Venice Film Festival, Aug. 31-Sept. 10, 2022

[Chris Knipp]

Venice Film Festival 2022 (Aug. 31-Sept. 10)

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HARRY STYLES, FLORENCE PUGH IN DON'T WORRY, DARLING

Julianne Moore is president of the jury this year. Special Lifetime Achievement Golden Lions will be presented to Catherine Deneuve and Paul Schrader.

From Variety (https://variety.com/2022/film/news/harry-styles-timothee-chalamet-cate-blanchett-venice-1235321778/).. Films expected:


DON'T WORRY DARLING (Olivia Wilde, Warner Bros.) with Florence Pugh, Harry Styles.
TAR (Todd Field, Focus Features) with Cate Blanchett as a star orchestral conducdor
BLONDE starring Ana de Armas.
WHITE NOISE (Noah Baumbach, adapting Don DeeLillo's novel). With Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Jodie Turner-Smith - Opening Night Film (at the NYFF also)
BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS (Alexander G. Iñárritu)
ATHENA (Romain Gavras, cowritten with LES MISERABLES' Ladj Ly)
BONES AND ALL (Luca Guadagnino) with Timothée Chalamet, Taylor Russell
1985 (Santiago Mitre, for Amazon studios) about overthrow of Argentina's dictatorsip
MONICA (Andrea Pallaoro) with transgender actor Trace Lysette, Patricia Clarkson
THE MASTER GARDENER (Paul Schrader) with Joel Edgerton, Sigourney Weaver
NO BEARS (Jafar Panahi) - Iran
WALK UP (Hong Sang-soo) - Korea
LOVE LIFE (Koji Fukada)- Japan
OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN/LES ENFANTS DES AUTRES (Rebecca Zlotkowski) with Virginie Efira, Roschdy Zem and Chiara Mastroianni, - France
SAINT OMER (Alice Diop, known for her doc NOUS) - France
L'IMMENSITà (Emanuele Crialese) with Peneloope Cruz - Italy
IL SIGNORE DELLE FORMICHE (Gianni Amelio) with Elio Germano, Luigi Lo Cascio - Italy
THE WHALE (Darren Aronofsky) with Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Hong Chau, Samantha Morton, Ty Simpkins

[Chris Knipp]

Venice Bienale Film Festival: full list (from Deadline (https://deadline.com/2022/07/venice-film-festival-lineup-2022-full-list-1235077241/))

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IL SIGNORE DELLE FORMICHE (LORD OF THE ANTS)

VENEZIA 79 COMPETITON
Il Signore Delle Formiche, dir: Gianni Amelio
The Whale, dir: Darren Aronofsky
L’Imensita, dir: Emanuel Crialese
Saint Omer, dir: Alice Diop
Blonde, dir: Andrew Dominik
Tár, dir: Todd Field
Love Life, dir: Koji Fukada
Bardo, False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths, dir: Alejandro G. Inarritu
Athena, dir: Romain Gavras
Bones And All, dir: Luca Guadagnino
The Eternal Daughter, dir: Joanna Hogg
Beyond The Wall, dir: Vahid Jalilvand
The Banshees Of Inisherin, dir: Martin McDonagh
Argentina 1985, dir: Santiago Mitre
Chiara, dir: Susanna Nicchiarelli
Monica, dir: Andrea Pallaoro
No Bears, dir: Jafar Panahi
All The Beauty And The Bloodshed, dir: Laura Poitras
A Couple, dir: Frederick Wiseman
The Son, dir: Florian Zeller
Our Ties, dir: Roschdy Zem
Other People’s Children, dir: Rebecca Zlotowski

OUT OF COMPETITION

Fiction films
The Hanging Sun, dir: Francesco Carrozzini
When The Waves Are Gone, dir: Lav Diaz
Living, dir: Oliver Hermanus
Dead For A Dollar, dir: Walter Hill
Call Of God, dir: Kim Ki-duk
Dreamin’ Wild, dir: Bill Pohlad
Master Gardener, dir: Paul Schrader
Drought, dir: Paolo Virzi
Pearl, dir: Ti West
Don’t Worry Darling, dir: Olivia Wilde

Documentaries
Freedom On Fire: Ukraine’s Fight For Freedom, dir: Evgeny Afineevsky
The Matchmaker, dir: Benedetta Argentieri
Gli Ultimi Giorni Dell’Umanita, dirs, Enrico Ghezzi, Alessandro Gagliardo
A Compassionate Spy, dir: Steve James
Music For Black Pigeons, dirs, Jorgen Leth, Andreas Koefoed
The Kiev Trial, dir: Sergei Loznitsa
In Viaggio, dir: Gianfranco Rosi
Bobi Wine Ghetto President, dirs, Christopher Sharp, Moses Bwayo
Nuclear, dir: Oliver Stone

Short Films
Maid, dir: Lucretia Martel
Look At Me, dir: Sally Potter

Series
The Kingdom Exodus, dir: Lars von Trier
Copenhagen Cowboys, dir: Nicolas Winding Refn

HORIZONS EXTRA
Origin Of Evil, dir: Sebastien Mariner
Hanging Gardens, dir: Ahmed Yassin Al Daradji
Amanda, dir: Carolina Cavalli
Zapatos Rojos, dir: Carlos Eichelmann Kaiser
Nezhou, dir: Soudade Kaadan
Notte Fantasma, dir: Fulvio Risuleo
Without Her, dir: Arian Vazirdaftari
Valeria Is Getting Married, dir: Michael Vinik
Goliath, dir: Adilkhan Yerzhanov

HORIZONS
Princess, Roberto De Paolis
On The Fringe, dir: Juan Diego Botto
Victim, dir: Michal Blasko
Trenque Lauquen I, dir: Laura Citarella
Trenque Lauquen II, dir: Laura Citarella
Vera, dirs: Tizza Covi, Rainer Frimmel
Blanquita, dir: Fernando Guzzoni
Pour La France, dir: Rachid Hami
A Man, dir: Kei Ishikawa
Bread And Salt, dir: Damian Kocur
Luxembourg, Luxembourg, dir: Antonio Lukich
Ti Mangio Il Cuore, dir: Pippo Mezzapesa
To The North, dir: Mihai Mincan
Autobiography, Makbul Mubarak
La Syndicaliste, dir: Jean-Paul Salomé
World War III, dir: Houman Seyedi
The Happiest Man In The World, dir: Teona Strugar Mitevska
The Bride, dir: Sergio Tréfaut

[Chris Knipp]

VENICE Film Festival begins.

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CATE BLANCHETT IN TODD FIELD'S TÁR

GUARDIAN coverage HERE (https://www.theguardian.com/film/venicefilmfestival) The oldest film festival has plenty of interest. And the GUARDIAN'S Peter Bradshaw is cranking out reviews once again of some of the most important new films.

WHITE NOISE (Noah Baumbach) The Don DeLilo adaptation opens here as it will at the NYFF and gets 5/5 stars in Peter Bradshaw's review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/aug/31/white-noise-review-venice-opener-is-a-blackly-comic-blast), "a sensuous apocalyptic reverie." (I have never finished this famous symphonic novel about conflicting information, a plane crash, campus crisis, marital comedy, death, and a professor of "Hitler studies" who knows no German. I know I should have. DeLilo is one of David Foster Wallace's favorite authors.) Adam Driver stars here as he did in Baumbach's previous MARRIAGE STORY.

BARDO: FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS (Alejandro González Iñárritu) gets 3/5 stars in Bradshaw's review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/01/bardo-false-chronicle-of-a-handful-of-truths-review-inarritu) for the semi-autobiographical return to Mexico which Bradshaw calls "Technically stylish and massively insufferable," a "quite staggeringly self-indulgent and self-congratulatory film." Bradshaw feels Iñárritu has only a sketchy knowledge of "actual journalist-slash-documentary film-makers, as opposed to those of colossally important Oscar-winning feature directors," so there is falsity about the slightly-changed autobiographical protagonist. But the film has "brilliant individual moments" and is "made with real panache."

THE KINGDOM: EXODUS (Lars vonTrier) Xian Brooks gives a 3/5 also in his GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/01/the-kingdom-exodus-review-lars-von-trier-venice-film-festival). It is a return to the director's 5-part inventive, quirky horror TV hospital series and, given the director's many vicissitudes, his ins and outs with festivals, his diagnosis with Parkinson's, it's a miracle that it's even here and he's still working.

TÁR (Todd Field) gets 4/5 stars and a lot of praise in Peter Bradshaw's GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/01/tar-review-cate-blanchett-is-colossal-as-a-conductor-in-crisis) for this piece of elegant high culture melodrama about a "globally renowned conductor who has a live-in relationship with her first violinist, Nina Hoss, heading for a crisis or crackup or creative breakthrough." Cate Blanchett alone could carry it off with such "imperious hauteur" and Field creates a "an almost tantrically deferred climax" it "can't quite absorb." VOGUE (https://www.vogue.com/article/venice-film-festival-tar-review-cate-blanchett) calls the character "menacing and unlikeable" and "brilliantly repugnant." Classical music fans are likely to love-hate this. Todd Field's first film since LITTLE CHILDREN (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?1851-Ny-Film-Festival-2006&p=15935#post15935)(NYFF 2006).

PADRE PIO (Ael Ferrara) gets a 3/5 in Bradwhaw's review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/02/padre-pio-review-shia-labeouf-purgatory-abel-ferrara\) for a film about the personal torment of a young priest after WWI which he finds strange; and he says "Shia LaBeouf’s bearded brooding leaves film stuck in limbo." Asia Argento has a "creepy cameo."

A COUPLE (Frederick Wiseman) gets a 4/5 in Bradshaw's review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/02/a-couple-review-sofia-tolstoy-frederick-wiseman) for a fictionalized film of only 64 minutes from the documentarian of normally epic length. Nathalie Boutefeu stars as the wife of Leo Tolstoy with "a series of yearning monologues which have been adapted from her diaries and letters."

THE MARCH ON ROME (Mark Cousins) gets 5/5 stars in Bradshaw's GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/aug/31/the-march-on-rome-review-mark-cousins-dissects-mussolini-and-the-grisly-founding-myth-of-fascism) for his documentary about the "founding myth" of Mussolini's fascist dictatorship of Italy. Cousins shows how films were used to engender glamour and enthusiasm and make it look like the march from Naples to Rome was much bigger than it was. A poster shown says "La cinematografia è la forma più forte" (film is the strongest form). Cousins discusses the reabsorption of fascist architecture in Italy but omits that the Palazzo Del Casinò "is surely one of the most obviously fascist-era buildings in Europe" and the Venice Film Festival "a key invention of the Mussolini government."

[Chris Knipp]

More Venice 2022 reviews

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CHALAMET AND RUSSELL IN BONES AND ALL

BONES AND ALL (Luca Guadangino) Jay Weissberg speaks of warmly in a FILM VERDICT review (https://thefilmverdict.com/bones-and-all/). It's from a YA bestseller by Camille DeAngelis about a young couple traveling together bonded by their shared need to heat human flesh. Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet star with Mark Rylance, André Holland, Chloë Sevigny and Jessica Harper. It's a youth picture, a romance, a road picture, and set in the'80's ands shot on Kodak 35mm to enhance the period feeling. After CALL ME BY YOUR NAME and even more after "We Are Who We Are" on HBO, this respectful, admiring review is convincing because Guadagnino keeps getting better, and this flows with Chalamet's increasing stardom. Bradshaw gave BONES AND ALL (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/02/bones-and-all-review-luca-guadagnino-timothee-chalamet-venice-film-festival) 5/5 stars and called it "a macabre horror, an emo adventure in revulsion" and "an extravagant and outrageous movie: scary, nasty and startling in its warped romantic idealism."

ATHENA (Romain Gavras) is a French film set in the banlieue that Boyd van Hoeij calls in his VERDICT review (v)"An adrenaline-rush thrill ride." Nothing new, he admits, but "heart-pounding action." Ladj Ly of LES MISERABLES worked on the script. Since this is a Netflix film, it had a very generous budget for a French film, $15M, so production values are an aspect of the interest. Bradshaw gives it 3/5 stars and says it has a "staggeringly good opening set piece."

ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED (doc ace Laura Poitras) Jay Weissberg's FILM VERDICT review (https://thefilmverdict.com/all-the-beauty-and-the-bloodshed/)calls "well structured" (when he got the hang of it) in interweaving the life of Nan Golden with the issue of the Sackler family's complicity in the opioid crisis. (This film will be featured as the centerpiece film in the NYFF, as we've seen (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?5197-New-York-Film-Festival-2022&p=40486#post40486).)

[Chris Knipp]

More films - "issues"

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MIA GOTH IN PEARL

PEARL (Ti West) gets 5/5 stars in Bradshaw's GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/03/pearl-review-mia-goth-and-ti-west-scare-up-a-storm-in-extraordinary-pandemic-horror). It's a prequel to West's previous X and he says shows Mia Goth "is an actual superstar" which is "the biggest and nicest" news of Venice.This "cine-fever dream set in the dying days of Spanish flu" is an "outrageous horror shocker" and Goth takes "to the next level." Maybe he shouldn't have enjoyed it so much, he says, but he did. PEARL TRAILER (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5PW5r3pEOg) (A24).

ARGENTINA 1985 (Santiago Mitre) is praised in Bradshaw's no-points "first look" review. (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/03/argentina-1985-review-rousingly-acted-junta-trial-dramatisation) The great Ricardo Darin plays Julio Strassera, the Argentinian chief prosecutor in charge of the junta trial in 1985. Thes is a courtroom picture but it's one of the key trials in modern history, ending decades of corruption, where lawyers take on Argentina's bloody dictatorship, and is enlivened by a band of young legal officers who travel around the country looking for witnesses who give the film "a lot of zip."

BLUE JEAN (Georgia Oakley) is a film about the travails of a gay woman PE teacher in the painful era for gay people (1988-90) of Thatcher's homo-repressive Article 28. Boyd van Hoeij on FILM VERDICT (https://thefilmverdict.com/blue-jean/) says this is "at times a little clumsy" but "the work of an interesting new voice in British cinema with a flair for expressive images." Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/03/blue-jean-review-watchable-section-28-drama-makes-its-point) finds a lot of "telly" in it and simplifications of the era but agrees it's "certainly forthright, with some soap-operatic force," and gives it 3/5 stars.

MASTER GARDENER (Paul Schrader). according to Deborah Young (FILM VERDICT (https://thefilmverdict.com/master-gardener/))is a spotlight film that drops the ball on depicting American extremists in a story about "a marked man trying to redeem himself," starring Joel Edgerton and Sigourney Weaver. In his HOLLYWOOD REPORTER review (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/master-gardener-paul-schrader-joel-edgerton-sigourney-weaver-1235211712/) David Rooney calls it "belabored." (Out of Competition.)

[Chris Knipp]

Venice Sunday

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VIRGINIE EFFIRA WITH CALLIE FERREIRA-GONCALVES IN OTHER PEOPLE'S CHLDREN/LES ENFANTS DES AUTRES

L'IMMENSITÀ (Emanuele Crialese). Bradshaw gives 3/5 stars in his GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/04/l-immensita-review-emanuele-crialese-penelope-cruz) to this "escapist fantasy" and film of "multi-generational unhappiness" starring Penelope Cruz, a study of a Spanish mother of three in Rome with an adulterous businessman husband who (she, that is) is headed toward a nervous breakdown. Fantasy song-and-dance segments with the kids are fine but pre-breakdown ones are "ungainly" and "do not have the delicacy and subtlety of her work with Almodóvar." Crialese is interested in immigration and notable films have been (reviewed here at the time) the excellent GOLDEN DOOR (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?t=828) (2006) and the ambitious TERRA FERMA (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3257-San-Francisco-International-Film-Festival-2012&p=27746#post27746) (2011) .

OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN (Rebecca Zlotowski) gets 3/5 stars also in the GUARDIAN (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/04/other-peoples-children-review-a-modern-heartfelt-love-triangle-venice-film-festival) for its "sweet" but slightly "lenient and soft-focus" treatment of various forms of adult heartbreak. Starring Virginie Efira as a single teacher who's Jewish sliding toward the age when she can't have a child of her own, who starts a hot love affair with Roschdy Zem, who's ever-present ex is Chiara Mastroianni, and woos his 5-year-old daughter because she must.

THE GHOST OF RICHARD HARRIS (Adrian Sibley) is a welcome documentary about the notable Irish-born singer and actor of the 'Angry Young Man' period and beyond. There are "memorable moments" of his colorful life with the participation of his three sons, but it's inadequate on his famous hell raising because it just goes a bit too light on the alcoholism and the cocaine, Bradshaw says in his GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/04/the-ghost-of-richard-harris-review-a-hushed-reassessment-of-a-hellraiser-by-his-sons). 3/5 stars. "Too many inconvenient truths are dismissed."

THE WHALE (Darren Aronofsky) gets 2/5 stars in the GUARDIAN review. (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/04/the-whale-review-darren-aronofskys-latest-is-a-hectoring-invitation-to-blubber)and a heap of abuse from Bradshaw, who calls it "vapid, hammy and stagey," the writing "clumsy" and the whole "sucrose and underpowered." It features Brendan Fraser in massive elastic latex makeup as a morbidly obese Zoom teacher who wants to reunite with his daughter whom he left for a gay affair with a student who has died. An overcomplicated, vague, and unconvincing plot partly revolves around the protagonist's love of literature and Melville's Moby Dick where he identifies with the whale.

[Chris Knipp]

Venice Monday

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COLIN FARRELL, BRENDAN GLEESON IN THE BANSHEEE OF INISHERIN

THE BANSHEEE OF INISHERIN (Martin McDonagh) receives 4/5 stars in Bradshaw's GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/05/the-banshees-of-inisherin-review-martin-mcdonagh), which describes the playwright-auteur's new feature as "a Guinness-black comedy of male pain," reuniting Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson of IN BRUGES (2008) "in remotest Ireland" for "an oddball study of isolation and hurt." The setting is an imaginary island off the Irish coast called Inishirin in 1923 during the civil war and there is a "tremendous performance" from Barry Keoghan. This is a tale of inexplicable, painful, broken-off male friendship that's "weirdly compelling and often very funny."

AMANDA (Carolina Cavalli), 3/5 stars from Bradshaw (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/05/amanda-review-comic-crises-in-the-life-of-an-entitled-twentysomething), is an Italian "absurdist existential comedy" about a spoiled young woman in "a quarterlife crisis." The style has "something of Lanthimos or Kaurismaki, or the Italian director Paolo Sorrentino whose influence is obvious." The characterization of the protagonist is amusing but shallow.

DON'T WORRY DARLING (Olivia Wilde) stars Florence Pugh and Harry Styles and doesn't work in the view of Bradshaw, who gives it 2/5 stars (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/05/dont-worry-darling-review-panic-harry-styles-drama-offers-cause-for-concern). It's about a sci-fi-mythical Fifties California desert model town where all the men work at a project called "Victory" in a town called "Victory," and won't say what they're doing, and something is terribly wrong. Wilde, who costars, spoils her reveal and it all doesn't jell nor does Harry's American accent. Pugh is wasted and we can't tell whether Styles has promise as an actor. More attention was on whether Harry Styles spat on Chris Pine at the opening than on the film (he didn't, though).

[Chris Knipp]

Tues. Venice

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TILDA SWINTON IN THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER

THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER (Joanna Hogg). 4 out of 5 stars from Bradshaw in his GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/06/the-eternal-daughter-review-double-tilda-swinton-haunts-joanna-hogg-ghost-story)for this "pseudo horror" move from the maker of the SOUVENIR films, again with Tilda Swinton, this time playing both a mother and her daughter, who go together to visit a hotel that brings back memories and winds up bringing out the unknowability of family members. Sounds like something very subtle and another triumph like the first SOUVENIR.

[Chris Knipp]

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LOVE LIFE

Wed.-Thurs. Venice

THE SON (Florian Zeller:) His follow-up (likewise adapted by Christopher Hampton from his stage play) to his troubling 2020 Anthony Hopkins vehicle THE FATHER features Hugh Jackman as a successful divorced lawyer in NYC who takes in his depressed 17-year-old son from his previous marriage. With Vanessa Kirby, Laura Dern as the two wives, a cameo from Hopkins. Bradshaw gives the film 4 our of 5 stars in his GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/07/the-son-review-hugh-jackman-laceratingly-painful-drama-of-familial-fear-and-loathing) calling it a "laceratingly painful drama of familial fear and loathing"; he has reservations about the "Kodak moment" flashbacks and finds the climax a bit slick.

LOVE LIFE (Kôji Fukada). 4/5 STARS in Bradshaw's GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/07/love-life-review-koji-fukada-tangled-and-tragic-chaotic-and-comic) for this " tangled and tragic human drama" from Japan "about chaotic life twists." It has both tragic and comic elements and a surprise coda set in Korea. In Shakespearean terms this could be a "filmic 'problem play'." It involves a couple drawn back to their previous partners due to a tragic accident, and disapproving parents. Coolly unreeling chaos. " It is a rich, varied meal of a film."

[Chris Knipp]

Reviews from Thurs. Venice

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WORLD WAR III

SAINT OMER (Alice Diop) (France).
“...extraordinary first fiction feature...” "using the trial of a Senegalese woman guilty of killing her infant to honestly explore the complexities of motherhood while foregrounding it all within France’s racist currents." -Jay Weissberg (THE FILM VERDICT) (https://thefilmverdict.com/saint-omer/?utm_source=The+Film+Verdict&utm_campaign=7fd00fa37c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2022_02_09_07_01_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b645ac61ca-7fd00fa37c-216240122).


WORLD WAR III (Houman Seyedi) (Iran).
“…an edge-of-seat drama that also packs a big social message...” - "A manual day laborer is selected to play Hitler in a film, but this stroke of 'luck' leads to terrible tragedies on the film set in Houman Seyedi’s expertly crafted, realistic/metaphoric tale about authoritarian society." - Deborah Young (THE FILM VERDICT) (https://thefilmverdict.com/world-war-iii/).

GOLIATH (Adilkhan Yerzhanov) (Iran)
Clarence Tsui, THE FILM VERDICT (https://thefilmverdict.com/goliath/): "Goliath is a good fit for its Venice premiere in more ways than one. Inspired by Niccolò Macchiavelli’s ideas about power dynamics in human society and Sergio Leone’s eye for windswept lawlessness in all its gory glory, Kazakh cineaste Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s second film of 2022 is at once a cutting political allegory, a taut revenge tale and a visual extravaganza."

LORD OF THE ANTS/IL SIGNORE DELLE FORMICHE (Gianni Amelio (Italy)) A film about persecution of an openly gay man in 1960's Italy who was put on trial on a trumped-up charge. Deborah Young reviews it for THE FILM VERDICT (https://thefilmverdict.com/the-lord-of-the-ants/).

[Chris Knipp]

Thurs., cont'd.


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BLONDE (Andrew Dominik). (USA) After the hype, disappointment. Jay Weissberg in THE FILM VERDICT (https://thefilmverdict.com/blonde/): "What’s so infuriating about [Dominik's] Blonde is that he seems to actually think he’s offering unvarnished insight into Norma Jeane’s soul when instead he’s simply changed the icon into a different kind of icon, just as standardized and one-dimensional. . . " Disappointing also since Dominik made the excellent The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. That demythologized the West's most famous figures; this just does the opposite. Simplifies and isolates its subject, makes her only a victim. Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/08/blonde-review-some-like-it-rotten-monroe-biopic-is-moving-explicit-and-intensely-irritating) (3 out of 5 stars) says "Andrew Dominik’s controversial drama finds space for talking fetuses, presidential sex and a starry throuple – but denies its subject sufficient agency." He calls the movie "moving, explicit and intensely irritating."

See for yourself next Fri., Sept. 16 (US release date).

[Chris Knipp]

Thurs. again

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IMAGE FROM THE DAMNED DON'T CRY

THE DAMNED DON'T CRY (Fyzal Boulifa) Bradshaw's GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/08/the-damned-dont-cry-review-fyzal-boulifa-venice-film-festival) gives four out of five starst to the Moroccan-English filmmaker's "mournful portrait of colonial tension" which "explores the decisions forced on a poverty-stricken Moroccan family" in a "vivid and powerful drama." He explains it is a follow-up to his LYNN + LUCY, a 'social-realist psychodrama" about "female friendship on an Essex housing estate." Here an impoverished mother and teenage son wind up in Tangier, Morocco and the boy turning to selling himself for sex like his mother - an ugly tale but a film that "shows style and real storytelling verve."

IDENTIFICATION OF A WOMAN (Michalangelo Antonioni 1982). This rerelease may or may not help rehabilitate the Italian director's reputation that declined toward the end. It concerns a movie director who is auditioning young women and. rather lost, has affairs with two women, with beautifully photographed scenes in Venice and at a grand party. Would be a comedy in other hands, Bradshaw says, and perhaps Antonioni intends a comic element. Not yet dated enough to view with detachment, he concludes. Bradshaw's GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/08/identification-of-a-woman-review-michelangelo-antonionis-midlife-crisis-of-a-movie) grants it three out of five stars. It does not sound edifying but must be necessary for cinephiles to know about.

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IMAGE FROM IDENTIFICAZIONE DI UNA DONNA

[Bradshaw has begun publishing reviews from Toronto.]

[Chris Knipp]

Venice 2022 Awards

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LAURA POITRAS RECEIVES THE 'LEONE D'ORO'

Best film:
Golden Lion goes to Laura Poitras for her documentary about Nan Golden and the Sackler family and the US opioid epidemic, ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED. (For the Filmleaf description of ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED, see HERE (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?5191-Venice-Film-Festival-Aug-31-Sept-10-2022&p=40526#post40526).) Poitras previously won the Oscar for her Edward Snowden documentary debuted at the 2014 NYFF, CITIZEN FOUR (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3800-New-York-Film-Festival-2014&p=32837#post32837).

"Runner-up" title went to Alice Diop's SAINT OMER, feature about a woman on trial for infanticide. “...extraordinary first fiction feature...” "using the trial of a Senegalese woman guilty of killing her infant to honestly explore the complexities of motherhood while foregrounding it all within France’s racist currents." -Jay Weissberg (THE FILM VERDICT) (https://thefilmverdict.com/saint-omer/?utm_source=The+Film+Verdict&utm_campaign=7fd00fa37c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2022_02_09_07_01_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b645ac61ca-7fd00fa37c-216240122).

The last two GOLDEN LIONS were to Audrey Diwan for HAPPENING (2021) and Chloé Zhao for NOMADLAND (2020).

Best Director:
Silver Lion goes to Luca Guadagnino for BONES AND ALL starring Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell in a young cannibal romance road picture.

Best young actress
Taylor Russell in BONES AND ALL

Acting awards:
BEST ACTRESS: To CATE BLANCHETT for her starring role in Todd Field's TÁR, playing an orchestra leader.
BEST ACTOR: To COLIN FARRELL for his role in Martin McDonach's THE BANSHEES OF INISHIRIN.

Best Screenplay:
MARTIN MCDONAGH for THE BANSHEES OF ININSHIRIN

Special Award:
Jafar Panahi for NO BEARS. Panahi has now been jailed in Iran on a six-year former charge not previously enforced.

[oscar jubis]

So the best two films were directed by females, and the directors who won the Golden Lion in the previous two years are also women. Is this a sign that the industry is truly becoming more accessible to women filmmakers?

[Chris Knipp]

I didn't even notice. I don't pay attention to these things.
IN answer to your question: No. Not necessarily. It's most of all a sign that these women are making good films, and jurors are trying to reward them.

I've been writing about Claire Denis, certainly one of my all-time fovorite directors, who is definitely a woman.

Also one of my all time favorite writers is a woman, Jane Austen, and one of the greatest novels in English of all time is Middlemarch, by George Eliot, a woman.

But n the plastic arts, in painting, women don't matter very much to me. And in classical music or jazz, not so many women stand out. Exceptions: Martha Argerich (big one) and Marin Alsop (pioneer woman director: I've reviewed the documentary (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4731) about her. And she was the BSO conductor - Baltimore, my home town!)

[Chris Knipp]

P.s. IN the new documentary My Imaginary Country/Mi país imaginario by Patricio Guzmán coming out Sept. 23 I will have a review) I was struck that all of the people in it are women and the people who created a new government and a new constitution of Chile were for the first time equally represented of both sexes, the film says. This is how it has to be now, patriarchy must end or there can be no real equality and hence no justice.

[Chris Knipp]

Notice Toronto is on. I've not been attempting to cover it remotely. It's the biggest one around. That's why. But Bradshaw has been doing his usual quick, accessible coverage so I may report from it, if time allows.