Caught between 90-degree heat waves that melted make-up on the red carpet and a virtual army of movie stars who seemed to disembark non-stop on the Lido, the 81st Venice Film Festival once again asserted its “unmissable despite everything” status on the world festival scene.
The return of A-list stars after the SAG-Aftra strikes depleted guest lists last year was perhaps the most noticeable change. Nicole Kidman (who won the best actress award), Lady Gaga, Angelina Jolie, Tilda Swinton, Julianne Moore, Daniel Craig, Adrien Brody, Antonio Banderas, Joaquin Phoenix, George Clooney and Europeans like jury president Isabelle Huppert and Vincent Lindon (winner of the best actor award) were among the celebrities present. Another was Brad Pitt, who was all over the program, not just co-starring and co-producing Wolfs; his production company Plan B also had a stake in three other films: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, One to One: John & Yoko and Apocalypse in the Tropics.
Yet despite this cornucopia of talent and abundance, not all the media benefited. More than 50 international members of the press signed a protest over their lack of access to major talent at this year’s festival. They pointed out that the tireless work of freelance journalists, in particular, was jeopardized by the fact that several different films premiering at Venice gave no press interviews at all. Considering the high cost of attending the Lido event, it is no small matter for the journalists concerned and an urgent problem for the festival, too.
Perhaps Venice, much like Cannes, has started to become too big for its own good. Consider the decision to screen series in their entirety. With the exception of the Alfonso Cuarón-helmed series Disclaimer, which received the honor of the Sala Grande gala slot, all the titles in that sidebar had their premiere screenings in the small and uncomfortable Sala Casinò, which feels like a disservice to everyone involved. Similarly, the late addition of Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2 to the already complete program led to the film’s single public showing taking place in the Sala Giardino, a venue where “sitting comfortably” is an oxymoron for screenings lasting over two hours.
But there was also good news regarding logistics. Even before the festival began, accredited press realized something had gotten fixed at Vivaticket, the big event ticketing system which for years had seemed unable to distinguish between a football match and a film festival. For the first time, booking tickets was fast and efficient, even if irrevocable because, thanks to the enormous number of accreditations issued, screenings got fully booked up in a very short space of time. Secondly, tickets were uploaded to the press badge this year, making it unnecessary to show one’s cell phone to prove the ticket existed or find an (unnecessarily) numbered seat. With this streamlining, Venice zoomed forward from one of the most retrograde festivals vis-à-vis ticketing to the very best on the circuit.
Even the police checkpoints were generally on low alert, winning points for a fast and easy transition into the festival area that was in marked contrast to past years.
The competition
The films in the main competition ranged from small and provincial to epic Hollywood, from experimental audience challenges to glorious looking modernism. Pedro Almodovar’s modestly scaled euthanasia drama The Room Next Door fell in the last category; it was hardly his most transgressive and iconoclastic work, but a generally well-liked winner of the festival’s main prize, the Golden Lion. Co-starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, the first-ever English-language feature by the 74-year-old Spanish maestro is an argument for assisted suicide couched in great performances, fabulous outfits and impeccably styled hair. Almodovar was previously awarded an honorary Golden Lion in 2019, but this was his first for a film in competition. He can now add it to his collection of Oscars, Golden Globes, Goyas, Cesars, Baftas and countless other festival prizes.
It was a bumper year for monumental movies about uncompromising, visionary architects made by uncompromising, visionary directors. Thankfully, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist met with a warmer reception in Venice than Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis did in Cannes. Built around a richly textured lead performance from Adrien Brody as a Jewish-Hungarian architect struggling to make his mark in post-war America, this sprawling modernist symphony earned Corbet the Silver Lion for Best Director. In a tearful speech, he stressed the film’s pro-immigrant message, wishing for “a better world for my beautiful daughter and each and every one of your beautiful children, irrespective of their fucking passports.”
Some of the Venice program’s most splashy, starry, newsworthy world premieres left the Lido empty-handed. Luca Guadagnino’s sumptuous William Burroughs adaptation Queer seemed tailor-made for awards, especially its lead performance by Daniel Craig, very much flexing his post-Bond Serious Actor muscles rather than his star status. But Isabel Huppert’s jury, much like the critics, were left lukewarm.
Similar reactions greeted Angelina Jolie’s high-camp turn as Maria Callas in Pablo Larrain’s latest diva-worship biopic Maria. Meanwhile the all-singing, all-dancing double act of Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga in Todd Phillips’ outlandish music-heavy supervillain sequel Joker: Folie à Deux fell short of expectations. It earned mixed reviews and no prizes, in stark contrast to its 2019 predecessor, which wowed the critics and won the Golden Lion.
Meanwhile, the timeless, highly original reflection on the origins of land ownership Harvest starring Caleb Landry Jones by Greek New Wave director Athina Rachel Tsangari, who has also produced for Yorgos Lanthimos, was a noteworthy omission when awards were handed out, while actress Fernanda Torres, the heroic protag of Walter Salles’ much-admired I’m Still Here, was a critics’ choice for her stunning performance as the wife of a desaparecidos following Brazil’s ferocious military coup. She lost to Nicole Kidman in Babygirl, one of the only films that was really worthy of festival director Alberto Barbera’s promise about a “return to eroticism” after a period of “prudishness”. In comparison, the sex scenes in Queer were pretty tasteful and the Italian porn saga that wandered into the main competition, Diva Futura, was positively bland.
Festival director Alberto Barbera underlined “the importance of the presence of 12 debuting directors in the Competition section out of 21 titles.” Happily, several of these newcomers were noticed by the critics and some won awards, like Dea Kulumbegashvili, for her rigorous and thought-provoking second feature April. Telling the story of a courageous country OB-GYN in film language as austere as her protagonist, the Georgian director was awarded a well-deserved the Special Jury Award.
As everyone knows by now, the habit of programming five films from the festival country in the main competition is at least one too many. On the Italian front, three of the five slots went to directors who had never been in Venice before, all of them vying for the Golden Lion with their second or third feature. And it was young Maura Delpero who earned the Silver Lion – Grand Jury Prize with Vermiglio, her visually striking tale of a small Alpine village and women’s changing role after the Second World War. A notable absence was Francesca Comencini’s Il tempo che ci vuole, which was relegated to an out-of-competition slot. This tribute to her father, the great Luigi Comencini, felt especially relevant for its inclusion of archive material taken from the collections of the Cineteca di Milano, which he co-founded.
Orizzonti
In the festival’s second official section, which is now also competitive, a clear winner emerged early in the awards ceremony. The feature debut of director Sarah Friedland, Familiar Touch, brought her to the stage twice as winner of the Luigi De Laurentiis Award for Best First Feature — one of the festival’s most significant prizes — and then as Best Director in the Orizzonti section. Moving and never rhetorical or conventional, the film about an 80-year-old woman learning to live with Alzheimer’s also won the Orizzonti Best Actress award for Kathleen Chalfant. Another winner was Scandar Copti’s much-admired Happy Holidays, the intersecting stories of a big Palestinian family caught in an anguishing spiral of social norms that particularly punish young women. In a side-section mysteriously called Orizzonti Extra, a small film from Naples had critics and programmers talking. Vittoria directed by Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kauffman is a reenactment of a working class couple’s difficult decision to adopt a fourth child, after the mother has a recurrent dream. It unfolds with plenty of surprises and an extremely touching ending.
The short films that stood out
Non-fiction also did well in the Orizzonti short film competition. Arshia Shakiba’s Who Loves the Sun, about the rise in improvised oil refining during the Syrian civil war, took the top prize. Meanwhile Luca Ferri, Morgan Menegazzo and Mariachiara Pernisa’s innocent René va alla guerra became the festival’s short nominee to the European Film Awards. Over in Settimana internazionale della critica, Marta Innocenti’s Things That My Best Friend Lost won the award for best film. Another festival highlight appeared in the same section: Andrea Gatopoulos’ The Eggregores’ Theory – a dystopian science fiction told through strange monochrome AI-generated images. Elsewhere, other standouts that will hopefully travel well were Claudia Varejao’s experimental documentary about female refugees in Portugal, Kora, which screened in Giornate degli autori, and Tian Guan’s playfully rebellious Orizzonti contender, The Poison Cat.
