It’s been one hell of a Cannes, hell being the operative word. The competition to win the Palme D’Or has taken us from the grisly depths of Lars von Trier’s Antichrist to the brilliance of Michael Haneke’s Palme D’Or winner, The White Ribbon.

In this severe and subtle film about small-town malice before the First World War, horrible, nasty things happen to prim and proper locals in northern Germany. The atmosphere of suspicion and fear brings Arthur Miller’s The Crucible racing to mind. Haneke’s film has malevolent extras. The village priest is a tyrant. The local schoolteacher, played by a blundering and blinkered Christian Friedel, relates these events from his past like an addled old man who simply didn’t understand. And tragically he still doesn’t. The result is mesmerising. Haneke deserves this.

The Best Director prize was stolen by Brillante Mendoza for his bloodbath film, Kinatay, which features a prostitute being slowly dismembered by a street gang. Charlotte Gainsbourg won Best Actress for her performance in Antichrist, where she takes a pair of rusty scissors to her privates. Yet the 62nd edition of the Cannes Film Festival has been one of the toughest contests in years.

The quality of Thierry Fremaux’s selection has been top-notch. Two weeks ago the list of 20 runners and riders for the Palme D’Or looked thin in terms of Hollywood glamour. But the artistic director has peeled away that cynicism and binned it with a thrilling selection of bold and bracing premieres.

The British entries put up a terrific fight. Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank had the unenviable task of opening the competition for the Palm D’Or proper, and she didn’t disappoint by scooping the Jury Prize. Katie Jarvis is a total revelation as an unhinged 15-year-old teenage tearaway.

Ken Loach took the festival by surprise. His comedy, Looking For Eric, about a postman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, featured its insouciant and cheeky hero, Eric Cantona, dispensing advice like gobbets of poetry.

The most shocking feature of this festival is the fact that thinking cinema is alive and kicking. And that there is a hell of lot more to celluloid life than Hollywood.

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