Another strong male performance was that of French actor Jean- Pierre Bacri, who portrays the venal, opportunistic mayor of a beach resort town in Nicole Garcia's otherwise humdrum Charlie Says.
Two other films that may have impressed the Cannes jury, which this year is headed by Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai, are Ken Loach's poignant Irish rebellion film The Wind that Shakes the Barley and Andrea Arnold's stark first feature Red Road.
American films were among the biggest disappointments of this year's Cannes festival, with Richard Kelly's eagerly awaited Southland Tales drawing most of the critics' displeasure.
Sofia Coppola's pop film biography Marie Antoinette, starring Kirsten Dunst, was greeted by a chorus of boos during its first screening, though it was too lukewarm a film to merit any strong reaction.
And Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki's Lights in the Dusk, a Chaplinesque story about loneliness, was too slight and suffered greatly through comparison with his The Man Without a Past, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2002.
But the nine-member jury often works in mysterious ways, and no Cannes film festival is complete without an awards decision that leaves critics speechless.
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