THE Venice Film Festival of 2008 delivered, by general consensus, the
most disappointing program in many years, a particularly unfortunate
outcome given that the past two years were so strong.
Disgruntled festival-goers not only coped with a collection of below-
par films, but with inadequate internet connections in major hotels, a
mosquito plague of almost biblical proportions and stiflingly hot
weather.
Yet it all started very promisingly with the judiciously chosen
opening night feature,Burn after Reading, which finds Joel and Ethan
Coen in comedy mode after the grim tensions of their previous film, No
Country for Old Men. This is a smart, witty film about Washington
insiders – and some decided outsiders – that starts off with the
dismissal of long-serving CIA operative Osborne Cox (John Malkovich)
for a drinking problem. This event triggers off a series of others
involving Cox’s faithless wife, Katie (Tilda Swinton), her federal
marshal lover, Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney) and, in another part of
the city, the somewhat clueless Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), and his
fellow employee at the Hardbodies Fitness Centre, Linda Litzke
(Frances McDormand). With the CIA and the Russian embassy involved
with some missing documents that may or may not be of great security
value, the stage is set for some comic, occasionally lethal,
misunderstandings. The film is beautifully scripted and every member
of the large cast, down to the smallest role, is utterly convincing.
But after this bright beginning it was all pretty much downhill,
especially in the competition. The two best films on display were both
out of competition, one of them French and the other Italian. With The
Beaches of Agnes, the matriarch of the French new wave, Agnes Varda,
has made a whimsical, touching and informative autobiography in which
she explores her childhood in Belgium and later (during the war) in
the south of France leading to her work as a photographer in China.
She was involved with the nouvelle vague from the very beginning
because of her friendship with Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, Jean-Luc
Godard and others; and at the age of 26 she directed the first feature
film of the movement, La Pointe-Courte, in 1956.
The film contains excerpts from her features and documentaries and an
expectedly warm portrait of her husband, Jacques Demy (the director of
that masterpiece, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) who died in 1990. Varda
emerges as an indomitable character, as feisty and inquiring at 80 as
ever she was.
First-time feature director Gianni di Gregorio’s Lunch in Mid-August,
which screened in the Critics Week, is also about the elderly. The
director plays Gianni, who lives in a small Rome apartment with his
very demanding 90-year-old mother (Valeria De Franciscis). He needs
the money, so he agrees to look after another old lady for a few days
at the height of summer, but in the end he gets stuck with four of
them, all very much with minds of their own. This is a very small film
but, mainly thanks to the quartet of grand old women, hugely
enjoyable.
Back in the competition, much was expected fromThe Burning Plain, the
first film directed by the Mexican writer, Guillermo Arriaga, whose
screenplays for 21 Grams and Babel, among others, have been so finely
wrought. The mechanics of his work are beginning to show, however, and
The Burning Plain, which tells apparently parallel stories unfolding
in sunny New Mexico and rainy Portland, Oregon, seems contrived. In
desert country, a young girl – well played by Jennifer Lawrence, who
deservedly won the jury’s prize for best young actor – discovers that
her mother (Kim Basinger) is having an affair with a Mexican man. In
the grey and overcast northwest, Charlize Theron plays the super-
efficient manager of a very upmarket restaurant who indulges in casual
affairs with staff and customers alike. It won’t take long for anyone
familiar with Arriaga’s other screenplays to work out the connections
between the two stories. But despite generally strong performances,
the film underwhelms.
The best American film in competition screened on the last day and,
against all odds, won the coveted Golden Lion from the jury headed by
Wim Wenders. Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler takes a basically
familiar story about a fighter long past his prime who unwisely agrees
to a comeback. In films, this kind of story usually features a boxer,
so the wrestling setting provided some freshness, especially in the
behind-the-scenes sequences as opponents plan their mostly scripted
contests. The revelation here is Mickey Rourke, who gives the
performance of his career as burnt-out Randy (aka The Ram), who lives
alone in a trailer, is in love with a stripper (Marisa Tomei) who sees
him mainly as a customer, and who has lost contact with his bitterly
disappointed daughter (the excellent Evan Rachel Wood). The story arc
may be familiar, but Rourke’s performance lifts this tersely made
story of a loser at the end of the road. And The Wrestler was the only
film screened in Venice that had any kind of emotional impact.
Kathryn Bigelow has always staged action scenes very well, but she is
often less effective when it comes to exploring human emotions. Her
new film, The Hurt Locker, centres on a squad of three bomb disposal
experts working on the streets of Baghdad. That this is incredibly
dangerous work is demonstrated in the opening sequence, where Guy
Pearce plays a victim of a bomb triggered by a mobile phone. He is
replaced by the gung-ho Jeremy Renner, and the rest of the film
explores a series of increasingly tense incidents in which he and the
other members of his team become involved. These set-pieces are
powerfully staged – though the hand-held camera is overused – but
there’s too little in the way of character development or narrative.
Bigelow doesn’t even take a position on the conflict, and to introduce
a British officer, played by Ralph Fiennes, for virtually a walk-on
part seems a little indulgent.
Not as indulgent, though, as Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married,
which the usually reliable director has chosen to make in the Dogme
style. Anne Hathaway is rather good as Kym, a disagreeable, self-
centred young woman just out of rehab who arrives at her family home
in time for her sister’s wedding and creates no end of ill-will. No
doubt there are people as selfish and tiresome as Kym, but keeping
company with the character for almost two hours, especially with
Declan Quinn’s queasy camerawork to contend with, is like attending a
wedding where you hardly know anybody and the speeches are
interminable.
Iranian-born Amir Naderi’s Vegas: Based On A True Story is almost
equally annoying; seemingly inspired by Erskine Caldwell’s God’s
Little Acre, it’s about an addicted gambler, played on one monotonous
note by Mark Greenfield, who comes to believe that a fortune in stolen
money is buried under his garden and, despite the initial objections
of his wife (Nancy La Scala) and son (Zach Thomas), he starts digging.
They soon join him in what is clearly going to be a futile exercise.
This is little more than an anecdote; material, perhaps, for a short
film but when extended to feature length it quickly bores.
Two other competitive films worthy of attention came from Russia and
Japan. Alexei German Jr’s Paper Soldier is set in Kazakhstan in 1961,
when Soviet space scientists were about to launch cosmonaut Yuri
Gagarin into the stratosphere. The film tells the story of a Georgian
medical officer on the isolated base and his troubled relationships
with his wife back in Moscow and his mistress at the site. It’s
beautifully shot with intricately choreographed camera movements and a
strong feeling for a period undergoing change with the recent fall
from grace of Stalin. The Jury awarded German the best director prize
and also acknowledged the fine photography by Alisher Khamidhodjaev
and Maksim Drozdov with an award for best cinematography.
Then there were the genuinely Third World films, including Ethiopian
Haile Gerima’s well-meaning but rather clumsy and over-extended Teza,
winner of the special jury prize and the best screenplay award, which
was about an intellectual who returns to his native country during the
rule of a repressive Marxist regime.
The Italian and French films were hardly worthy of inclusion, though
they provided the acting awards: Silvio Orlando for the title role of
the annoying parent in Pupi Avati’s Giovanni’s Dad and Dominique Blanc
as a frustrated woman in the pretentious L’Autre.
Finally, it was good to see Japan’s Takeshi Kitano making something of
a comeback, though an overlong one, with Achilles and the Tortoise, a
comedy about an artist who can’t connect to his audience. The film
almost seemed a metaphor for many of the films screened in Venice this
year.
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