The Amateur Actors of Cannes 1999: A Shock to the (Star) System

Abstract

At the Cannes film festival in 1999 the perennial tension within French film between popular cinema and auteur cinema came to a head with the award of the Palme d’Or to the Dardenne brothers’ Rosetta. Moreover, three amateurs were given Best Actor awards: Émilie Dequenne for Rosetta, plus Emmanuel Schotté and Séverine Caneele for L’Humanité. This article analyses the performances of the amateur actors in the above films, and evaluates to what extent they offer a challenge to conventional modes of representation, and in particular to the idealised embodiments of masculinity and femininity traditionally presented by film stars. The notion of the amateur as Bressonian model will also be addressed, as will the possibility of amateur actors challenging the supremacy of the auteur and moving into the realm of popular stardom.