So this was my last Sala Grande screening. Meaning the official screening in the film cast’s presence. I like these screenings very much as one gets a good sense of the public’s reaction to the movie (not that I always agree with the public, but still). The Venice crowd is not as radical as the Cannes one. I have rarely (if ever) witnessed strongly negative reactions to a screening. Therefore, in Venice, your barometer is the strength and the length of the applause. From the ones I have seen this year in the Sala Grande, the applause winner is definitely Hamaguchi. But then, in the Sala Grande I was not for Lanthimos’ movie. My little finger tells me this must have been a big celebration.
Our little Belgian production “Holly” still got a quite decent welcome as well yesterday. Fien Troch is already a bit of a Venice chouchou. She received the Best Director Award in the Orizzonti section back in 2016. She has her crowd of followers and they were definitely present yesterday.
As for the movie itself, the first reactions are mixed. Strangely what is criticized is what I appreciated the most about it.
But let’s start shortly with the plot: a 15 year old schoolgirl calls her school one day to say she won’t come in as she has a feeling that something extremely bad is going to happen. That day a fire breaks out at school and leaves 10 students dead. Holly, who is a bullied outcast in her school with only one friend (another bullied “special” boy, as she describes him) suddenly becomes sort of a messiah, mostly for the grieving adult community. Now, deal with it when you are 15 and people are willing to pay you 50 EUR for a hug that will make them “feel better”.
What I liked about the movie is that nothing in it is set straight: the nature of Holly’s “powers” is unclear. One sometimes wonders if they are real or if it’s yet another manifestation of collective hysteria. Holly’s mixed feelings about the entire situation are very much interiorized as well – one thus regularly questions her understanding of what is happening around her. Is she just her own life’s spectator? I found this very well balanced and interesting.
It seems that precisely this uncertainty disturbs many critics. We apparently live in an era when everything needs to be clearly explained and understood for it to make sense. Let’s just agree to disagree.
Finally, the very qualitative second roles are worth mentioning: the “special” friend (Frederic Heremans) and the school teacher/counselor (Greet Verstraete) put a really good performance in this production.
Conclusion: a bit of a strange one but definitely worth watching precisely because of its strangeness.
Klara's cinema 