No one can deny it: the 81st Venice International Film Festival directed by Alberto Barbera was a triumphant edition, with super stars, great films and intriguing television series. The vast choice of proposals and films from all over the world in the Competition and other sections (Out of Competition, Horizons, Venice Classics, Venice Immersive, Biennale College), redeemed the previous edition, penalized by the heavy strikes from Hollywood. The prizes awarded by the Competition Jury, led by President Isabelle Huppert, also demonstrated balance and sensitivity with respect to the most current and interesting themes, but also to the most thoughtful and difficult auteur cinema.
“The Room Next Door”, director Pedro Almodòvar, photo courtesy Warner Bros Discovery and Biennale Cinema
Let’s start immediately with the Golden Lion for Best Film: “The Room Next Door” by Pedro Almodòvar. The first film in English by the Spanish director, it is an adaptation of the novel by Sigrid Nunez “What Are You Going Through”, starring Oscar winners Tilda Swinton (Martha) and Julianne Moore (Ingrid) as two intellectual and very stylish friends, colleagues in their youth. They meet again after years in New York in the clinic where Martha is hospitalized for incurable cancer. The central and crucial theme for Almodòvar, linked to the story of the deep friendship between Ingrid and Martha, is that of euthanasia, an object that the director addresses with extreme delicacy and poetry. Martha, faced with the diagnosis that condemns her without hope, chooses a sweet and conscious death alongside her friend who keeps her company and supports her in the difficult decision. The film, in reality, is a moving and poignant hymn to life and the most precious joys. Ingrid is a writer of autobiographical novels, while Martha is a war reporter: despite their very different ideas and experiences, the friends represent the epitome of the purest love. The magnificent photography by Edu Grau and the scenography by Inbal Weinberg, between splendid natural exteriors and sophisticated interiors, are a music of colors and emotions for the eyes.
“Ainda Estou Aqui”, director Walter Salles, photo courtesy Bim Distribuzione and Biennale Cinema
Another film from the Venice Film Festival that we can’t miss is “I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui)” by the famous Brazilian director Walter Salles (his “The Motorcycle Diaries”), awarded with the Osella for Best Screenplay. It tells the story of the large Paiva family, which begins in 1970 on a splendid beach in Rio de Janeiro, among teenagers who flirt, play volleyball and sunbathe. It’s the Christmas holidays and the mother Eunice (Fernanda Torres) with her husband, the engineer Rubens (Selton Mello) are with their four daughters and the youngest son the image of a happy, bourgeois and cultured family, in a beautiful house near the sea open to many lifelong friends, with the sweet sambas of Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso. But in reality Brazil has long been under a military dictatorship: suddenly, some agents kidnap the father Rubens for questioning. The film is emotional and painful, photographically impeccable, with a vintage patina thanks also to home movies in Super 8 and is inspired by the true story told in the book of the same name by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, which covers the long period of dictatorship and the desaparecidos. The director himself knew the children and frequented the Paiva house as a boy, and therefore felt the urgency to tell this dramatic story after reading the book, at the center of which stands out the beautiful and courageous figure of the mother Eunice Paiva, showing her to us until old age (Fernanda Montenegro), surrounded by the love of her married daughters who were also mothers with children.
“Vermiglio”, director Maura Delpero, photo courtesy Lucky Red and Biennale Cinema
The Silver Lion awarded Maura Delpero, a committed and talented Italian director, for “Vermiglio” with Tommaso Ragno, Giuseppe De Domenico, Roberta Rovelli, Martina Scrinzi, Carlotta Gamba, Orietta Notari, Santiago Fontevila Sancet, Enrico Panizza, Patrick Gardner, Anna Thaler and Sara Serraiocco. Vermiglio is also the name of the small village in Val di Sole in Alto Adige where the grandfather, a teacher, and the father of the director, originally from Bolzano, lived. It is a choral story inspired by family tales, with snow, silence and the slow passage of the seasons: at the center three sisters with their mother and the peasant women in the last year of the Second World War. As the author states: «Vermiglio is a “family lexicon”. Crossing a personal time it wants to pay homage to a collective memory», which also includes, through the strict dialect, that of nature and the hard life of the most impervious mountain: farmers and mothers, children and girls, who at dawn warm themselves with hot milk milked from cows where they live in uncontaminated nature in forced isolation, far from the war conflict, with the mourning of older brothers and husbands at the front. The special film to be savored, is an open homage to the poetic and rigorous cinema of Ermanno Olmi. It is co-produced by Rai Cinema with France and Belgium and is distributed by Lucky Red.
“Maria”, director Pablo Larraìn, photo courtesy 01 Distribution and Biennale di Venezia
The long-awaited “Maria” by Pablo Larrain is a great biopic with the amazing Angelina Jolie, whose face, acting and singing convey all the tragedy and charm of Maria Callas. The film takes us to the Parisian Seventies, in the last period of the greatest opera singer in the world. Callas, beautiful and still pursued by journalists, has lost her voice and is trying to recover it far from the opera houses and the crowds of admirers. The intention of the famous Chilean director (winner of the award for best screenplay in Competition at Venice in 2023 with “El Conde”) is the celebration of the unsurpassed Divine, of her extraordinary life and of huge successes, but also tormented by deep pain after the abandonment of her companion Aristotle Onassis in 1968 for the wedding with Jacqueline Kennedy. Between flashbacks and imagined reality, isolated in her sumptuous apartment dotted with precious objects and ancient art, the diva appears very thin and always protected by iconic black sunglasses. She takes antidepressant psychotropic drugs in secret, does not eat and has her make-up and clothes done by her faithful maid Bruna, expertly played by Alba Rohrwacher, while obsessively having her ailing butler Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino) move a very precious grand piano every now and then.
“Se posso permettermi” Capitolo II, director Marco Bellocchio, photo courtesy Rai Cinema International Distribution and Biennale Cinema
It is impossible to tell the many interesting and unmissable films of this magnificent 81st edition, such as “Jocker: Folie a deus” by Todd Phillips with Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, but among the gems of pure cinema I would like to mention at least a couple of titles that cinephiles should not miss. First of all, in the Out of Competition section, the witty and funny “Se posso perdermi” Capitolo II by Marco Bellocchio, shot in five days in his house in Bobbio (the same as “I Pugni in tasca”) with the students of “Bottega XNL – Fare Cinema”. A low-budget film but as always rigorous, ironic and coherent, starring Fausto Russo Alesi, Barbara Ronchi, Rocco Papaleo, Giorgia Maddalena Fasce, Filippo Timi, Pier Giorgio Bellocchio, Fabrizio Gifuni and Edoardo Leo. The screenplay, written by the director himself, tells the story of a day in the life of Fausto, a paradoxical, lazy, inert and bored man who refuses any job when faced with a series of characters who come looking for him: the parish priest, the commander of carabinieri, a mysterious man and finally, at night, some thieves.
“Allégorie citadine”, director Alice Rohrwacher JR photo courtesy The Match Factory e Biennale Cinema
Another Out of Competition Short Film, the delightful “Allégorie citadine” by Alice Rohrwacher and JR, the French artist and director with whom the young director had made “Omelia contadina” in 2020. A short philosophical story, with images between art and contemporary Parisian reality, profound dialogues that become allegories and “liberation of thought”, as the author of “Chimera” (2023) states.
Manuela Teatini
Info:
www.labiennale.org/it/cinema/2024
Manuela Teatini, film maker and journalist, focuses on visual arts, in particular cinema, photography and contemporary art. She has written freelance for years with VOGUE, Uomo VOGUE, ELLE and other cinema, art and new trend magazines. She is the author and director of the docufilms “ART BACKSTAGE. La passione e lo sguardo” (2017),” MASSIMO MININI. Story of a Gallerist “(2019),” GIOVANNI BOLDINI. Il Piacere. Story of the Artist” (2021) awarded at the Terra di Siena International Film Festival 2021.
NO COMMENT