And Palme d'Or Goess to... Julia Ducournau

Julia Ducournau's "Titane," a wild body-horror thriller featuring sex with a car and a surprisingly tender heart, won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday, news wires reported. Ducournau became the second female filmmaker to win the festival's top honor in its 74 year history.

The winner was mistakenly announced by jury president Spike Lee at the top of the closing ceremony, unleashing a few moments of confusion.  After several false starts, Lee implored Sharon Stone to make the Palme d'Or announcement, explaining: "She's not going to mess it up."

Ducournau's win was a long-awaited triumph. The only previous female filmmaker to win Cannes' top honor — among the most prestigious awards in cinema — was Jane Campion for "The Piano" in 1993, AP recalls. In recent years, frustration at Cannes' gender parity has grown, including in 2018, when 82 women — including Agnes Varda, Cate Blanchett and Salma Hayek — protested gender inequality on the Cannes red carpet. Their number signified the movies by female directors selected to compete for the Palme d'Or — 82 compared to 1,645 films directed by men. This year, four out of 24 films up for the Palme were directed by women.

In 2019, another genre film — Bong Joon-Ho's "Parasite" — took the Palme before going on to win best picture at the Academy Awards, too. That choice was said to be unanimous by the jury led by Alejandro González Iñárritu, but the award for "Titane" — an extremely violent film — this year's jury said came out of a democratic process of conversation and debate. Juror Maggie Gyllenhaal said they didn't agree unanimously on anything.

In "Titane," Agathe Rousselle plays a serial killer who flees home. As a child, a car accident leaves her with a titanium plate in...