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The message of relief from Venice 2024 is that the films are all right.
The industry has hurled itself at fall festival season with enough energy to distract from a scarcity of product post-Hollywood strikes, and an exhibition industry which needs to make a wish upon a star. While no one film at Venice suggested their woes are over, a buoyant independent sector helped to lift spirits on the Lido.
The Competition selection was well-curated (the festival’s trademark preference for more staid ‘prestige’ Italian films bucked by more modern Silver Lion winner Vermiglio) and carefully scheduled to ensure that the red carpet rolled over all 12 days of the festival. Headline winners including Babygirl’s Nicole Kidman mean the jury led by Isabelle Huppert has kept the festival in the picture for the awards corridor (while also opening the looming competition between Nicole and Maria’s Angelina Jolie). A Golden Lion for Pedro Almodovar’s English-language The Room Next Door sealed the fate of that deeply moving film in exhibition and awards and the end-of-life discussions it provokes will continue.
Venice 81 also went as smoothly on a logistical level as Barbera could have wished. An enhanced ticketing system saw an end to lengthy queues both online and on an unusually sweltering Lido – the eventual torrential storms even held off until after Lady Gaga had walked the red carpet for the somewhat underwhelming last big ticket of the festival, Joker: Folie A Deux.
There were no protests even, something of a miracle given the festival had programmed a film shot in on a ransacked kibbutz in the immediate wake of October 7 (Of Dogs And Men). Journalists annoyed over lack of access to stars; a Georgian film which fell into legal hot water but did eventually screen – those were the minor controversies the fates threw at the Biennale. Meanwhile, a couple of big-ticket pick-ups drew headlines, with Netflix taking hold of the mic for the artful Maria Callas biopic Maria, and A24 looking to burnish its edgy credentials with the Daniel Craig/Luca Guadagnino collab Queer.
Road to awards
In recent years, Venice has staked its claim as an award-season launchpad, boosted by its friendlier relationship with streamers than, say, Cannes. With Netflix missing on the Lido until it picked up Maria, and Apple ruling the Brad Pitt/George Clooney comedy-drama Wolfs out of awards contention outside of the US with no theatrical screenings, there was some question as to how Venice would continue to burnish that reputation as it both competes against and shares titles with Telluride/Toronto.
Yet the Biennale opened with a sufficiently entertaining Beetlejuice Beetlejuice world premiere from Tim Burton, which set the tone for the more commercially-oriented star-studded films – none of which completely swept critics off their feet but were generally well-received (films like Maria, Babygirl, Justin Kurzel’s The Order, with a resurgent Jude Law, or the romp Wolfs). The musical Joker: Folie A Deux only proved that any musical needs its stars to be able to sing (or for one of them to be allowed to sing) to have a chance of success. Kevin Costner’s second instalment of his lengthy Horizon oater (six hours-plus to date, with more to come) saw the festival out in an extended hoedown.
Cineastes, though, clustered around some more unusual propositions. Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here was a unanimous hit from Brazil, winning best screenplay. Brady Corbet’s lengthy The Brutalist divided critics, but fans were passionate and its director was honoured. Almodovar’s devastatingly contemplative The Room Next Door with Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore entranced so many, and took the top prize. April, the singular and challenging Georgian drama by Dea Kulumbegashvili, winner of the Jury Prize, was an abrasively idiosyncratic entry in this year’s line-up, and critics responded enthusiastically to one of seven women in Competition – a record for Venice (and Cannes or Berlin).
With Huppert at the helm, French films managed to take two of the key acting prizes, although it is always assumed that Cannes has the pick of the crop in any given year. The Italian selection, again, often felt stale and stifled – especially when you consider some of the more exciting Italian films playing outside Competition, particularly in Horizons slots. Then again, even Guadagnino’s I Am Love wasn’t deemed worthy of Competition in its time. Now the festival falls over itself to programme his more pungent, uber-hyped Queer in the highest profile-possible slot – and that’s apart from the Loewe/Daniel Craig advertising blitz from the airport on in. (The film’s costume designer JW Anderson is the creative director at that Spanish label.)
Those interested in the future of cinema from this special country of cineastes might like to look instead at Vittoria (by Alessandra Cassigoli and Casey Kaufman), Nineteen (EP’d by Guadagnino and directed by Giovanni Tortorici), The Mohican by Frederic Farrucci, or even Familia in Horizons, winner of that section’s acting prize for Francesco Gheghi.
Docs were solid – Riefenstahl and the Chinese film Mistress Dispeller being standouts, while audiences warmed to Kevin Macdonald’s John Lennon/Yoko Ono doc One To One.
For potential arthouse items, festival programmers and those looking for new voices, Venice had some sparkly treasures away from the noise: Peacock, from Germany, in Critics Week; dark Belgian paedophile policier Maldoror in Horizons; the section’s top prizewinner The New Year That Never Came from Romania; Familiar Touch, the affecting winner of The Lion of the Future award and Horizons prizes for actor Kathleen Chalfant and director Sarah Friedland; and, especially, Scandar Copti’s Happy Holidays, a thrilling family drama from this skillful Israel-born Palestinian writer/director which won the Horizons best screenplay award.
It was an excellent year for Horizons.
Less arthouse, more conventional, but surprisingly strong given the lack of hype and a low-profile screening slot was September 5, a nail-biting drama set around the Black September killings of the Munich Olympics in 1972. Directed by Tim Fehlbaum and starring Peter Sarsgaard, this potentially strong player seems caught up in the Paramount fallout. The thing about Venice, though, with its small selection (in the light of Toronto), careful curation, and hordes of journalists at a loose end as star after star declined to give interviews, is that word does get out. And the films follow.
