Not Clint Eastwood’s ‘Changeling,’ not Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Che.’ Not Charlie Kaufman’s ‘Synecdoche, New York’ and not even the rumored documentary ‘Waltz With Bashir’ went home with a Palme d’Or. It was the French picture ‘Entre les murs’ (’The Class’) that got the highest prize of the Cannes Film Festival. It’s a film about the high tension and energy in the classroom today, a hot topic in France.

“I think it would be good for all those people who claim to be able to judge youth … in two or three aphorisms to learn something new about youth,” the main actor of the movie said. Jury president Sean Penn called it “an amazing, amazing [...] virtually seamless film. All the performances, magic. All the writing, magic. It just touched us so deeply.“

As a consolation prize for Steven Soderbergh, Benicio del Toro was crowned Best Actor for leading in ‘Che.’ “I’d like to dedicate this to the man himself, Che Guevara,” he said. Clint Eastwood got his consolation prize in the form of a “special prize of the 61st Cannes Film Festival,” but he wasn’t at the ceremony to collect it.

Although there are plenty of summer blockbusters to go around this year, many critics are disappointed with Cannes’ main competition films. “Coming off another weak Berlin festival, there is a sense that 2008 is not going to be the best year for films,” Jay Weissberg of Variety said. “Even before the halfway mark, the general mood has been one of disappointment,” he added. Which might also explain why there aren’t as many sales at the Cannes Film Festival.

Most movies had mixed reactions. Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Che’ was loved by some, but said to be too long by others. Charlie Kaufman’s ‘Synecdoche, New York’ was deemed too weird. And while Clint Eastwood’s ‘Changeling’ created some very early Oscar buzz, it also disappointed a lot of critics at the festival. Lesser known documentary ‘Waltz With Bashir’ is seen as the potential winner of the Cannes Festival’s Palme d’Or. It’s an animated feature about the 1982 massacre of the Palestinians in Beirut.

Cannes is ending with mixed results. Early market activity indicated how the French festival also wasn’t able to pull the market out of the slump. And now it seems like a classic case of bulls vs. bears. On the one side Variety is reporting ‘Cannes reels in deals,’ but on the other side there’s another piece saying ‘Cannes market signs caution tune.’ Conclusion: some deals, but the dead market isn’t showing much signs of life.

“Some big deals are going down today. But overall, feedback from the market is that it’s somewhat sober,” Cannes director Jerome Paillard said. As at the other festivals this year, everybody is still cautious. Nobody wants to buy another ‘Speed Racer.’ “Too much financing created an insane number of films and more for people to buy, but (ultimately) they pick and choose the movies they want to buy,” ICM exec Hal Sadoff said.

Continue reading False alarm: still SOME deals at Cannes