2006 César Award Winners
by Andre Soares
The curious but uninvolving psychological drama De battre, mon coeur s’est arrêté / The Beat That My Heart Skipped won eight awards, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay for producer-director-co-writer (with Tonino Benacquista) Jacques Audiard at the 31st edition of the César Awards.
© Mars Distribution
Two veterans took home the Best Actor and Best Actress prizes: Eighty-year-old Michel Bouquet - whose career spans more than fifty years - for his star turn as former French president François Miterrand in Le Promeneur du champ de Mars, and Nathalie Baye for her recovering alcoholic police officer in Le Petit lieutenant. (Baye had already won three Césars, the first of which in 1981.)
Among other winners were Clint Eastwood’s boxing melodrama Million Dollar Baby, which was voted the Best Foreign Film; Va, vis et deviens / Go, See and Become for Best Original Screenplay (Alain-Michel Blanc and Radu Mihaileanu); Best First Film Le 
Cauchemar de Darwin / Darwin’s Nightmare, by the Austrian Hubert Sauper (instead of Luc Jacquet’s worldwide hit La Marche de l’empereur / March of the Penguins); Best Supporting Actor Niels Arestrup for De battre, mon coeur s’est arrêté; and Best Supporting Actress Cécile de France for Les Poupées russes / The Russian Dolls. (Three years ago, de France won a Best Newcomer César for that same role in the highly popular prequel to Les Poupées russes, L’Auberge espagnole / The Spanish Apartment.)
L’Espoir Never Dies: Linh Dan Pham, nominated for a César for the Best Female Newcomer (or, more literally, Best Feminine Hope) back in 1992 for Indochine, won in that same category for her delightful turn as a demanding piano teacher in De battre, mon coeur s’est arrêté.
List of winners at the 31st edition of the César Awards
List of the British Academy of Film 2006 nominees
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