Last three films in competition at the Venice Film Festival presented on the eve of the awarding of the Golden Lion.
We start from ‘Kobieta Z… (Woman of)’ by Polish directors Magorzata Szumowska and Michal Englert, a film which, against the backdrop of Poland’s transformation in the transition from communism to capitalism, spans forty-five years of Aniela Wesoy’s life, telling her journey in search of freedom as a trans woman. The protagonist faces difficulties in her family and complicated situations in the environment where she lives.
Then it will be the turn of a French film in which there is also a bit of Italy, ‘Out of season’ by Stèphane Brizè with Alba Rohrwacher together with Guillaume Canet, Sharif Andoura and Lucette Beudine. It’s a film about finding yourself and time passing. Mathieu lives in Paris, Alice in a small seaside town in western France. He is a famous actor about to turn fifty, she is a piano teacher in her forties. Fallen in love fifteen years ago, later separated. Time has passed. Everyone took their own path and the wounds slowly healed. When Mathieu goes to a spa to try to overcome the melancholy that grips him, he runs into Alice.
The last film in competition, which will be on the Lido at 9.30pm, is ‘Memory’ by Michel Franco. The film by the Mexican director, starring Jessica Chastain, Peter Sarsgaard, Brooke Timber, Merritt Wever, Elsie Fisher, Jessica Harper, Josh Charles, tells the story of the meeting between a man and a woman: Sylvia and a social worker, with a life simple and organized between her daughter, work, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Everything falls apart when Saul accompanies her home after a reunion between former schoolmates: the unexpected meeting will shock both of them, because they will open the door to the past.
Finally, in the afternoon, at 2 pm it will be screened the documentary by Giorgio Verdelli is out of competition ‘Enzo Jannacci I’m coming too’ on the Milanese singer-songwriter who passed away ten years ago.
At 5pm today we will know the name of the first winner of this edition of the Film Festival during the Awards Ceremony of Agiscuola Golden Lion and the Cinema For Unicef Report.
Grand final tomorrow, TotoLeone kicks off
Poor Creatures!, Dogman, The Green Border and, for Italy, Io Capitano ed Aeneas. This could be the top five of a possible TotoLeone of the 80th edition of the Film Festival which ends tomorrow. And all this considering something that is no small thing: Damien Chazelle, born in 1985 and Oscar winner with La La Land, is the youngest jury president of the festival since he was born.
Meanwhile, it is impossible to imagine that poor creatures! he doesn’t score goals, that is, he doesn’t enter this year’s list of winners. If anything, the problem is another: who will receive the prize? To the incredible Emma Stone or to the film? The actress is extraordinary in the role of Bella Baxter, a woman brought back to life with the grafting of a child’s brain which makes her “a very cute retard”, a pure being who discovers sexuality naturally.
“Wherever there is an unhappy person, God sends him a dog.” This evocative phrase by de Lamartine introduces Dogman by Luc Besson, a black fairy tale starring Douglas (the eclectic and always Luciferian Caleb Landry Jones from Coppa Volpi), a boy who from an early age is locked in a cage full of dogs by a violent father .
In The Green Border, however, immigration by Agnieszka Holland takes center stage. In the film, shot clandestinely and divided into chapters, the director tells, from time to time, the story of a family of Syrian refugees who escaped ISIS, of an English language teacher from Afghanistan, of a young border guard and a group of volunteers who try to help by risking themselves every day.
On the Italian front, represented by six titles in competition, Garrone’s Io Capitano stands out in pole position. Everything speaks well of this film: from the theme, the very current one of migration by sea from Libya to Italy, up to the story, that of two underage boys who remain pure despite the hell of a journey to a dilapidated boat. In Aeneas by Pietro Castellitto, the freshness and authorship of a film that remains a Martian within the tired panorama of certain Italian cinema could prevail. A thirty-year-old who talks about his generation is rare in Italy. In the case of Castellitto it is the life of Enea, a boy from the good Rome, legitimately bored and the perfect mix of a spoiled boy, but full of philosophical principles and capable of frequenting the most exclusive club on the Tiber, his problematic bourgeois family.