Cannes waves flag for US auteur films by giving top prize to "Elephant"

US director Gus Van Sant poses for photographers with French theatre and cinema director, head of the jury, Patrice Chereau (3rdL), US actress Meg Ryan (5thL), French actress Karin Viard (4thL), Indian actress Aishwarya Rai (R), after being awarded the Golden Palm and the Best direction prize for his film "Elephant" during the closing ceremony of the 56th Cannes film festival. - Photo: AFP

"Elephant", a documentary-style movie about a school massacre that strongly resembled the real-life 1999 Columbine high school shootings, took the coveted award at the closing ceremony in this French Riviera town Sunday.

In doing so, it elbowed past 19 other contenders, including "Dogville", the latest production by Cannes' favourite son, the Danish director Lars von Trier, which almost all critics had expected to win.

Van Sant, who is best-known for "Good Will Hunting", "Drugstore Cowboy" and "My Own Private Idaho", also picked up the Best Director prize -- an unusual double honour from the nine-person Cannes jury that this year included US director Steven Soderbergh and actress Meg Ryan.

"To win is kind of miraculous and fortunate and lucky," Van Sant told a media conference after receiving the awards. He was the first American to win the prestigious Palme since Quentin Tarantino took it for "Pulp Fiction" in 1994.

His film, made for a US cable network on a meagre three-million-dollar (2.5 million euro) budget with a mostly non-professional cast of real students in a school in the American west, was not meant as a criticism of America but more "a musing about school violence," he said. The title came from a highly acclaimed 1989 BBC documentary about Northern Ireland.

Diversity is one of Cannes' signature themes, however, and that was reinforced with the award of the runner-up Grand Prize to "Distant", a Turkish film by Nuri Bilge Ceylan that explores the emptiness of life and loneliness in the city.

A French-language Canadian film, "The Barbarian Invasions", that was probably the most popular entry seen in the week and a half long festival, earned a Best Screenplay award for its writer and director, Denys Arcand. It also took the Best Actress prize for Marie-Josee Croze, who played a heroin junky helping a dying man cope with his pain.

Overlooked was the Clint Eastwood-directed "Mystic River", a psychological thriller that used its all-star cast of Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Tim Robbins to good effect.

For many of the 30,000 industry types and journalists accredited to the event, and for the tens of thousands more movie fans who flocked to the Riviera for a glimpse of celebrities, the real high point came early on, with the out-of-competition premiere of "The Matrix Reloaded" in the presence of Keanu Reeves and its other stars.

Little else lived up to Cannes' reputation for over-the-top cinematic hype except for Arnold Schwarzenegger's shameless plugging of his upcoming and as-yet unseen "Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines" in a seaside publicity show and exclusive party.

Many of the official screenings seemed to be grim celebrations of death. The little humour to be found was in "The Barbarian Invasions" or in non-competing fare such as the wryly polished French animation "Belleville Rendez-Vous", about a Tour de France cyclist kidnapped and taken to a pastiche Manhattan to race for sinister Mafia types.