CANNES, France: Reclusive US director Terrence Malick clinched the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival for “The Tree of Life”, a fantastical family drama uniting Brad Pitt and Sean Penn on screen. Malick did not turn up at the gala awards ceremony Sunday, after which jury president Robert De Niro said the epic had “the size, the importance, the intention, whatever you want to call it, that seemed to fit the prize”. Kirsten Dunst won acting honors for her turn as a depressed bride facing the apocalypse in “Melancholia” by Denmark's Lars von Trier, who was expelled from the festival for making an awkward joke about his sympathies for Hitler. “Well, what a week it's been,” she quipped, referring to the scandal which marred what critics otherwise hailed as a vintage year at the world's top cinema showcase. Fellow Dane Nicolas Winding Refn claimed best director for his high-octane thriller “Drive” starring Canada's Ryan Gosling as a stunt driver who moonlights as a wheelman for armed robbers in what was probably the most commercially viable of the 20 Cannes contenders. France's Jean Dujardin, who charmed critics with his role as a fading 1920s film star in Michel Hazanavicius's silent black-and-white feature “The Artist”, took the best actor laurel.
