c'est l'amour

Michael Haneke, right, with (from left) Jean-Louis Trintignant, Adrien Brody and Emmanuelle Riva after Amour won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Photograph: Yves Herman/Reuters

The 65th Cannes film festival drew to a close with the director Michael Haneke being awarded the Palme d'Or for Amour.

His victory was greeted with acclaim but an understandable lack of surprise: Amour had been hotly tipped ever since it unspooled on the fifth day of the festival.

The jury, presided over by former Palme d'Or winner Nanni Moretti, gave the chief award to Haneke, saying the jury was not unanimous on any of the awards, but that many of the contending films were "more in love with their style than their characters"; this, presumably, was where Haneke differed.

Amour, which stars French veterans Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva as well as Isabelle Huppert, describes the relationship between an elderly married couple when one of them is incapacitated by a stroke.

The Palme d'Or is Haneke's second; his last was only three years ago for The White Ribbon. In this he joins a select company, including Emir Kusturica and the Dardenne brothers.

The Austrian director accepted the award in his characteristically low-key way, saying: "It's a harsh thing to have to contend with. It's something I had to contend with in my own family, and that's why I started to make this film."

Haneke also mentioned his own wife: "This film is an illustration of the promise we made to each other, if either one of us finds ourselves in the situation that is described in the film."

The Grand Jury prize, Cannes' second most prestigious award, was given to Matteo Garrone, the Italian director whose film Reality explored the effect of reality TV. Garrone's award was genuinely unexpected, perhaps reflecting the common cultural ground between him and the jury president.

British cinema scored a pleasant surprise as the bronze-medal Jury Prize went to Ken Loach's The Angels' Share, a whisky heist comedy set in Scotland. Loach, who is held in high esteem on the European festival circuit, took the opportunity to affirm his opposition to Europe-wide austerity economic policies when accepting his award; he elaborated on the issue afterwards in the winners' press conference.

"The characters in the film have no work, and the world tells them they have no worth," Loach said. "We are reminded of the situation in Europe where people are told they have to stay out of work, and stay of no value. So we are in solidarity with those against austerity – another world is possible."

A rare moment of levity was provided by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas, whose best director award was probably the biggest surprise of the night, after a string of negative reviews for his film Post Tenebras Lux. Reygadas bounced into the winners' press conference, punching the air, and stood balancing his award certificate on his head. British jury member Andrea Arnold had earlier defended his film to the hilt, saying it had "dared to fail".

Probably the most disappointed director on the night was Leos Carax, whose Holy Motors looked likely to scoop at least one award. Moretti said: "Opinions were divided within the jury over several films; some won awards, some did not."

But one popular winner was the young American, Benh Zeitlin, whose surreal coming of age film Beasts of the Southern Wild won the Camera d'Or for best first film. Zeitlin, the only American to win a major prize, explained that nearly all his cast and crew were first-timers too: "We were a lot of inexperienced people running fast into the unknown."

Former Bond villain Mads Mikkelsen also drew loud cheers when his best actor award was announced for the child-abuse-accusation drama The Hunt. Jury member Ewan McGregor said: "The wonder was in the subtlety."

@Guardian