10. “The Class” (2008)
Before “The Class,” no French movie had won taken the Palme d’Or in over twenty years (Maurice Pialat’s “Under The Sea Of Satan” had been the previous victor). “The Class” isn’t quite good enough to justify breaking that particular record (it wasn’t even the best French film in competition that year: Arnaud Desplechin’s “A Christmas Tale” would have been a more deserving victor), but it is a charming, deeply felt film that felt at the time like the rare crowd-pleasing winner. Based on a novel by François Bégaudeau, based on his experiences and starring the writer as a fictionalized version of himself, the film follows the teacher and his form in a tough French school as they circle each other in an uneasy alliance. It looks as though it could be an inspirational teacher movie, but it’s far from that, demonstrating a toughness and a deceptive complexity that makes it not just a film about the educational system, but a film about France in the 2000s. Beautifully acted by a non professional cast and offering no pat truisms, it’s a shame that director Laurent Cantet’s two subsequent films haven’t quite lived up to this film’s example.
9. “The Child” (2005)
Just six years after winning the Palme for “Rosetta,” the Dardennes joined the illustrious ranks of Alf Sjoberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Bille August, Emir Kusturica and Shohei Imamura as two-time winners (Michael Haneke would subsequently do the same). The deceptive simplicity and immediacy of “The Child” may have been flattered by the tricksiness and formal intricacy of the other big players that year (like, say, Haneke’s “Hidden” or Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s “Three Times“) —by contrast, the Dardennes’ style feels thrillingly authentic and unadorned, and as ever it’s matched by the performances they coaxed from their young cast. It’s the story of near-indigent 18 year-old Sonia (Deborah Francois), who brings her newborn son home only to discover that her boyfriend Bruno (Jeremie Renier) has lent out their tiny one-room apartment. When she eventually tracks Bruno down, the feckless petty criminal sells the infant to an underground adoption gang, only to immediately renege on the deal when he sees how it affects Sonia. In any other hands, this would be a straightforward cautionary tale, but the Dardennes have such compassion for their characters, no matter how misguided, that by the end, you still somehow root for their improbably durable love.
8. “Dancer In The Dark” (2000)
He might be persona non grata at Cannes (or at least was for a while), but Lars Von Trier used to be the toast of the Croisette, reaching a peak with the Palme d’Or winning “Dancer In The Dark.” And appropriately so: while the more recent “Nymphomaniac” might be the director’s magnum opus, ‘Dancer’ remains his best. A spiritual successor to his similarly acclaimed “Breaking The Waves,” the film sees Von Trier push the digital form he’d used with the Dogme movement to new heights, using the frills-free look to blend a sort of Von Sternberg-ish melodrama with MGM-style musical. In her sole true acting role to date, Björk plays Selma, a Czech immigrant in Washington state who consoles herself in the midst of her poverty and degenerating eyesight by watching Hollywood musicals with her colleague (Catherine Deneuve). She’s saving up for an operation to prevent her young son from also going blind, but when her policeman landlord (David Morse) steals from her, it leads to even greater tragedy. Von Trier’s penchant for torturing his leading ladies reaches an apex here, but to dismiss the film (as some did at the time) is to overlook the lo-fi poetry of its form, the boldness of its approach, and the unaffected, raw performance of its wonderful lead, which adds up to something truly mighty.
7. “The Son’s Room” (2001)
The winner of the 2001 Palme was a surprise: with films like “Mulholland Drive,” “Moulin Rouge!” and “The Man Who Wasn’t There” in competition, the prize went to a modest little drama from Nanni Moretti, a Cannes favorite who’d never made this kind of splash before. But while it might have raised eyebrows, the film was a worthy winner, telling a universal story with utter specificity and enormous humanity. Moretti’s film focuses on a middle-class Italian family whose happiness is torn apart when, after the father Giovanni (Moretti himself) has to go on an urgent call with a patient and must cancel a jogging date with his son (Giuseppe Sanfelice), the boy goes on to die in a scuba diving accident. Comparisons were drawn to “Ordinary People” (and, by the time it hit U.S. theaters, the same year’s “In The Bedroom”) and it’s kin to those two films in portraying total, life-upending, helpless grief without ever once becoming sentimental. It’s a movie that feels utterly human, and it’s a reminder that while Moretti has never been entirely fashionable, he’s capable of greatness (his recent “Mia Madre” marked a return to form after a few disappointments).
6. “Amour” (2012)
Never one for ripping off a band aid in one go when a slow, incremental, hair-by-hair peel will do, the exquisite torture of Michael Haneke’s “Amour” suggests it’s possibly the finest film never to have elicited a single repeat viewing. But its one-off impact is such that it hardly needs one. It’s hard to say which is the more merciless: the relentless, debilitating, progressively more undignified ravages of old age and illness that the film depicts, or Haneke’s unblinking focus on its mortifications, which makes his typically austere film so upsetting that there are moments you want to turn your head from the screen. And yet you are riveted: aside from the pristine perfection of Haneke’s style with its immaculate compositions and edits so wincingly precise as to feel like lacerations, the performances from Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant are instantaneously affecting, and yet unsullied by sentimentality. Also almost absent the tendency for didacticism that can mar some of Haneke’s more overtly provocative works, “Amour” gives you a visceral experience of devotion, frustration, erosion and death —it’s an experience so profound as to be deeply valuable, but so upsetting you might wish you could give it back.