Until today, what was contradictory and normal was for an essentially rich actor to walk down an essentially red carpet dressed in the most expensive colorful costumes to demand, for example, solidarity with the poor and equality. Well, this year the venice festival has shown that there can always be a greater contradiction: that no one demands anything. The actors’ strike marked (and emptied) the 80th edition of the Mostra and, in some way, it may even seem logical that, to perhaps compensate, the record has taken care of the great anomaly. Also red, like the carpet. Politics is the claim of the unemployed performers and, in their own way, the awards were political. Essentially.
The Golden Lion went to, without a doubt, the great film of the festival. For many reasons: because she is ambitious, because she is intelligent, because she is funny, because she is delirious, because she is risky and because she is simply dazzling. poor creatures It is a counterproductive production that has nothing to do with the imposed condescension of, for example, Maestro, by Bradley Cooper. It is not the usual film that goes to the Mostra thinking about the Oscars with formally prestigious and empty forms and language. Yorgos Lanthimos’ work wants more. On the one hand, it is a twist to the argument that has dogged the filmography of the person responsible for films like Canine, Lobster o The favourite. Once again, it is about analyzing what happens when the meaning of words is displaced, when power relations are broken, and doing so at the exact moment when reality loses its footing. But, one step further, it now enters the world of fantasy and what is discussed is the place of women and sex itself, or sex through the eyes of women. Call it feminist desire.
In reality, the idea is not his but that of the Scottish writer Alasdair Gray, which is the author of a novel that is also the postmodern and foul-mouthed reverse of the Frakenstein myth. In an England that is as fictional as it is properly Victorian, a mad doctor played by Willem Dafoe decides to resuscitate a pregnant woman after a tragic suicide. The idea is none other than to place the still-living brain of the unborn child in the head of the deceased. What emerges is not so much a monster (although, a little bit) as a completely free woman: with the body of an adult and the mind not yet subjugated nor ‘patriarchy’ of a baby. No trace of shame or modesty. Now sex is completely new and completely your own. Body language changes and with it attitudes, manners and even kisses. That the film coincides with the Rubiales case, bouncing off the covers around the world, is anything but coincidental.
The rest of the winners’ list, devised by a jury chaired by the director Damien Chazelle (and with Jane Campion, Martin McDonagh y Hansen-Love as figures of great weight), followed the line of commitment. This time with the purest cinema. Such a decision is also political. If possible, more. The second prize under consideration, that of the Grand Jury, went to the other great film of the Mostra (the most). Evil does not existfrom Japanese Rysuke Hamaguchi, is by its nature a work that opens horizons and seeks new spaces for cinema. Conceived as a reflection of a previous work in which the director put images to the music of Eiko Ishibashi, the film delves into the conflict between a company, determined to build a campsite for urbanites, and a town, determined to continue being what it is. what is it. The argument is just the excuse. What counts is the deployment of intuition and cinematic wisdom to construct a magnetic and hypnotic fable about fatherhood, loneliness, nature and fear. And some other major issue that escapes us.
The designated director was Matteo Garrone by I captain. And next to him, the leading actor as a young revelation, Seydou Sarr. The filmmaker tells a modern Odyssey through the eyes of a Senegalese man heading to his particular Ithaca, which is Europe. Between harsh reality and magical fable, there remains a memorable film and, from a distance, even dreamed of. The Jury Special was for The green borderof Agnieszka Holland. And this is rabidly political cinema and even politically political. The accused, again, is Europe and its immigration policy. And there are two. The award to Pablo Larraín for his screenplay Count (where Pinochet appears transfigured from Dracula) completed the court’s desire for commitment to noble causes. Well so be it. And by the way, the latter is the only Netflix film on the honor roll.