Shocking win @ Cannes: Philippine star Jaclyn Jose gets best actress

Philippine soap star Jaclyn Jose won best actress at the Cannes film festival Sunday for her mesmerising performance as a slum matriarch who falls prey to corrupt police.

A huge star in her homeland, she said she had to forget everything she learned in her 30 years in the business for the role as a sweetshop owner and small-time drug dealer in 'Ma' Rosa'.

"The biggest challenge for me was not to act. Especially since I am coming from television shows where I play loud and campy characters," she told reporters.

"I am so surprised. I just went to have the red carpet walk with my daughter, my real-life daughter and my daughter in the movie also," Jose said as she accepted the award Sunday, referring to her daughter Andi Eigenmann. "To Cannes, thank you so much, thank you to the jury, thank you that you liked our film."

ABS-CBN network reported that Jose beat big-name actresses including Charlize Theron, Kristen Stewart and Marion Cotillard.

The 52-year-old said she had to 'tone everything down to zero' - for the stark, realistic portrait of a woman fighting to do the best for her family in director Brillante Mendoza's gritty film.

It is a dramatic change from her regular job, playing a spoilt, rich woman in the popular Philippine TV soap opera, 'The Millionaire's Wife'.

The best actress contest had been viewed as a particularly competitive one this year.

Some thought that Jaclyn’s lack of acting in the film was too small to merit the award, and was thought to be a supporting role.

Anne Thompson, the editor at-large of movie review site Indiewire, even summed up that surprise in one tweet: "An audible gasp went up in the @Festival_Cannes press room as Philippine actress Jaclyn Jose won for Brilliante Mendoza's Ma' Rosa."

AP

Speaking for the jury, the Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen answered that by saying, "We found her to be a wonderful leading actress, a master of her skills. It was not a supporting character."

Variety magazine praised Jose for the 'naturalistic grace' of her film performance, playing the matriarch of a family struggling to survive amid squalor.

The daughter of a Filipina mother and a largely absent American serviceman father, Jose first became famous in Philippine showbiz circles for her ethereal beauty.

But she has proved to be a versatile and hard-working actress, starring in dramas, comedies, horror stories, romances as well as television soap operas.

She has won numerous acting awards in her native country and worked with its most prestigious filmmakers.

But it is her relationship with 'Ma 'Rosa' director Mendoza - a friend for over three decades - which has brought her into the international limelight.

She appeared in Mendoza's first movie 'The Masseur' 11 years ago and also his drama 'Serbis', which competed in Cannes in 2008.

Palme d'Or

British director Ken Loach won the Palme d'Or top prize at Cannes Sunday for the second time in a decade with his moving drama 'I, Daniel Blake' about the shame of poverty in austerity-hit Europe.

The award marked a major upset at the world's top film festival in favour of the left-wing director, who turns 80 next month and is known for shining a light on the downtrodden.

He beat runaway favourites including the rapturously received German comedy 'Toni Erdmann' by Maren Ade, one of three female directors in competition, and US indie legend Jim Jarmusch's 'Paterson' starring Adam Driver as a poetry-writing bus driver. Both left empty-handed.

Loach now joins an elite club of two-time victors at the French Riviera festival including Francis Ford Coppola and Emir Kusturica.

Loach slammed swingeing welfare cuts across Europe as he accepted the prize.

The runner-up Grand Prix award went to Canada's Xavier Dolan, 27, for his hot-tempered family drama 'It's Only the End of the World' featuring a cast of A-list French stars which had been widely panned by critics.

Britain also claimed the third-place Jury prize, for Andrea Arnold's high-energy 'American Honey' starring Shia LaBeouf in a tale of disadvantaged US youths selling magazines door-to-door.

All three top winners surprised critics. "The jury managed to blindside virtually every punter with their choice of winner," wrote US trade magazine Variety.

French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema tweeted that it had been a "lovely competition ruined by a blind jury".

The jury led by 'Mad Max' director George Miller included Kirsten Dunst, Donald Sutherland, and Vanessa Paradis, presented themselves as a united front that bordered, at times, on a cinephile love-in.

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