Gory Gainsbourg wins at Cannes

The female star of the most shocking film shown at this year's Cannes film festival has been awarded the best actress prize. In Antichrist, by the Danish director Lars von Trier, Charlotte Gainsbourg plays a psychotic woman who goes on a spree of self-mutilation and torture after her son falls to his death while watching his parents make love.

The film brought howls of outrage and a near riot at the post-screening press conference after it was shown earlier in the festival. Quite apart from the various ways she tortures her husband, played by the American actor Willem Dafoe, Gainsbourg's character attacks her clitoris with a pair of scissors.

But while many in the audience covered their eyes for long periods, the jury saw enough of Gainsbourg's fearless performance to award her the top acting honour.

The 37-year-old is a singer as well as actress, just like her parents, the late Serge Gainsbourg and his then English girlfriend, Jane Birkin. The couple were famous for their erotic duet Je t'Aime, released in 1968 and banned in several countries.

Accepting the award on the final night of Cannes, Charlotte Gainsbourg said the making of the film had been "the most intense, the most painful, and most exciting experience of my life".

As predicted by The First Post, the Palme d'Or for the best film of the festival went to the Austrian director Michael Haneke for The White Ribbon, set in Germany at the outbreak of World War One. Haneke beat Frenchman Jacques Audiard with his prison drama A Prophet, as well as new works from Cannes favourites Ken Loach, Quentin Tarantino and Pedro Almodovar.

Audiard's compensation was the Grand Prix - in effect, the festival's second prize - while fellow Frenchman Alain Resnais, 86 and still going strong with a new film Wild Grass, was given a lifetime achievement award.

The British film-maker Andrea Arnold shared the Jury Prize for her gritty Brit realism film Fish Tank with the South Korean director Park Chan-Wook for his vampire film, Thirst. Arnold won the same award three years ago for Red Road, though she didn't have to share it that time.

The best actor prize went to Austrian Christoph Waltz for his portrayal of an SS officer in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. The award for best director went to an outsider, Brillante Mendoza of the Philippines for Kinatay - it means 'massacre' - which with its scene of cops hacking a prostitute to pieces with kitchen knives ran Antichrist a close second in the grisly stakes.

Meanwhile, by a twist of fate, Jane Birkin was appearing at the Hay literary festival this weekend, reminiscing about life with Charlotte Gainsbourg's father, especially his generosity as a lover. "He took more attention than you can imagine to make sure you were sexually OK, with tiny wee cushions everywhere so one was comfortable," she told the Hay audience. "I never knew anyone who gave one such tiny, exquisite attentions.

"It was like having a wonderful parrot who bites everyone else but you. Everyone said: 'Oh Serge, he's so dangerous.' I said : 'Oh yes, he is,' but really, he was a pushover ­ very sentimental, very romantic." ·