Cannes this year opened with a promise from its long-serving director, Thierry Frémaux, that political controversy would not be on the programme – or at least would be confined to its cinema screens. And at tonight’s closing ceremony, the jury lived up to that pledge, awarding the Palme d’Or to the festival’s most nakedly crowd-pleasing film.

Many of us suspected the Palme would either go to The Seed of the Sacred Fig, a masterful domestic thriller from the Iranian dissident director Mohammad Rasoulof, or All We Imagine As Light, the first Indian film to be selected for the competition in 30 years.

Instead, though, it was presented to Anora – a riotously grubby screwball comedy directed by Sean Baker, in which a shrewd young…