Month: August 2024

Mostra Day 2 – “Maria” (Pablo Larrain) and “El Jockey (Kill the Jockey)” (Luis Ortega)


I have to say that I was quite doubtful prior to yesterday’s evening screening. Indeed, what we knew before entering the movie hall was that we would see a film about the last days of Maria Callas and that it would be starring Angelina Jollie. 

To start with, the Jollie/Callas combination raised some doubts in me about Larrain’s casting skills – I mean, believe it or not, I don’t think that I have ever seen a movie with Angelina Jollie, but god knows I know who she is and how she looks. Same for Callas. We all know that both her appearance and personality were quite unique.

My doubts were further supported by the fact that I found both previous biopics made by Larrain (“Jackie” and “Spencer”) absolutely insufferable. From what I recall, I painfully suffered “Jackie” until the end but ran away from “Spencer” after an hour (though the escape was as well due to a COVID time outdoor screening during which we were all absolutely freezing outside).

So, heavy feet I had entering the cinema. And, maybe due to the fact that I was prepared for the worse, I came out positively surprised. Do not take me wrong: I did not see Callas on the screen for one second (except for the few archive pictures displayed at the end of the movie). What I saw was Jollie putting on a pretty decent performance impersonating a lonely diva suddenly confronted with the end of her career. 

Additionally, for once in one of Larrain’s biopics, I very much enjoyed the dialogues and found the movie flow pretty normal (which it was definitely not in “Spencer”) and even pleasant. 

This resulted in a very surprised but overall satisfied me at the end of movie 1.

Movie 2 was announced as an Argentinian production about a drug/alcohol addicted jockey who, after a serious accident, discovers his real self. Intriguing.

I have to admit that I only saw the first hour of it. This was not due to my lack of interest in the film but more to the physical state of my movie buddy – having taken a flight at 07:00 in the morning, the movie buddy was physically incapable of keeping her eyes open for more than the first 30mins of the second screening. Once in a while, one has to have mercy for his friends.

So, from what I saw, this seemed to be quite an awkwardly funny and oddly original piece of work. The jockey on his own is a piece of art – never leaving his helmet and his sunglasses as he is too full of drugs and alcohol to look even slightly capable of coping with a race (after his accident, the helmet is replaced with a weird hat made of medical bandages).

Before I read that Ortega had actually cooperated with him, I told my movie buddy that this seemed to me like an Argentinian version of a Kaurismaki movie: many characters with impossible faces (same as Kaurismaki, you wonder where the director found them), many silent looks, loads of very dark humour. 

As a conclusion, I would say that this one is definitely worth a full second watch if it ever comes out in our movie theaters.

Mostra Day 1 – “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (Tim Burton)


Unbelievable but true, I made it to Venice. This year, the challenge was not so much the emptiness of our venetian cocoon upon arrival, but leaving Brussels to start with. The denial phase lasted until Monday evening (with a flight foreseen on Tuesday morning, quite timely). The guilt of leaving my old ones behind (in not such a good shape, to say the least) was quite hard to fight back. But, as everyone around pushed for me to go and finally get a break from everything, I ended up in that plane on Tuesday morning with the only thought in my head being “fuck, I am actually going to Venice”. 

And the good thing about going back to a city that, by now, really feels like home is that you are done with that urge to visit and see everything from day 1. My day 1 actually entailed a visit to the supermarket, a 2h afternoon siesta (hell, I actually WAS really tired) and a random encounter and chat with our friend Nelson on our fondamenta. That’s about it. 

Good that the Mostra started a day after my arrival, because I am not sure that I would have been physically able to drag myself to the Lido right on the first evening. The fact that the opening movie was a Tim Burton one would have actually played against such a courageous shift. 

I know that many people won’t agree with me as it is very personal but I am definitely not a Tim Burton girl. In general, I am not a fantasy movie watcher. I don’t need a movie to take me away from my reality, I need it to make me (re)think about it. I guess that, that is how I was raised (I mean, I was taken to see Forman’s “Amadeus” when I was 5 years old after all – quite inappropriate but definitely striking) and it is very hard to change it by now. 

So the opinion of a non amateur after the screening is the following: I would definitely not pay for a movie ticket to watch it in the cinema but I surprisingly had some fun. As always with a Tim Burton movie it is visually stunning, extremely weird, relatively funny and, in this specific case, just kind and naive. This is about everything I can say about it. I did not see the first “Beetlejuice”, hence I have nothing to compare it to. But it was definitely not boring to watch and reasonably long. So a good starting point for the next 10 days of my movie marathon.