LEE Chang-dong’s Latest Earns All-Time Best Score on Screen Daily’s Cannes Jury Grid
LEE Chang-dong’s highly anticipated sixth work
BURNING premiered to enormous acclaim in the main competition section of the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, May 16. Starring
YOO Ah-in,
Steven YEUN and
JUN Jong-seo, the film earned the highest ever score recorded on Screen Daily’s Cannes Jury Grid and has received unanimous praise from critics and viewers.
International trade publication Screen Daily conducts a Cannes Jury Grid every year, where they invite 10 prominent film critics from around the world to view all the films in competition and award them a mark out of four.
BURNING scored a 3.8 average following its bow on Wednesday with eight of the featured critics giving it the highest possible mark, making it the best-scoring Cannes competition title in the feature’s history.
Writing for The Hollywood Reporter, Todd McCarthy related the richness and themes of
BURNING, calling it a “beautifully crafted film loaded with glancing insights and observations into an understated triangular relationship, one rife with subtle perceptions about class privilege, reverberating family legacies, creative confidence, self-invention, sexual jealousy, justice
and revenge.”
Performances all around also earned top marks. Variety critic Guy Lodge tweeted that “I don't see how a jury could *not* give Best Actor to
Yoo Ah-in for BURNING: he's quietly magnificent,” while Indiewire called YEUN a “perfect fit for the role.” The Playlist’s critic Jessica KIANG tweeted (along with pictures of the cast of
BURNING) that “these three actors gave the three best performances I've seen in a strong Cannes for acting, and they did it all in the same movie.”
Director LEE has participated twice before in the competition section at Cannes, with
Secret Sunshine in 2007 and
Poetry in 2010. Both of those earned prizes, with
JEON Do-yeon taking home Best Actress for
Secret Sunshine and LEE earning the Best Screenplay prize for
Poetry, so many will be looking to Sunday’s closing awards ceremony in Cannes to see if LEE can make it three for three or even if he may vie for the top prize, the Palme d’Or, which has never been won by a Korean film.