AFTER an up-and-down festival where the winners were impossible for even the most sagacious bookie to call, the Cannes Film Festival jury Sunday night gave the coveted Palme D’Or to a closely observed drama about illegal immigrants. “Dheepan,” which was gripping, subtly detailed and remarkably unpredictable given that it dealt with a subject of daily headlines, was directed by French favorite Jacques Audiard.

    The biggest surprise, however, was the decision to share the award for best actress between Emmanuelle Bercot and Rooney Mara, snubbing crowd-favorite Cate Blanchett.

    Rooney Mara plays the shop assistant who falls for elegant Carol, played by Blanchett, in Todd Haynes’s film of the same name. “Carol” was the first real festival hit; in a year with an unusually strong showing of female protagonists and great feminine performances, Blanchett was widely expected to scoop the prize.

    Her character, a wealthy wife torn between her real longings and the pretence of respectability she must maintain to keep custody of her daughter in 1950s America, unquestionably drives the drama.

    Before the festival began 12 days ago, Audiard was marked as a favorite for the Palme D’or; he had previously won the Grand Prix for his prison drama “The Prophet” in 2009. Once the competition was under way, however, critical favor started to slip between the Chinese entrants — Hou Hsiao-hsien’s “The Assassin” and Jia Zhangke’s “Mountains May Depart” — and the more stylistically daring Europeans, Yorgos Lanthimos’s “The Lobster” and Oscar-winner Paolo Sorrentino’s “Youth,” with Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel as two elderly artists facing the gloomy reality of their fading powers.

    (SD-Agencies)