Word: pulp
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...member jury, which included Catherine Deneuve and Kazuo Ishiguro (author of Remains of the Day), got the message. Happily infected with Saturday-night fever, it awarded Pulp Fiction the Palme d'Or as best among the 23 entries in competition. But the picture threw the international critics into a tizz. They weren't sure they should approve of a work of popular art so enjoyably and cleverly crafted; after a week studying the snail trails of European anomie and Third World angst, watching Pulp Fiction was like sneaking out of a final exam to go on a bender...
...truth is that until Pulp Fiction barged in, Cannes this year had no strong prize contenders. Instead, it presented a roundup of best directors' next-best films. The Chinese master Zhang Yimou sent To Live; the film, which spans 30 years of Maoist hard times, is beautifully observed and performed (the male lead, Ge You, won the Best Actor prize), but lacks the fiery power of Zhang's Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern. Nikita Mikhalkov intended his Burned by the Sun as a Russian Gone With the Wind, a story of country life amid the turmoil of tyranny...
None of these films could come near the breadth and gusto, the sheer comic wallop, of Pulp Fiction. This 2 1/2-hour tapestry weaves four tales into a meditation about tough guys with too much or too little time on their hands. What do you talk about before a killing? (Fast food in Amsterdam.) How do you escape a fate worse than death? (With luck and honor.) How do you date your gang boss's wife? (Very carefully.) How do you remove those telltale blood stains from the backseat? (Very quickly.) Spinning delirious variations on familiar film noir conventions and pulling...
...scene are all very American -- the old studios at their snazziest. But Tarantino's hard guys also reflect a European sensibility, reminiscent of the existential gangster films of Jean-Pierre Melville; they talk all night about everything except what matters. With this marriage of Hollywood and the Continent, Pulp Fiction, which will open in the U.S. this fall, showed Cannes that the power of movies is all about energy, visual and verbal, that won't slow down or shut...
...Pulp Fiction, a film by 31-year-old American director Quentin Tarantino, won the coveted Golden Palm Award for Best Movie at the Cannes International Film Festival. Reaction to the violent movie about the Los Angeles underworld was divided, a testament to the sentiment Tarantino declared upon winning: "I don't make movies that bring people together...