Klara's cinema

For those who remember, two years ago after the screening of “Bones and All”, I had an entire reflection on my love/hate relationship with Luca Guadagnino. Back then, we had a tie between the love (“Io sono l’amore” and “Call me by your name”) and hate (“A bigger splash” and “Suspiria”) sides. “Bones and all” remained in the middle, as it left me totally indifferent. 

This year, the hate side has taken a solid advantage, which might even be a win on KO. On the morning after, I still feel extremely irritated about what was thrown – I would even say vomited – at me the evening before. Now, let’s not forget that we are in Italy and that, in general, Luca Guadagnino has his strong supporters. I have seen articles passing by about a “masterpiece” and Daniel Craig being “heartbreaking” or “mesmeric” with his performance. 

And yes yes, this is art, this is very personal and sensitivities are extremely diverse.

My personal sensitivity (and it seems that most of the Palabiennale screening hall’s sensitivity as well, if you consider the booing after the movie) resulted in absolute dread and blunt irritation. Very similar to my post Suspiria state of mind.

What I have personally seen is a totally feelingless style exercise that some call a “trippy gay odyssey” and I call “visual vomit”. As often with Guadagnino, everything focuses on the visuals, the colours, the effects… the picture basically. Problem is that, even that was too much for me. Just fakeness. 

And yes, Craig is astonishing in his unexpected gay dandy performance. But the director’s choice has gone towards making him overplay it (you can really feel the Guadagnino imprint on the acting style). With a bit more “restraint”, it could have been heartbreaking indeed. Presented as it is, it is just infuriating as lacking any kind of frailty. 

This lead me to rethink a vivid discussion that I had with my friend Pamela years ago. Still influenced by my love for “Io sono l’amore”, I strongly defended Guadagnino, refusing to admit that his aesthetics might be slightly pretentious. Well, Pamela, it is never too late to revise one’s position. I now fully agree with you. Guadagnino IS damn pretentious. 

Obviously, given my state of mind, the second movie stood no chance. As I spent the first 40mins of it cursing at Luca and booing in my head, I decided that it might make more sense to go home and sleep over it. Let me just add one more morning BOOOO to close this chapter for good.

This morning, I woke up quite early as we had a “mountain of plastic waste in the house” issue. The boat collecting waste stops every single morning right in front of our appartement window. Which can be a plus as it allows you to run out still in your pyjamas, hand in your bin bags, and run right back to bed. The bad side of it is that our sidewalk is one permanent conversation as of 08:00 and that, on every second day, when glass is being collected, it is impossible not to notice it unless one uses proper earplugs.

This morning was “plastica” day, hence I had an early pyjamas run in order to free our home from that mountain of empty water bottles (damn, it’s been hot the whole past week). 

Whilst doing so, I had this weird thought that Venice must be the only city in the world in which waste collectors make you feel as if you were worth less than the tiniest little piece of shit in the world. My “buongiorno” with a smile remained unanswered. My “dove metto la plastica?” (where do I put the plastic?) was answered by a silent finger (I’m apparently not even worth a look) pointing at a container. And my “buona giornata” was ignored with the most professional disdain ever.

Strangely, this put me in the greatest mood for the day as half an hour later I was still laughing at this whole situation and making my friend laugh at how Venice is the city where bin collectors became kings/queens and where we are considered as tiny little insignificant parasites. The context behind all this is, of course, not that laughable (let’s face it, mass tourism is slowly killing Venice) but this good morning laugh did us well.

Especially as the previous night screening ended up being way more challenging than expected. The synopsis of Almodovar’s movie was rather concise: something about two old friends (Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore) meeting again after some years and being brought closer because of a “tragedy” they face together.

Taking into consideration that the unspecified “tragedy” ends up (!!! spoiler alert for those who know me well) being exactly the one through which my family is currently going was not the most pleasant surprise for me. When the screening ended, I first started to mumble that a slightly more specific synopsis would have been appreciated. Then that maybe not, because I would have most probably chosen not to watch the movie. Then that actually that would have been a pitty as the movie was very good. Then I stopped talking and the tears just started pouring by themselves. Not exactly what I expected for myself in my little venitian paradise.

Fortunately the crisis only lasted for 3 minutes as, let’s put things straight, the movie is not overly dramatic and definitely not miserabilistic. It is above all about true friendship, it is (as always with Almodovar) beautifully staged with amazing colours, settings and everything around that you can think of, and it is supported by a fantastic cast of actresses. It is basically one of these little jewels that one is not given to see that often. Local news say that the standing ovation in the Sala Grande was 18mins long. My own prize barometer also sees it as a strong contender for one of the top lions.

The little Italian movie that followed (one of those, such as the previous one we saw, that would have never ended up in the official selection, was it not an Italian production) was pleasant to watch though absolutely not at the level of the masterpiece seen before.

Prior to seeing this one, our line of thinking was a) this is a potentially very interesting topic, b) Adrien Brody is an excellent actor but c) 3h30 is a risky length for a movie and it has to be absolutely perfect from a screenplay perspective to keep us focused for that long.

So high expectations combined with a bit of concern.

Now, prior to actually seeing the movie, a huge discovery was made within our group. Let me give you a bit of context: the first Mostra I ever attended was the 56th (the current one is the 81st). That makes it 25. Though I have not been attending on a yearly basis since then, I would say that since 2007, I have barely missed one. That makes it at least 17 editions in a row. For these 17 years, I have been entering the Sala Grande through its RIGHT side entrance, barely acknowledging the existence of its left side entrance.

Yesterday, a sudden urge for a quick prosecco before sitting and watching the screen for 3h30, made us run inside through the LEFT side entrance. This resulted in a whole new world unraveling for me: it only took me 17 years to discover that there is a perfect viewpoint on the red carpet when entering from that side. The below picture is a material proof of it. Just when you were about to think that you knew it all…

I was still recovering from that shocking and belated discovery when the screening started. And that ended up being at least as exciting as our major 2024 left side revelation.  Not only is the story fascinating (the American dream/nightmare of a Hungarian Jewish architect who survived the camps and attemps at starting a new life in the USA) but, as many already say around town, Adrien Brody might be up for a second Oscar with that one. He is literally close to absolute perfection.

Add to it a screenplay that hooks you to the plot from minute 1 until exactly minute 215 without giving you one second of rest and what you get is my first very strong potential candidate for this year’s golden lion. A must see!

I had to wait for one more day to write this one as there was honestly nothing much to say about day 3. 

“Babygirl” tells the story of a successful and powerful CEO (Nicole Kidman) having a sexual affair with a very young and attractive intern. We have already seen this fifty times and in much more interesting formats. About “Trois amies”, I have even less to say. I would summarize it as someone’s unsuccessful attempt at being the new Eric Rohmer. The problem is that, if you are not as gifted as Rohmer was, all this talking and unnatural dialogues end up being crucifying for the actors (and it proves again that Camille Cottin is a good actress as she is the only one who at least slightly survives this crucifixion). We obviously ran away.

Fortunately, after seeing (yet again – it seems to be my cross to bear) the worst of contemporary French cinema, we saw the best of it yesterday. “Leurs enfants après eux” is based on the 2018 Goncourt winning novel written by Nicolas Mathieu. Though being slightly too long, it is supported by a fantastic cast of renounded actors (Gilles Lellouche, Ludivine Sagner) as well as young and not yet so well known ones, who simply burst the screen with their authenticity. 

For those who have not yet read the book (you should), it takes us back in the 90s and the lives of teenagers in a economically crumbling region of France. It is quite rare that a movie does honour to the book it is based on, this is definitely one of these cases. 

The standing ovation in the Sala Grande was long and enthusiastic in presence of the entire cast. A really nice moment of this year’s Mostra. I’m betting on a price for this one.

We followed in the evening with two pretty decent and very different films (though not award-worthy, according to my personal opinion). 

“Campo di Battaglia” tells the story of first world war doctors confronted with wounded soldiers (some by their own deeds) willing to do anything not to be sent back to the battlefield. Are they traitors to the nation or are they only poor souls who already gave enough to the country and are in need of saving? Add to it the beginning of the Spanish flu epidemics and you end up with a quite dramatic story filmed in a very austere manner but focusing on an important and less and less known moment in our history. Not to mention that my beloved Alessandro Borghi plays in it and is always a delight to watch.

We ended up the day with “The Order”, a beautifully filmed (these Idaho sceneries are stunning) crime story, based on true events involving a white supremacist group preparing for armed revolution against the state institutions (a frighteningly actual topic). Though it has a very standardly structured scenario, it is supported by a good cast (Jude Law – one of his really good performances – Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan) and a storyline that really does the trick. The conclusion is thus: no surprises but a solid movie.

The night walk back home through empty San Marco completed perfectly this day to remember…

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.

A contrasted final evening at the Palabiennale screening venue last night. 

Yet another useless French movie – honestly guys, it’s becoming slightly worrying. I’m all for a stronger financing of culture but dear lord, maybe we should think about redistributing the French funds elsewhere. If “Le Monde” gave this one a 5 star (as it did for “La Bête”) I swear I am ready to write them a letter questioning the need for sending a correspondent to Venice. It does not make sense to pay for a plane ticket to distribute 5 stars for free. 

“Hors saison” does not even deserve me loosing my time summarizing the plot. It’s just too long, too slow, not credible for one minute (my Holly’s super powers are more credible than this relationship) and… just a pain to watch.

I thus suffered the screening just for the sake of the second movie (otherwise I would have escaped after 1 hour). Problem is that this required quite some energy and that by the end of movie 1, I was half asleep. The short 15mins break between the two screenings did not suffice to regain some strengths for Franco’s movie. Therefore I spent the first 45mins of it struggling with my eyes shutting down and my head falling. Thank you Stéphane, really. It was a hard struggle but I was determined to enjoy Jessica Chastain – a pleasure, as usual, and the right way to close my 2023 Mostra.

Franco’s movie questions quite a sensitive topic: the possibility of love and of a relationship when one has dementia (and honestly the second half of the couple is not at its best either). A pretty tricky subject. I would not have dared. There is a thin line not to cross there, between treating the matter with delicacy and restraint and shifting towards the disturbing, if not voyeurism. This is what firstly kept me awake and eventually fully woke me up. Thank you Michel.

To be honest, I spent most of the movie hoping for the best and for it not to shift to something really wrong. Thankfully, it lived up to the expectations. Quite a delicate exercise it was and it was probably a successful one thanks to the quality of the acting – always subtle, never too much (not only Jessica, on both sides of the couple, actually). 

But this should not overshadow the similarly impressive quality of scenario. Where Stéphane Brizé shows you 10mins of a beach under the rain to make you understand that you are… at the beach and off season (I really had NOT noticed), Michel Franco proposes a very smart set of subtle, precise and tender moments about the least probable love story in the world. And the miracle happens when you actually start believing in it.

Whilst it was not the Mostra’s best movie (I am still getting over my conversion to Lanthimos – my personal Golden Lion), it was a very pretty one to finish my festival with. Highly recommended.

So this is it. The sun has set on my 2023 Mostra. A very satisfying selection according to me. Looking forward to hearing what the jury thought of it (closing ceremony tonight). In my heart, Venice remains the most beautiful and relaxing city in the world (if you know how to manoeuvre through it). If all is right, I’ll see you back in Venice and on facebook in September 2024 (hopefully with my full festival team). In the meantime, I’ll disappear back from social media but will keep on updating my blog whenever a movie catches my eye! Ciao a tutti!

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.

Ca’ Pesaro – the Gemma De Angelis Testa Donation (only until 17/09 but really worth seeing): an absolutely wonderful contemporary art collection donated recently to the Ca’ Pesaro with pieces by Ai Weiwei, Cy Twombly, Anselm Kiefer, an incredible Bill Viola video (and many many others). The crème de la crème, if you are into this kind of art.

Punta della Dogana (Fondation Pinault) – Icônes (until 26/11): as I always say, nothing makes me happier than a colourful square. If that’s your kind of thing, run to the Punta. This year’s exhibition is one of the best ones I’ve seen in this amazing place in years. Already its opening, with Lygia Pape’s magnificently poetic installation is worth going there (let me brag about the fact that I have seen 2 other variations of this one, one at the Venice Biennale a few years ago and one in Inhotim, Brazil, and that they never stop amazing me).

Prada Foundation – everybody talks about the weather (until 26/11): an interesting art parcours through meteorological phenomena and climate change, from Monet through Turner to contemporary pieces (Dan Peterman, Pieter Vermeersch, Vivan Suter etc.). Nice one as well though I would say the two first ones are more like an absolutely must see.

Also worth seeing if you have more days: the architecture Biennale at the Arsenale (I have been told the Giardini are nice as well but have not been there myself) and the Palazzo Grassi with a huge photo collection recently aquired by Pinault (Chonorama – treasures from 20th century photography, until 26/11 as well). I was slightly overwhelmed by the amount of pictures on display but met with my mini-me in there:

Let’s say that “Coup de Chance” was a sympathetic light ending to a light and relaxing day at the beach – quite a perfect fit. It is the lightest we have seen until now and let’s admit it, once in a while, lightness does you good.

“Coup de Chance’s” fully French cast gives us a glimpse of Paris’ wealthy bourgeoisie milieu. Those that go to their country house (aka manor) during the weekend to hunt and who attend almost daily (and gossipy) upper class receptions and dinners. Once the setting is set, a little infidelity comes to spice it up and triggers a pretty inoffensive (and very Allen-esque) intrigue involving detectives, hitmen and an investigating mother/mother in law (the best of Valérie Lemercier I have seen in years). 

Now. It is definitely not Allen’s best movie. It suffers a bit from weaker dialogues and a simplistic plot. But if one takes it as a “farce grotesque” (as I am sure it is intended, knowing the guy) it still does the trick for me. I’d honestly rather watch the Allen-style least discrete detective and most cliché Romanian hitmen than Michael Fassbender in a two hours monotonous monologue as in “The Killer”. At least you get a good laugh out of it.
Hence the conclusion is: perfectly watchable for me.

And yes, the Grand Hotel des Bains is still sadly empty and abandoned – its ghost is watching you on the Lido beach…