Not too long ago, we were wondering if the age-old “separate the art from the artist” philosophy was still at play in the context of festivals, with a general idea that European events were more open to works from controversial directors compared to American ones. Toronto, for example, canceled the world premiere of Ulrich Seidl’s Sparta at the eleventh hour last September, after German media suggested the Austrian filmmaker had been dishonest with the younger cast regarding the film’s premise. The film bowed without incident at San Sebastian.
In the case of Venice, which has repeatedly claimed to be a festival and not a tribunal, the 2023 edition is arguably the pinnacle of such a mindset. “There’s nothing left to say on the matter,” said Alberto Barbera in a recent interview with the Venetian newspaper Il Gazzettino on the subject of having the new films by Roman Polanski, Woody Allen and Luc Besson in the Official Selection. His stance has always been that the festival is all about the quality of the work, which caused some to question the inclusion of Luc Besson in competition. (But this was before the festival started, and in a plot twist even M. Night Shyamalan might regard as outlandish, Besson’s Dogman has actually been much better received than Polanski’s The Palace, while Allen’s Paris-set Coup de Chance has not yet screened at the time of writing.)
That at least one of the three would be included in the competition lineup was a foregone conclusion, given that Polanski’s previous film An Officer and a Spy played to great acclaim on the Lido in 2019
and even won the Silver Lion Special Jury Prize, and The Palace is, not insignificantly, an Italian co-production with a theatrical release scheduled for the end of this month. Allen is also particularly well-loved in Italy, where you can get skewered on social media if you so much as suggest his output in the past 25 years has been inconsistent (with the locally-produced To Rome with Love as one of its lower points).
There have been other incidents in Venice. In 2018, one Italian journalist heckled Australian director Jennifer Kent with a sexist insult at the end of the press screening for The Nightingale, and a producer sported a T-shirt proclaiming “Weinstein is innocent” on the red carpet. This year’s trifecta of directors has led to renewed comments about the festival’s problematic attitude towards women, as if the selection were an automatic endorsement of sexual assault. In reality, Polanski was convicted of unlawful intercourse with a minor in the late 1970s and fled the U.S. after serving his initial sentence; Allen has been accused of molesting his adopted daughter in the early 1990s, though no official charges were ever filed against him; and Besson was recently acquitted for the third time in a rape trial, though he has been a controversial figure ever since he fathered a child with the then 16-year old Maïwenn, who was half his age (their relationship was allowed under French law, and partially inspired Natalie Portman’s character in Léon).
But how did all three films end up at Venice? The biggest clue lies in an interview Thierry Frémaux gave back in April when discussing the Cannes selection. He claims that The Palace wasn’t submitted at all (this was confirmed by producer and cast member Luca Barbareschi, who preferred a world premiere in a Venetian setting), while the producers of Coup de Chance did show him the film outside of the formal process, with Frémaux speculating that they wanted to avoid a scandal by not premiering in Cannes, the most widely attended festival in the world. Presumably, similar logic was applied to Dogman since French films usually get less brutal reviews if they premiere outside of France, where there are fewer Gallic members of the press in attendance.
And while none of these titles are likely to see the light of day in North America, at least theatrically (Allen has even suggested he might retire because of how difficult it is for lower-budgeted works like his own to get a standard run in American theaters nowadays), their scandalous allure will definitely improve their cultural shelf life. Barbera’s choice may have been, first and foremost, a stance on the concept of artistic freedom, but it’s also confirmation, based on how many people still flocked to the Besson and Polanski screenings, that there’s no such thing as bad press.