CANNES, France — Now that the Festival de Cannes 2011 is bidding us a final adieu, this Cannes first-timer has a few awards of her own:

Best Audience Pleaser: The Cannes 2011 animated promo video that ran before every film, featuring red carpet stairs rising from below the sea, breaking the surface of the water, and then flying upward toward the twinkling heavens, to be topped by the golden logo, "Festival de Cannes." While some films drew their share of derisive boos, this short commercial for the festival itself was met by scattered applause each and every time.

Best Celebration of Film: Movieland is everywhere in the South of France. There are five formal screening theaters (plus additional options for viewing the short film selections), posters of film goddesses current and past that are plastered on the sides of buildings, plus additional independent festivals running concurrently. Film is even available with sand ... due just east of the Palais, the Cinéma de la Plage unreels a golden oldie every night at 9.

Best Eye-Canne-dy: The location itself. Such production design! The sparkling Mediterranean bordering a pristine seaside town dotted with luxury hotels, palm trees and more cafes than stars ... or is that more stars than cafes? It's a mix of Beverly Hills, Hollywood and the French Riviera all in one. While the festival may be 64 years old, like frequent guest Catherine Deneuve (appearing this year in an out-of-competition comedy, The Beloved) Cannes is as attractive as ever.

Best Hambone Performance: In the bleak heist film Drive, we suddenly get the stylings of Catskill comedy, utterly misplaced, with Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman double-teaming as mob guys. You want them to go to a deli, order a bagel with schmear and stop with the overacting, already.

Best Imitation of the Hindenburg: Lars von Trier. (See prior Screen Savor Blog "Cannes-celled."

Best Props: The male escorts who serve as welcome crutches to the ladies in the 5-inch heels attempting to negotiate the Croisette. Overheard by one young woman clacking breathlessly down a steep hill: "Where is my shoe boyfriend?!"

Best Special Effects: The topless older women who sunbathe at the beach, unconcerned with the ample swelling around their middles. Sit them next to their topless husbands, and it's exceedingly difficult to tell man from wife. And you thought a Guillermo del Toro movie was scary.

Best Use of a Dog in Retail: The canine companion crops up almost everywhere in Cannes -- in ladies' handbags in restaurants, in the markets, the hotels, the beaches. But at an outdoor bazaar during the last weekend of the festival, one four-pawed fellow was fast asleep amid a display of used jewelry. Perhaps if Madame bought a jeweled collar at this particular, um, flea market, the pup would be thrown in at half price?

Joking aside, there were many amazing films to see and performances to admire. That said, the extraordinary standouts for The Screen Savor come down to two:

Best Actor: Sean Penn, This Must Be the Place. Not since Dustin Hoffman took on Rain Man have we seen such a riveting transmogrification. Penn's walk, voice, laugh and mannerisms give us a 50-year-old rock star whose growth was stunted somewhere in his teens. This odd duck of a film, a coming-of-middle-age story, depicts one man's physical and emotional journey that travels from Ireland to New York to cockeyed stopovers all over a crazy quilt America. Penn is a revelation.

Best Film: The Artist. Shot in black and white, a valentine to Singin' in the Rain and A Star is Born, director Michel Hazanavicius painstakingly crafts a vision that is unlike anything we've seen. It's not just about a silent movie star who finds his star suddenly fading with the advent of the talkies; this is a film about the fear of obsolescence that resonates individually. Whether we can make the correlation to aging in a world that only celebrates beauty, or losing one's job when modern technology passes us by, or doubting the possibility of finding love too far down the path, The Artist mixes humor with heart, all the while presenting us with a camera that is as nimble and diverse as lead actor Jean Dujardin.

When the critics say, "If you see only one film this year" ... this is the one.