Did Asia Argento Hijack the Cannes Jury?

Two of the less well-received films at Cannes this year were Kinatay, Brillante Mendoza's driving-and-dismemberment saga, and Spring Fever, Lou Ye's extended Chinese drama. So of course they won big awards! Mendoza's Best Director prize and Spring Fever's Best Screenplay award shocked even the most experienced Cannes observer, and Variety claimed that the jury that produced those winners was riven with discontent.

Vulture's Dennis Lim asked jury member Asia Argento whether the reports were true, and may have indirectly found both films' unlikely champion:

According to a Variety report, one of the male jurors said it was the worst jury experience of his life, and another called Huppert a fascist.

AA: Really? I've got nothing to say about that. Obviously everybody has different tastes, but we came together very much at the end. We had no preconceived ideas; at least I didn't. I felt the awards at the end surprised even us.

When an Italian journalist asked you at Sunday's press conference why the Italian film [Marco Bellocchio's Vincere] was shut out, you said you wanted to keep the focus on the films that won awards. Will you reveal then which of the prize winners you were most pleased with?

AA: I was very happy with Kinatay [which won Filipino filmmaker Brillante Mendoza the directing prize, despite being the competition's most widely despised film]. It had such terrible reviews but it was a movie that I hadn't seen before. It felt necessary, so naïve and urgent. It felt like the director had no idea how to do it and picked up a camera and was shooting the first movie of history. The 45-minute scene in the car where nothing happens I thought was incredible. [Ed. Emphasis ours, for that amazing, amazing film festival-y sentence.] And I was also so happy about Spring Fever. It might be surprising to give it the script award, because the movie was very long, but it had ingenious ideas about the love triangles between the characters.

Both of those prizes were booed by the journalists who were watching next door.

AA: I know. That's always a good sign.

· Asia Argento and Michele Civetta on Cannes Controversy and Porn-y New Work [Vulture]