically charged Iranian thriller “Manuscripts Don’t Burn” as the sidebar’s best, the jury handed prizes to five other films — with their top award going to Cambodian director Rithy Panh’s “The Missing Picture,” an autobiographical Khmer Rouge story told in mixed-media format using clay puppets. Their runner-up prize, meanwhile, went to the well-received “Omar” by Dutch-Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad, who made the Oscar-nominated “Paradise Now” in 2005.

Typically, I missed both films, though I was pleased to see Frenchman Alain Guiraudie pick up a directing prize for his smart, sexually explicit thriller “Stranger by the Lake” — still one of the sidebar’s biggest talking points. Elsewhere tonight, Guiraudie also nabbed the Queer Palme award for the best LGBT-themed film of the festival — no mean feat in a lineup that included Competition heavyweights “Blue is the Warmest Color” and “Behind the Candelabra.”

Similarly well-judged was an award for the young ensemble of the excellent Mexican border-crossing drama “La Jaula de Oro,” which I will discuss at a later stage. I’m less convinced that Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner “Fruitvale Station,” which played to a rather muted response here in Cannes, merits further honors, but it picked up the Future Award for debut director Ryan Coogler. (He’s also among the apparent frontrunners for tomorrow’s Camera d’Or.)  

Finally, in further independent jury news, the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury — a Christian body set up in 1974 to reward films that “reveal the mysterious depths of human beings” — went to another film that could well scoop the Palme tomorrow, Asghar Farhadi’s “The Past.”

Click on the next page for a longer list of preliminary awards. 

UN CERTAIN REGARD AWARDS

Prix Un Certain Regard: “The Missing Picture,” Rithy Panh

Jury Prize: “Omar,” Hany Abu-Assad

Best Director: Alain Guiraudie, “Stranger by the Lake”

Talent Award: Ensemble cast of “La Jaula de Oro”

Avenir Future Award: “Fruitvale Station,” Ryan Coogler 

FIPRESCI AWARDS

Competition: “Blue is the Warmest Colour,” Abdellatif Kechiche

Un Certain Regard: “Manuscripts Don’t Burn,” Mohammad Rasoulof

Directors’ Fortnight or Critics’ Week: “Blue Ruin,” Jeremie Saulnier

ECUMENICAL JURY AWARDS
 

Ecumenical Jury Prize: “The Past,” Asghar Farhadi

Honorable Mentions: “Like Father, Like Son,” Hirokazu Kore-eda; “Miele,” Valeria Golino

DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT 

Art Cinema Award: “Me, Myelf and Mum,” Guillaume Gallienne

SACD Award: “Me, Myelf and Mum,” Guillaume Gallienne

SACD Special Mention: “Tip Top,” Serge Bozon

European Cinemas Label Award (Best European Film): “The Selfish Giant,” Cio Barnard

CRITICS’ WEEK

Grand Prize: “Salvo,” Fabio Grassadonia, Antonio Piazza

Special Mention: “Los Duenos,” Agustin Toscano, Ezequiel Radusky

Visionary Award: “Salvo,” Fabio Grassadonia, Antonio Piazza

Best Screenplay: “Le Demantlement,” Sebastien Pilote

Queer Palme: “Stranger by the Lake,” Alain Guiraudie

When I saw Alex Gibney’s new documentary “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks” at Sundance, I was bowled over. My instant reaction was mostly admiration for Gibney, who has become “a beast at his craft,” as my first blush Tweet noted. The film, opening in limited release this weekend, is a towering study of one of the most enigmatic figures of our time, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and it will surely be seen as the definitive documentary of the organization, which trades in leaked classified information that has had an impact on everything from the Arab Spring to perceptions of National Security here at home.

That the film will be held in such a light is clearly rubbing the organization, and Assange, the wrong way. The film does a number of things that would chafe for the white-haired renegade, but one of them in particular seems like fair play to me: it makes sure the line between Assange’s sexual offense allegations in Sweden and his woes with the US government regarding the business of WikiLeaks is not blurred, and it makes the case that Assange has continued to conflate the separate issues in an attempt to stoke the fire under his supporters and push the WikiLeaks cause.

It also paints a fascinating and frankly compassionate portrait of Assange’s superstar source Bradley Manning, the US Army soldier arrested and charged with 22 offenses including “aiding the enemy” as a result of his communications with, and leaks to, Assange. Manning pleaded guilty to 10 of the charges in February and will stand trial for the remaining 12 beginning on June 3, or nine days hence.

One imagines Assange would have liked a little more of that compassion in the documentary for himself, though it is noted that he declined an interview with Gibney. And on that point, it is one of countless elements challenged by WikiLeaks in a recently released series of talking points and a full annotated transcript of the film.

“Julian Assange did not say the market rate for an interview with him was $1 million dollars and Alex Gibney did not decline,” the material reads. “This section deliberately distorts the final, lengthy negotiation between Julian Assange and Alex Gibney regarding his and WikiLeaks’ possible participation in the documentary, which at the time was unnamed…Alex Gibney distorts this conversation by attempting to portray Julian Assange as greedy.”

@kristapley @westealsecrets Please tweet our response in full: 1) wikileaks.org/WikiLeaks-Leak… 2) wikileaks.org/IMG/html/gibne… 3) justice4assange.com/We-Steal-Secre…

– WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) May 25, 2013

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Much of the information is sourced, though plenty of it also comes at the price of “take our word for it.” Whatever the case, the film has clearly riled the organization to the point that such an undertaking was seen as necessary.

Gibney has responded to the organization’s outcry, noting that WikiLeaks is reacting to a non-finished version of the film. The transcript “did not included any of Bradley Manning’s words…almost 1/4 of the film,” the filmmaker Tweeted, alleging that Assange “wrote [Manning] out of the story…the ‘leak’ [of the transcript] is a malicious edit or the result of a bootleg audio recording.”

One can only imagine what the reaction will be to Bill Condon’s “The Fifth Estate,” a narrative film about Assange’s rise starring Benedict Cumberbatch that is sure to take liberties (as nearly all biopics do). That film is due out in October.

@wikileaks Whoops. WikiLeaks has published transcript of non-final version of film. Final includes “grand jury.” More errors from WikiLeaks.

– Alex Gibney (@BaLueBolivar) May 24, 2013

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Meanwhile, WikiLeaks acolytes are lying in wait, ready to snuff out any sense that “We Steal Secrets” (the very title is also challenged on the basis of semantics) does anything more than distort the truth. There were reports of a lively Q&A session for the film just last week at the Seattle Film Festival where Gibney was harassed by an audience member accusing him of falsifying information for the film. And a point of contention was, again, the issue of Assange’s conflation of his woes. “Gibney [is] explaining that after much investigation, Assange’s charges totally disconnected from Wikileaks,” one person in attendance reported. “Getting super tense in here.”

I’ll leave the task of parsing all of this information and running a comb through it to readers and interested parties far sharper and more versed in it all (and, well, smarter) than me. My reaction to the film remains what it is, however: It’s a tightly constructed and revealing piece of work that pushes past its subjects and finds profound bedrock concerning outcasts and secrecy. And if those two words immediately conjure the ominous, they shouldn’t. There are times when the film serves more as profile than exposé, and it’s in those moments that it really soars.

Head out to the theater this weekend if it’s playing near you and see for yourself.

UPDATE (6/11): It looks like someone has taken the liberty to disassemble the annotated transcript with annotations of the annotations.

This post has been updated to reflect Gibney’s rebuttals.

CANNES – A Jim Jarmusch vampire movie? Sure, why not? Much of “Only Lovers Left Alive” seems to have been made in this spontaneous, scarcely thought-through spirit, which is responsible for what is both most appealing and most enervating about it. It’s a designer doodle of a dream, like much of Jarmusch’s work, though it’s clear some effort has gone into making it appear this cast-off. If the “Twilight” series has taught us anything, it’s that vampires are natural poseurs, which creates a stronger creative bond between Stephenie Meyer and the bequiffed crown prince of American indie cinema then you might have expected.

“Prince” might not be the appropriate word for an auteur now heading into his seventh decade. Indeed, Jarmusch’s youthful ennui and original-hipster styling have remained so consistent over the years that it’s fair to wonder if he’s something of a vampire himself. This may not even be the first vampire film he’s made on some level: think back to the languorous creatures of the dark that have populated such films as “Mystery Train” and “Night on Earth,” and a formal step into the genre seems positively overdue.

Not that Jarmusch does anything formally, of course. Adam and Eve, the disaffected pair of bloodsuckers at the center of this typically episodic narrative, may be immortal, but in every other respect they play very much by Jarmusch’s rules of characterization: they’re humanly world-weary, largely resistant to conflict and have impeccable taste in vinyl. (“Do you want to see the Motown Museum?” Adam Idly suggests on a nighttime drive. “I’m more of a Stax girl,” replies Eve.)

As played by the lank-haired, skinny-jeaned duo of Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton — the former channelling any number of latter-day guitar-band frontmen, the latter chiefly channelling herself — they’re quite possibly the least alarming vampires ever put to screen, lightly canoodling, bickering over the vagaries of modern life, and scoring blood through non-invasive means wherever possible. (From the way they talk about it — at least until a final reel that introduces a faint element of peril to the wandering — blood is more marijuana than milk.)

“Only Lovers Left Alive” isn’t quite the desolate romantic vision suggested by its title, and the film itself is a little low on eroticism — even of the affected Jarmusch variety. It turns out the lovers spend significant lengths of time apart — breaks a couple can afford to take when neither party is getting any older — which may be why they interact more as loyal friends than passionate soul mates. The anaemic narrative hinges on the threat of Adam’s suicide; bored of his louche eternal life, he has recently bought a gun. Eve, haunted by premonitions of its use, travels from her Tangiers base to his ramshackle Detroit abode to talk him off the edge. And then some, and then some more.

It’s a thin premise for what amounts more to an extended sketch than a fully realized love story, though at least the one-ply joke is a droll one, played with good humor by the leads — particularly Swinton, who was pretty much born to deliver Jarmusch’s refined deadpan schtick. I’m not sure how many previous films have gotten comic mileage out of the possibility of modern-day Nosferati having known substantial historical figures, but it feels like more should have. According to Jarmusch, William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe were both vampires, and the latter (played by John Hurt in the agreeably befuddled manner of all his performances these days) lives on as Eva’s closest confidante. If the sheer listlessness of these characters and their travais proves swiftly irksome, that’s a familiar problem with Jarmusch — I suspect this is a fans-only effort, however en vogue the vampire genre may be these days.

The energy picks up for roughly a quarter-hour, when the ever-terrific Mia Wasikowska shows up as Eve’s selfish, shallow younger sister Ava. As she plays havoc with Adam’s temper and guitar collection alike, Ava’s presence fleetingly suggests this story may offer a broader view of vampire society, with its curious generational contrasts (relative to vampire years, of course) and varying degrees of human integration. But she departs all too quickly, and the air (or indeed the blood) goes out of the film when it returns to two-hander status, and its musings on mortality — or lack thereof — take on a self-serious, even sentimental, slant. “I’m barely still here,” whines Adam toward the end of this amusing but overlong amble, speaking for at least some drifting viewers. “We’re finished, aren’t we?”

For many of our readers, I know today has been circled on the calendar for a long while. Richard Linklater’s “Before Midnight” brings a third look into the lives of Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke). It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival where it was very well received and was soon after picked up by Sony Pictures Classics. It featured prominently in our summer movie preview feature here at HitFix and I, of course, am over the moon for the film. I can’t wait to give it another look. For now, though, let’s hear what you thought of it. Rifle off your thoughts in the comments section and as always, feel free to vote in our poll below.

CANNES – James Gray has always made period films – it”s just that they haven”t always been set in the past. Since arriving on the scene as a precocious 25-year-old with his Venice-laurelled 1994 debut “Little Odessa,” the New Yorker has unobtrusively fostered a reputation as one of the American cinema”s last true classicists, his writing and visual storytelling alike distinguished by an unfashionable emotional sincerity and matte polish – virtues that the French have embraced far more openly over the years than Gray”s compatriots.

Gray is, to some extent, repaying that Continental loyalty with “The Immigrant,” a painstakingly restrained but profoundly romantic coming-to-America drama, and his first film set outside his own lifetime. It”s arguably his most Eurocentric work, and not just as an evocative document of the European immigrant experience – taking as its subject a penniless Polish future-seeker, one of many thousands to set sail for Ellis Island in the grim wake of the First World War. Less literally, in its most rapturous moments, “The Immigrant” channels the Euro-Hollywood immigrant cinema of such artists as Murnau and von Sternberg: its gauzily stylized aesthetic and literarily composed love story reaching past latter-day realism. The resulting film is altogether extraordinary: a silent tragedy with words, at once boldly breaking form while reflecting all Gray”s passions and curiosities.

Like Gray”s last film, 2008″s underappreciated “Two Lovers,” “The Immigrant” takes a modest love triangle as its skeleton – at least, what seems like a love triangle until an abrupt turn of events prove it was two lovers all along. Where “Two Lovers” used that traditional form as a canvas for a finely-etched character study, however, “The Immigrant” is content to keep its principals as enigmatic archetypes, saving the densest detail for its evocation of time and place.

As ever, Gray has little need for frilly backstory or context. The year is 1921, and we open on Ewa (Cotillard) and her TB-stricken sister Magda (Angela Sarafyan), fresh off the boat from Poland and trembling in the naturalization office, waiting for the green light to begin their new lives. It never comes: Magda is whisked off for six months” quarantine in the immigrant infirmary, while Ewa, accused of slatternly behaviour on the boat trip, is instructed to line up for immediate deportation.

It”s a corrupt ruse, designed to get defenceless pretties like Ewa into the care of “talent” promoter and pimp Bruno Weiss (Joaquin Phoenix), who guards his girls with equal parts paternal protectiveness and chilly sexual exploitation. He claims early on that Ewa – whom he dresses, ironically enough, as Lady Liberty for his tacky cheesecake revue – is more equal than the others, though it”s not until late in the game that we learn whether or not he truly believes that. In the meantime, his kinder-hearted cousin, vaudeville magician Orlando (Jeremy Renner, winning if oddly cast), enters the scene and falls swiftly head over heels for her. All the while, the ailing Magda remains Ewa”s primary concern and motivation, even in her romantic decisions; theirs is the pure love story that cuts through the film”s more torrid melodrama, and Ewa”s escape route takes shape only when the men around her realize that.

Not since her Oscar-winning turn in “La Vie en Rose” has Cotillard found a role that allows her remarkable face to do this much of the work for her. Her Ewa is a feat of impressive actorly technique – the French actress learned to speak Polish for the role, her telltale accent unusually buried in her tremulous, tightened vocal delivery – but that seems almost incidental when so much of the character”s pain is written on her soulful Lillian Gish visage, here given the Golden Age movie-star treatment by cinematographer Darius Khondji in one scene after another. She”s never looked better on screen, and for once, that”s not unrelated to her rarely having been better on screen; she interacts with the camera as few of her peers know how.

If Cotillard wows from her first milky close-up, meanwhile, Phoenix”s performance is one of slower-burning sound and fury. His Bruno spends half the film as an amusingly venal cartoon, until a shift in fate exposes the depths of his guilt and desire. His final scene with Cotillard, of which I already remember only gesture and expression rather than dialogue, is a shattering reminder of the unmannered vulnerability Gray has always managed to coax out of this most volatile of contemporary actors.

If a much richer, more tangibly lush recreation of 1920s New York has been built for the screen since Sergio Leone”s “Once Upon a Time in America,” it”s not coming to mind right now. (Sorry, “Gatsby.”) Khondji and production designer Happy Massee deserve almost equal credit with Gray for the film”s cumulative build of heartache, such is the overwhelming atmospheric influence of their half-lit network of cramped patchwork apartments, seedy underground saloons and dockside debris. Khondji”s work, all but sepia-tinted, is repeatedly gasp-inducing, prompting memories of prime Gordon Willis (“The Godfather”) or, especially, late Sven Nykvist (“Fanny and Alexander,” “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”) in its lacy shadow play and deft economy of light.

There”s an instinctive tendency among critics to ascribe the word “valentine” to any film this exquisitely textured and regionally specific, but if “The Immigrant” is a valentine to the Big Apple, it”s a tattered, tear-stained one: rarely has the promised land looked quite so unpromising, even within the geographically consistent and consistently moody oeuvre of James Gray. The film”s devastating final shot holds in a single frame all the city”s capacity for hope and despair, opening doors for some folks while cutting others off at the knees. It”s a double-edged sword the director has contemplated in all his later-set classical works, but never quite as beautifully or broken-heartedly as he does here.

CANNES – Fans of New York-based writer-director (and lovingly adopted son of France) James Gray are getting a lot of bang for their, well, Euro at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. His long-awaited new feature “The Immigrant” may be the main attraction, of course, but he also has a writing credit on Guillaume Canet’s thriller “Blood Ties” — a film that might be described as too James Gray for Gray to have directed himself. Between its elegiac genre qualities, its fuzzily gray visual textures, even its age-old tale of brothers on opposite sides of the law, it’s a veritable checklist of attributes from the director’s past films; small wonder it took a Frenchman to make it.

Not that Canet is blind to all other influence is this relatively skilful but stuffy exercise in impersonation. From the opening vinyl scratch that kicks off its diegetic jukebox soundtrack of 1960s and 1970s soul-rock gold, he cheerfully steals wholesale from the meaner-street output of Martin Scorsese too. That Scorsese, perhaps with a side of Sidney Lumet, can scarcely be avoided when talking about Gray’s work makes “Blood Ties” a rather tangled game of charades, particularly what amounts to a remake of another, tight film — 2008’s “Rivals,” in which Canet actually starred under the direction of compatriot Jacques Maillot,.

Between all these reference points, it’s perhaps fair to say that the filmmaker least reflected in its nostalgic tough-guy strut (which, at 144 minutes, is perhaps more of a saunter) is Canet himself. The urgent pacing and unapologetic B-movie attitude that made his 2006 directorial breakout, the hit Harlan Coben adaptation “Tell No One” is largely absent here; if anything, the film suggests the soapy sprawl of his non-genre 2010 follow-up, “Little White Lies,” may have settled in for the long haul. 

This degree of anonymous identifiability (or should that be the other way round?) has made “Blood Ties” a target of some of the festival’s more casual opprobrium, though the film — which was recently scooped for US distribution by Roadside Attractions — does as little to earn outright scorn as outright praise. There’s something agreeably, reassuringly old-fashioned about its diagrammatic construction and reliance on high-end star power to see its sluggish narrative through. The mainstream market has become sufficiently distended with concept-y franchises these days that there’s something oddly noble about a standard adult potboiler. 

That’s the (admittedly heavily qualified) good news; the bad news is that the pot stops boiling about halfway through this 1970s-set underworld family melodrama, dropping to a slow simmer as far too many narrative ingredients absorb the heat. Billy Crudup and Clive Owen play estranged brothers Frank and Chris — a cop and career criminal, respectively, who become reluctantly entangled in each other’s affairs, professional and personal, when Chris finally returns to the family stomping ground after nearly a decade in the clink. Chris’s return to gangsterism (after the most cursory of attempts to go clean) places undue pressure on Frank’s sterling police career, though their father (James Caan) won’t hear a thing against the bad boy.

Women, written in such a way here that they may as well be called “dames,” further crowd the proceedings. Unwillingly separated from his wife (an indeterminately accented Marion Cotillard, aka Mrs. Canet), a drug-addicted prostitute, Chris takes up with fragile receptionist Mila Kunis (not at her most convincing as a shy naif). Meanwhile, Frank gets deeply involved with a tricky ex: the wife (Zoe Saldana) of the hulking deadbeat (Belgian “Rust and Bone” sensation Matthias Schoenaerts) he just put away for weapons possession. 

Boasting a surprisingly credible Noo Yawk accent, it’s the magnetic Schoenaerts who emerges from this overworked but under-tested ensemble with the most credit. In his first big-ticket assignment, he’s perhaps hungrier to prove himself than his proficient co-stars, none of whom visibly spark either with the material or with each other. Even the leads, wearing their carefully selected period polyester as virtual camouflage, seem happy to recede into the film’s evocative rust-and-dun production design, which carries an authentic whiff of Nixonian mildew; in his first production set and shot outside his homeland, it’s the recreation of time and place that Canet seems most jazzed about.

The final result is diverting but inevitably derivative, with even Gray’s own dialogue (co-written with Canet) sounding sometimes like genre play-speak. “I’m back in the New York groove,” proclaims the film’s opening song, though it’s not strictly true: Gray never left, but Canet’s just arrived, which may be why the French-produced “Blood Ties” still feels a tad jet-lagged.  

The Weinstein Company came to Cannes ready to show off with films like “Only God Forgives” (via VOD shingle RADiUS), “The Immigrant” and “Fruitvale Station” in tow, not to mention a big presentation of material including peeks at biopics “Grace of Monaco” and “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom”. There were rumblings that footage from Judi Dench starrer “Philomena” at the film market had revved the distributors engines, and indeed, today TWC has announced acquisition of the title in the US, UK and Spain and positioned it in the fall of 2013, obviously aiming for an awards trajectory.

The film, directed by Stephen Frears, is based on the 2009 novel “The Lost Child of Philomena Lee.” It tells the true story of an Irish woman’s 50-year search for the illegitimate son that was whisked away from her by the church as an infant and sold to America for adoption. Seven minutes of the film was shown to buyers last week and TWC outbid all comers. Judi Dench stars in the film, along with Steve Coogan (also a co-writer), Tracey Seward and Gabriella Tana.

“I am delighted to be working again with my dear friends Judi Dench and Stephen Frears, blurbed Weinstein via press release. “We have had great successes in the past together and I have always enjoyed the collaboration. ‘Philomena’ is a brilliant project and we are excited to bring it to theaters this fall.”

Indeed, Frears and Dench have seen their share of success in the awards season under Harvey Weinstein’s watch. In the Miramax days, Dench received Best Actress nominations for 1997’s “Mrs. Brown” and 2001’s “Iris.” She won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for 1998’s “Shakespeare in Love” in 1998 and received another nomination in the category for 2000’s “Chocolat.” When Weinstein struck out on his Weinstein Company venture, one of the first awards successes was “Mrs. Henderson Presents” in 2005, which landed Dench another lead actress nomination and was directed by, you guessed it, Stephen Frears.

Frears was nominated in the Best Director category for 1990’s “The Grifters” at Miramax and the year after the Weinsteins left the company in 2006, his film “The Queen” managed a slew of nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. Obviously, the pair have a long, healthy history with Weinstein.

Last year Dench was nominated for a handful of awards for her performance in “Skyfall,” including a BAFTA.

“Philomena” is set for release this year amid an already healthy slate of players, from “August: Osage County” to “The Butler,” to the above-mentioned “Fruitvale Station,” “Grace of Monaco,” “The Immigrant,” “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom” and “Only God Forgives,” not to mention the documentary “Salinger.” It promises to be another busy fall for The Weinstein Company.

CANNES – “Nebraska,” Alexander Payne’s latest dramedy of American ennui and mislaid family relationships, opens with a vintage monochrome Paramount Pictures ident standing in for the flashier, CGI-enhanced mountain peak of recent years. It’s a detail that may strike you either as a cute throwaway (hey, the film’s in old-timey black-and-white!) or something rather more calculated. Like so many of his peers, Payne is deeply indebted to the American new wave of the 1970s, and with its Bogdanovich-esque lensing and revival of Bruce Dern, “Nebraska” cops to that debt pretty openly with this badge of cinematic classicism. That’s all well and good, but is it stretching to detect a certain smug conservatism there too, a whiff of self-congratulation in its resistance to the new?

Probably. It’d be unfair, after all, to suggest that “Nebraska” romanticizes traditional heartland values: if anything, much of the melancholy in Payne’s first onscreen visit to his home state since 2002’s “About Schmidt” (which was also, coincidentally, his last entry at Cannes) hinges on its elderly inhabitants being as pettily venal today as they were 40 years ago. A certain shrugging sourness has been Payne’s career-long signature, coloring films as wonderful as “Election” and as phony as “The Descendants” alike, but only in more recent works has that perspective been presented as humanism: how much empathy and affection you detect in “Nebraska”‘s gallery of bitter old coots will affect how warmly you respond to it.

The film’s lead character, Woody Grant (Bruce Dern), is certainly a mournfully sentimental creation: a plainspoken but increasingly addled former mechanic who’s not so much raging against the dying of the light as giving it a hard stare. His crusty demeanor doesn’t go far toward masking a vulnerable guilelessness that propels the entire narrative, as he falls for one of those junk-mail sweepstakes letters promising a prize of a million dollars to anyone naive enough to ignore the fine print. “He just believes stuff that people tell him,” explains his son, David (Will Forte), to the company clerk finally charged with letting Woody down easily. “Oh, that’s too bad,” she replies brightly.

It’s the most quintessentially Payne-ful exchange in a script that, in an unusual break from routine, the director didn’t actually write himself — decrying a contemporary world in which nothing should be taken at face value, and where those who persist in doing so wind up with only the puniest of rewards for their sincerity. The blandly conciliatory David, who humors his father’s delusions to the extent of proposing a father-son road trip to collect Woody’s non-existent winnings, is constructed as a prissy emblem of modern-day disingenuousness. His milquetoast politeness only worsens the farcical situation as Woody and David make a pit stop in their former hometown of Hawthorne, Nebraska, and word of Woody’s false good fortune ripples through his opportunistic circle of old friends and extended family — all of whom, questionably, are depicted as too dense to doubt his story. As tempers run high and old grudges and debts surface, it’s David’s unyielding, bullshit-averse mother Kate (June Squibb, ripely overplaying) who repeats rights the situation with her blunt candor; in Payne’s world, you catch more flies with vinegar than with honey.

This is a tidy enough setup for a sharp comedy of manners, though Payne can’t seem to decide if he’s coddling these old-school Midwesterners for their rudely rustic values or sneering at the sheer narrowness of their worldview. Sometimes it does both at once: a galling bum note in Bob Nelson’s script comes when David’s sweetly stupid aunt explains that her deadbeat son did jail time for “sexual assault, not rape… there’s a difference,” a potentially telling line that the film simply plays awkwardly for laughs. The younger generation of Nebraskans shown in the film isn’t any more enlightened, as David’s loutish cousins (one of them the aforementioned rapist) jeer him for driving a “Jap car,” among other such sissy-ish traits.

There’s an argument to be made that Payne, famously a son of Omaha, is putting himself up for scrutiny here, poking fun at the flawed society that raised and continues to mark him: something he arguably did in his earlier work, where even characters as deplorable as “Election” anti-heroine Tracy Flick were possessed of an admirable, self-preserving intelligence. But it’s hard to see much self-identification in the comedy he creates from these small-minded, materialistic rubes, and even if you accept the film as an exercise in self-loathing — hard to do, given the arch tone of Nelson’s script — that doesn’t make its portrait of the middle-class Midwest any less condescending. And that’s to say nothing of the way it views almost any character over retirement age as a figure of fun, whether in the one-note feistiness of Squibb’s character (can we have a moratorium on foul-mouthed old women as comic standbys?) or the doddering, circular-speaking cluelessness of Woody’s male contemporaries. 

If “Nebraska” is finally warmer and more amusing than “The Descendants” — which cunningly swept its misogyny and misanthropy under a politically correct plea for social and geographical preservation — it’s because the father-son relationship at its core carries some sweet us-against-the-world strength, even if Woody himself is as oblivious to that as he is to nearly everything else around him. It’s touching and believable, however misguided, that David persists with the sweepstakes fantasy, even with no contingency plan in place for its inevitable unravelling, and it’s to the credit of Nelson’s script that the two don’t seem to understand each other any more at the film’s inconclusive close than they did at the beginning.

If no actual tears arrive by this point, that could be down to performances that seem functional rather than truly invested. Dern imbues Woody with a kind of dishevelled dignity, but conveys little subtext beneath between the character’s permanently bemused surliness — one wonders what Payne’s first choice, the inflexibly retired Gene Hackman, would have made of the role in a Royal Tenenbaum mood. Forte, in a role that requires tetchy specificity, hasn’t the strength of presence to make David much more than an agreeable sap.

There’s an easy breeziness to the leading men’s interplay that Payne has evidently fostered in the same manner that he demands of his craftsmen: Phedon Papamichael’s cleanly composed black-and-white cinematography doesn’t have much use for heavy contrast, while Kevin Tent’s shaggy editing all-too-frequently resorts to twee ‘wipe’ cuts. Mark Orton’s folksy acoustic score, with its relentlessly repeated motifs, will no doubt find plenty of fans, but its insistent tone of downbeat poignancy doesn’t quite square with the flip tone of all too many scenes, as if Payne is trying to pass the film off as something less cynical than it actually is. Payne’s homecoming will be treasured by his many devotees as a work of rueful, backward-looking humanity, but for this critic, it’s his earlier, more nakedly cruel films that still cut deepest; the home fires are kept flickering in “Nebraska,” but they don’t really burn.

When last we heard from Todd Haynes (save a quick trip to HBO’s “Enlightened”), he had brought James M. Cain’s “Mildred Pierce” to the small screen via mini-series. Kate Winslet stormed the awards circuit winning every trophy in sight (much like Michael Douglas seems poised to do this year for “Behind the Candelabra”) and the event was in general a nice fit in Haynes’s oeuvre of female-centric drama. He’s set for another as he transitions back to the big screen with “Carol,” Screen Daily reports.

The film will be based on Patricia Highsmith’s novella “The Price of Salt,” about a relationship between a 20-something department store worker in 1950s New York and a wife trapped in a loveless marriage. Mia Wasikowska and Cate Blanchett have been tapped for the two roles.

The film brings Haynes and Blanchett together again for the first time since 2007’s “I’m Not Here.,” the experimental Bob Dylan biopic that brought Blanchett an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Phyllis Nagy, who previously wrote the teleplay for HBO’s “Mrs. Harris,” will adapt Highsmith’s novella.

Speaking with Screen Daily, producer Elizabeth Karlsen mentioned the project’s place in a film market seemingly bereft of major female roles, making Haynes’s involvement all the more special. “A recent report from the USC Annenberg School revealed the lack of major speaking parts for women in 2012,” she told the outlet. “As a female producer, that report has only renewed my passion and inspiration for this film because there are very few of these roles out there for the likes of Cate and Mia.”

What’s your favorite Todd Haynes film to date? Tell us in the poll below. (And yeah, we’ll go ahead and include “Mildred Pierce” in the bunch.)

The Broadcast Television Journalists Association (BTJA) announced today its list of nominees for TV programming. CBS series “The Big Bang Theory” and FX’s mini-series “American Horror Story: Asylum” led the way with six nominations apiece. On the drama side, FX’s “The Americans,” AMC’s “Breaking Bad,” HBO’s “Game of Thrones” and CBS’s “The Good Wife” led with four nods each.

Netflix’s new stab at serialized entertainment, “House of Cards” — developed by David Fincher, among others — picked up a pair of nominations for Best Actor in a Drama Series (Kevin Spacey) and Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (Corey Stoll). HBO’s recently canceled series “Enlightened” also landed some performance notice, for Laura Dern and Molly Shannon.

On the mini-series side, Sundance’s “Top of the Lake” from Jane Campion received a slew of notices, including Best Actress for Emily Moss. But perhaps most notable is the presence of Steven Soderbergh’s “Behind the Candelabra.” The film was nominated for Best Movie or Mini-Series and both Michael Douglas and Matt Damon picked up Best Actor nominations.

The film just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to mostly raves. Our own Guy Lodge called it “a sympathetic study of a man defiantly resisting his own significance,” and indeed, Douglas looks primed to collect throughout the year when TV awards shows such as this rear their head. Sorry, Al Pacino.

Check out the full list of BTJA nominees below.

Best Comedy Series
“The Big Bang Theory” – CBS
“Louie” – FX
“The Middle” – ABC
“New Girl” – FOX
“Parks and Recreation” – NBC
“Veep” – HBO

Best Actor in a Comedy Series
Don Cheadle (“House of Lies”) – Showtime
Louis C.K. (“Louie”) – FX
Jake Johnson (“New Girl”) – FOX
Jim Parsons (“The Big Bang Theory”) – CBS
Adam Scott (“Parks and Recreation”) – NBC
Jeremy Sisto (“Suburgatory”) – ABC

Best Actress in a Comedy Series
Laura Dern (“Enlightened”) – HBO
Zooey Deschanel (“New Girl”) – FOX
Lena Dunham (“Girls”) – HBO
Sutton Foster (“Bunheads”) – ABC Family
Julia Louis-Dreyfus (“Veep”) – HBO
Amy Poehler (“Parks and Recreation”) – NBC

Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series
Max Greenfield (“New Girl”) – FOX
Simon Helberg (“The Big Bang Theory”) – CBS
Alex Karpovsky (“Girls”) – HBO
Adam Pally (“Happy Endings”) – ABC
Chris Pratt (“Parks and Recreation”) – NBC
Danny Pudi (“Community”) – NBC

Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
Carly Chaikin (“Suburgatory”) – ABC
Kaley Cuoco (“The Big Bang Theory”) – CBS
Sarah Hyland (“Modern Family”) – ABC
Melissa Rauch (“The Big Bang Theory”) – CBS
Eden Sher (“The Middle”) – ABC
Casey Wilson (“Happy Endings”) – ABC

Best Guest Performer in a Comedy Series
Melissa Leo (“Louie”) – FX
David Lynch (“Louie”) – FX
Bob Newhart (“The Big Bang Theory”) – CBS
Patton Oswalt (“Parks and Recreation”) – NBC
Molly Shannon (“Enlightened”) – HBO
Patrick Wilson (“Girls”) – HBO

Best Drama Series
“The Americans” – FX
“Breaking Bad” – AMC
“Downton Abbey” – PBS
“Game of Thrones” – HBO
“The Good Wife” – CBS
“Homeland” – Showtime

Best Actor in a Drama Series
Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad”) – AMC
Damian Lewis (“Homeland”) – Showtime
Andrew Lincoln (“The Walking Dead”) – AMC
Timothy Olyphant (“Justified”) – FX
Matthew Rhys (“The Americans”) – FX
Kevin Spacey (“House of Cards”) – Netflix

Best Actress in a Drama Series
Claire Danes (“Homeland”) – Showtime
Vera Farmiga (“Bates Motel”) – A&E
Julianna Margulies (“The Good Wife”) – CBS
Tatiana Maslany (“Orphan Black”) – BBC America
Elisabeth Moss (“Mad Men”) – AMC
Keri Russell (“The Americans”) – FX

Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series
Jonathan Banks (“Breaking Bad”) – AMC
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (“Game of Thrones”) – HBO
Michael Cudlitz (“Southland”) – TNT
Noah Emmerich (“The Americans”) – FX
Walton Goggins (“Justified”) – FX
Corey Stoll (“House of Cards”) – Netflix

Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series
Jennifer Carpenter (“Dexter”) – Showtime
Emilia Clarke (“Game of Thrones”) – HBO
Anna Gunn (“Breaking Bad”) – AMC
Regina King (“Southland”) – TNT
Monica Potter (“Parenthood”) – NBC
Abigail Spencer (“Rectify”) – Sundance

Best Guest Performer in a Drama Series
Jim Beaver (“Justified”) – FX
Jane Fonda (“The Newsroom”) – HBO
Martha Plimpton (“The Good Wife”) – CBS
Carrie Preston (“The Good Wife”) – CBS
Diana Rigg (“Game of Thrones”) – HBO
Jimmy Smits (“Sons of Anarchy”) – FX

Best Movie or Mini-Series
“American Horror Story: Asylum” – FX
“Behind the Candelabra” – HBO
“The Crimson Petal and the White” – Encore
“The Hour” – BBC America
“Political Animals” – USA
“Top of the Lake” – Sundance

Best Actor in a Movie or Mini-Series
Benedict Cumberbatch (“Parade’s End”) – HBO
Matt Damon (“Behind the Candelabra”) – HBO
Michael Douglas (“Behind the Candelabra”) – HBO
Toby Jones (“The Girl”) – HBO
Al Pacino (“Phil Spector”) – HBO
Dominic West (“The Hour”) – BBC America

Best Actress in a Movie or Mini-Series
Angela Bassett (“Betty & Coretta”) – Lifetime
Romola Garai (“The Hour”) – BBC America
Rebecca Hall (“Parade’s End”) – HBO
Jessica Lange (“American Horror Story: Asylum”) – FX
Elisabeth Moss (“Top of the Lake”) – Sundance
Sigourney Weaver (“Political Animals”) – USA

Best Supporting Actor in a Movie or Mini-Series
James Cromwell (“American Horror Story: Asylum”) – FX
Peter Mullan (“Top of the Lake”) – Sundance
Zachary Quinto (“American Horror Story: Asylum”) – FX
Sebastian Stan (“Political Animals”) – USA
David Wenham (“Top of the Lake”) – Sundance
Thomas M. Wright (“Top of the Lake”) – Sundance

Best Supporting Actress in a Movie or Mini-Series
Ellen Burstyn (“Political Animals”) – USA
Sienna Miller (“The Girl”) – HBO
Sarah Paulson (“American Horror Story: Asylum”) – FX
Lily Rabe (“American Horror Story: Asylum”) – FX
Imelda Staunton (“The Girl”) – HBO
Alfre Woodard (“Steel Magnolias”) – Lifetime

Best Reality Series
“Duck Dynasty” – A&E
“The Moment” – USA
“Pawn Stars” – History Channel
“Push Girls” – Sundance
“Small Town Security” – AMC
“Wild Things with Dominic Monaghan” – BBC America

Best Reality Series – Competition
“Chopped” – Food Network
“Face Off” – Syfy
“Shark Tank” – ABC
“So You Think You Can Dance” – FOX
“Survivor” – CBS
“The Voice” – NBC

Best Reality Host
Tom Bergeron (“Dancing With the Stars”) – ABC
Cat Deeley (“So You Think You Can Dance”) – FOX
Gordon Ramsay (“Hell”s Kitchen”/”Masterchef”) – FOX
RuPaul (“RuPaul”s Drag Race”) – Logo
Ryan Seacrest (“American Idol”) – FOX
Kurt Warner (“The Moment”) – USA

Best Talk Show
“Conan” – TBS
“The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” – Comedy Central
“The Ellen DeGeneres Show” – Warner Brothers Television Distribution
“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” – ABC
“Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” – NBC
“Marie” – Hallmark Channel

Best Animated Series
“Adventure Time” – Cartoon Network
“Archer” – FX
“Phineas and Ferb” – Disney Channel
“Regular Show” – Cartoon Network
“The Simpsons” – FOX
“Star Wars: The Clone Wars” – Cartoon Network

CANNES – If nothing else — and like many Cannes folk who entered this morning’s screening bleary-eyed, and left it black-eyed, I’m still working out just how much else it is — “Only God Forgives” may be the single reddest film to grace our screens since “Moulin Rouge!.” Just about the only scenes in which blood isn’t virtually seeping from the walls in Nicolas Winding Refn’s sleek, stunted, undeniably startling revenge thriller are those in which it’s quite literally splashing them. 

Those who tagged “Drive” with the “ultra-violent” label would be well advised to give “Only God Forgives” a wide berth; Refn has followed the relative romance of that gorgeous thriller with a film in which human bodies — even ones as belovedly immaculate as Ryan Gosling’s — are little more than crash test dummies, built to be broken, repeatedly and dispassionately. This isn’t a film about anything that’s on the screen — which is just as well, since apart from the surfeit of blades gliding serenely through human flesh, only faintly wrinkling the thousand-yard stares of the penetrated, there’s barely anything to speak of going on in Refn’s skinny, self-penned script. Rather, “Only God Forgives” is entirely about its own physical violations, and how deliberately it can design these extremities.

As the bodies pile up in increasingly grisly — and not terribly inventive — fashion, Refn dispenses with such niceties as tension, momentum or palpable human stakes. By the end, characters are passively serving themselves up for the slaughter, the endgame of a film that has the good grace not to appear very excited by its own rampant nihilism. “Only God Forgives” is dull, but it’s also oddly transfixing, and not just in the sheer splendor of its craft.

Resembling “Valhalla Rising” significantly more than “Drive” in the director’s canon, there’s a zonked, even balletic, quality to its flattened, dehumanized narrative of carnage that’s clearly what Refn was going for: as characters move like molasses across the screen, speaking little and scarcely conveying more, our gaze slows with them. There’s been some talk about the influence of brutal Asian pulp stylists (Kim Jee-Woon came to mind at several points) on this Bangkok-set film, but it could just as easily be likened to Wong Kar-Wai attempting a video nasty. (The end credits, on the other hand, dedicate the film to less immediately obvious source of inspiration: current Cannes comeback vet Alejandro Jodorowsky.) 

Even amid my appreciation for its woozy, sculpted grossness, however, I can’t help wishing “Only God Forgives” was doing a little more, and I mean purely on the level of nuts-and-bolts storytelling, not grander emotional or thematic resonance. “Drive,” with its preponderance of hotly-styled posturing, wasn’t exactly Sartre either, but there was some basic yarn there; characters in the new film, by contrast, seem to walk around the plot whenever the option is given them.

This is what we’re given. Gosling plays Julian, a cool customer (as if you needed to ask) who runs a Thai boxing club with his more volatile brother Billy (Tom Burke). If that seems an odd venture, it’s actually a front for an Eastern outpost of a major drug-running circle run by their mother Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas), which only makes a little more sense. When Billy rapes and murders a teenage prostitute, and is murdered in turn for this crime, Julian initially opts out of retaliation: Billy had it coming, after all, and revenge is a dirty business that might soil one of his impeccably fitted T-shirts. (I’m projecting here, but Gosling’s studiedly opaque performance invites any number of readings.)

Crystal, of course, is having none of it: a seething emasculator in Real Housewives chic, she’s on the first plane to Thailand to mourn her favorite son — she makes no bones about this — and berate the other one for his cowardice. Bearing down on Julian at the same time is Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm), a retired policeman on the warpath against the Bangkok underworld for reasons as enigmatic as Julian’s own motivations. Indeed, “enigmatic” seems to have been used as a placeholder term throughout the script: what matters (or doesn’t) to Refn is that characters do things he can pore over in his catalogue of violence.

One of the film’s most interesting scenes — not so much narratively as in the way it beats down audience expectations accumulated over decades of the star system — finds Julian challenging Chang to a boxing duel, only to put up not much fight himself as Chang swiftly beats him to steak tartare, leaving his face a ghoulish mask of bruising for the rest of the film. It could be that Chang is simply that indomitable, though Julian — having entered the fight in a natty three-piece suit — appears to give himself no chance to begin with. Is this simple defeat, a death wish, or a token gesture at revenge made to please his mother, watching stonily from the sidelines? If Refn knows, he has little interest in telling us; of more concern to him is the perverse beauty of watching Ryan Gosling getting his ass most bloodily kicked.

“Drive” may have made Gosling a star, cinematically salivating over his every head turn, but “Only God Forgives” is far less kind to him: if he’s not getting physically pummeled, he’s taking a verbal beating from Kristin Scott Thomas, who steals the film with queenly entitlement in her few scenes. Correctly surmising that the best way to counter the potentially star-freezing polish of Refn’s aesthetic is to vamp it up with discordant relish, her Crystal is both the film’s most poisonous presence and its most vital life force, the kind of walking nightmare who, upon learning that her late son murdered a child, responds cuttingly, “I’m sure he had his reasons.”

Refn seems barely interested in his script’s allusions (they barely count as innuendo) to mother-son sexual relations; Scott Thomas, on the other hand, revels in them, musing on the size of his cock over dinner with flirtatious viciousness. It’s a grand, gleeful performance in a film that scarcely demands it; sneaking the film itself past the Academy’s faint-hearted acting branch will be a tough task, but the campaign for a Best Supporting Actress nomination (with the chance to hear the words “cum dumpster” on national television) begins now. 

“Only God Forgives” is equally well-served — albeit in a manner rather more compliant with Refn’s vision — by cinematographer Larry Smith, who hasn’t had this kind of showcase for his abilities since “Eyes Wide Shut.” As in that Kubrick marvel, his precise lighting schemes locate texture and contrast even in near-total darkness. “Drive” composer Cliff Martinez, meanwhile, contributes an electronic score of magnificently atonal sonic animosity, less bar-friendly than his ubiquitous “Drive” soundtrack, but even more brooding.

“Only God Forgives” could hardly look or sound more luscious, then — which is either a problem, if you think a film that dwells this extensively on the least pleasant reaches of human behavior has an obligation not to ornamentalize them, or a virtue, if you simply buy the film as the inhuman cartoon that Refn and cast do. I can accept the latter, but wish the cartoon was a bit more, well, animated. For a film in which the first word of dialogue uttered by Gosling on screen is the simple directive “go,” “Only God Forgives” ultimately stagnates in its exquisite pools of red.

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4912281618001

CANNES – Straight from the Palais, HitFix’s Gregory Ellwood and Guy Lodge of In Contention break down a few of the most-talked about films from the first half of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, including “A Separation” director Asghar Farhadi’s “The Past,” the Coen Bros.’ “Inside Llewyn Davis” starring Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan and Justin Timberlake, and the WIlliam Faulkner adaptation “As I Lay Dying” starring and directed by ubiquitous multi-hyphenate James Franco. Check out all their thoughts on these films and more in the video above.

(Click here for part two and thoughts on the fest’s second week, including Plame d’Or winner “Blue is the Warmest Color.”)

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4912310036001

Zal Batmanglij’s “The East” premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival in January. Its positioning this summer has me interested in giving it another look amid the surrounding blockbuster noise. The film is about an operative for a private intelligence firm embedded in a corporation-focused anarchist group who sees her priorities tested. It is the follow-up to Batmanglij’s debut, “Sound of my Voice.”

Patricia Clarkson and Brit Marling are featured in the clip above, the former reminding of how she can lift a character right off the page. Alexander Skarsgård, Ellen Page and Toby Kebbell also star. As with “Sound of my Voice,” Marling served as both co-writer and co-producer on the film.

“The East” hits theaters on May 31.