Following The Awards Season 2021/2022: Cannes Festival 2021
As is tradition, the Cannes Film Festival serves as the first major kickoff to the fall film festival season, which also corresponds with the true start of the new awards season. With audiences getting their first reactions to various major awards contenders, this really is the first place where narratives can start to build that could lead to Oscar gold. Therefore, it is worthwhile to recap the festival and see what landed and what missed the mark.
The immediate focus has to go on the winner of Palme d'Or, Titane. Julia Ducournau's highly praised feature has caused many to not only view it as a Best International Film contender but also a potential contender in above-the-line categories following in the footsteps of a recent Palme d'Or winner, Parasite. This, however, feels clearly like misplaced faith with nearly everything working against the feature. First off, while Parasite did in fact win Best Picture, that is an incredibly rare sight as one of only four films which won the Palme d'Or and got an above-the-line nomination in the past two decades. Out of those, the only other film to be in a language other than English was Amour but there is a clear pattern with these two films. Both Michael Haneke and Bong Joon-ho had established careers filled with well-respected features that touched western audiences. Even outside Palme d'Or winners, international films to break into those above-the-line categories are traditionally from well-respected and well-known voices such as Thomas Vinterberg and Paweł Pawlikowski. Titane doesn't have this. While Julia Ducournau's feature solo directorial debut Raw got a good amount of attention in certain niches, it didn't get recognised by The Academy, meaning there is no evidence that The Academy as a whole has a relationship with the filmmaker that would help score a nomination.
It also doesn't help that Titane is a provocative and insane film that clearly is not Academy-friendly in the slightest. While many want to believe The Academy is becoming a woke group that embraces weird cinema, this is objectively not true – at least for now. The larger issue many are ignoring is France's position in the campaign for the film. France has historically been quite conservative with their submissions to The Academy, as seen in major upsets such as Les Misérables being selected over Portrait of a Lady on Fire. It is really hard to imagine that, even with a Palme d'Or victory, France would select the film as their submission, meaning that Titane's realistic chances are slim to none across the board.
Luckily, there were quite a few films that debuted with plenty of hype and awards potential. Keeping with the Best International Feature category: both The Worst Person in the World and A Hero seem like near locks for the category. Both films not only received an incredible buzz but solid distributors in Neon and Amazon, respectively. A Hero also comes as the newest film from Asghar Farhadi, who won the then-Best Foreign Language Film Oscar twice for both A Separation and The Salesman, and even got Best Original Screenplay nomination for A Separation. Both films are Academy-friendly and seem prime for selection from their respected countries. Other potential competitors for this category coming out of Cannes include Compartment No. 6, Drive My Car and Paris, 13th District.
Another category that got some buzz was the Best Animated Feature category, which saw Belle, Where Is Anne Frank and The Summit of the Gods premiere to overall praise. Immediately, it feels rather safe to write off Where Is Anne Frank and The Summit of the Gods, considering the category's reluctance to nominate international animated features that don't come from established names. It would be easy to say the same thing about Belle despite its solid praise, if not for the fact that Mamoru Hosoda actually did get nominated a few years back for Mirai. It seemed impossible that a non-Studio Ghibli and especially a non-Miyazaki anime film would be able to break into the category, but Hosoda's film snuck into the lineup signaling a possible wide-spread appreciation for the director. With an incredibly solid animated line-up already established, it feels hard to predict that Hosoda will find that lucky break once again but at this point, it also can't be written off.
Finally, it is time to analyse the big players. Clearly, the film with the biggest potential coming out of Cannes for across-the-board love is Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch. While the love might not have been as overwhelming as some would hope, the reaction still was overall positive and Anderson's two previous live-action features managed to get at least a screenplay nomination. With an established pathway through a few more film festivals towards its October release, this could build the steam to possibly even become a Best Screenplay winner, especially if the narrative of Anderson never winning an Oscar is used correctly. The works of Kogonada and Sean Baker earned good marks also, meaning those filmmakers might get a shot at breaking into the Academy's bubble.
If anything, the bigger titles Cannes served more as an end for some film's journey than the start of them. Sean Penn's Flag Day came into universal hate, signaling the director is still far from reclaiming both the awards and general praise he was once showered with. Leos Carax's Annette got fine reviews but proved too weird to be seen as significant in the awards season as of now, and Stillwater received mixed reviews that make it hard to imagine the film will be able to keep enough momentum from an August release date to become a major player in January.
The 2021 Cannes Film Festival might not produce a Best Picture nominee like years past and failed to have any film receive the same undeniable passion as something like Parasite, but still is at least a start. These contenders are going to stay in the conversation as they jump from festival to festival, and as more films are added to the conversation along the way, it will be interesting to see what sticks and what drops. The 2021-2022 awards season is upon us, and the only thing left to say is: “God help us all!”
