2. The Eel
Like the Dardennes brothers, Shohei Imamura is one of the few directors who can proudly boast of being the recipient of not one but two Palme d'Ors - he won his first one in 1983 with The Ballad Of Narayama then picked up another in 1997 for The Eel. Opening with a striking scene of violence, in which the central character Takuro Yamashita (Kji Yakusho) returns home to discover his wife in bed with another man and proceeds to stab her to death, the film then jumps forward several years to his release from prison, where he takes a job in a barber's shop and tries to rebuild his life and forms a tentative relationship with a local woman. At times gentle and laid back, The Eel's genius is in its unpredictability as Yamashita struggles with his past and the need to keep his desires in check. The power of redemption through romance has never been so ambiguous.