September 10, 2021 4:55 pm
Pedro Almódovar, Jane Campion, Paul Schrader, Ridley Scott, Pablo Larraín, Denis Villeneuve, Maggie Gyllenhaal. Here is the long list of some big names whose films I didn’t get to see at the Venice Film Festival. Fortunately, we are sure that their films will circulate (some already circulate) far and wide. So we’ll be back.
Instead, within a few days I saw three films (two in Venice, one before) of Russian-Ukrainian origin in which, among other things, we talk about torture, which is shown to us in various forms. The non-Venetian one is Dau. Natasha, the result of the gigantic “installation” by the Russian director Ilja Chržanovskij (see also Internazionale 1425). The film takes place in a large Soviet-era research institute (reconstructed in Ukraine) and the protagonist, who manages the canteen, meets the new security officer in a “light” torture session, in which the perpetrator seems almost wanting to introduce himself and “get in touch” with his victim.
Then (and here we are already in Venice) there are the tortures to which Dr. Serhiy is subjected, a Ukrainian surgeon who participates in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in the film Reflection by Valentyn Vasjanovyč. At the front, torture, systematic, brutal and often lethal, is a weapon and is used as such. Once back home, the doctor experiences another kind of torment: that for which the comfort of loved ones is a constant reminder of the precariousness of existence.
Finally, in Captain Volkonogov escaped, by Natasha Merkulova and Aleksey Chupov, torture is a phase, a passage in the bureaucracy of extermination in Stalin’s Russia: you identify someone who could possibly create problems, accuse him of something, make him confess with torture and proceed execution. An oiled mechanism entrusted to handsome security agents who cultivate the cult of the body and support themselves with a healthy camaraderie. Too bad that their conscience re-emerges every now and then. And Captain Fyodor Volkonogov falls for it.
Driven by the ghost of a colleague, he goes to visit the relatives of some of the victims of his office to obtain the forgiveness of at least one of them and avoid eternal damnation. During the search around Moscow the captain, a tough guy, is hunted by his former colleagues, who are not inclined to accept defections. The human sample he has to deal with leaves no doubt about the deep and incurable wounds that that particular type of bureaucracy has inflicted on society. Eventually, forgiveness becomes almost irrelevant. Who knows if what the directors have called “a post-modern parable with elements of mystical thriller” will arrive in our cinemas?
Outlaw of reason
Instead, we hope that even the beautiful will arrive in our rooms The event by Audrey Diwan. In France in 1963, the young Anne, a brilliant student of literature, decides to break the law. Not to get rich, to “turn around” or to experience the thrill of transgression. But to have an abortion. She got pregnant, but the abortion is illegal and the doctors she goes to don’t even want to hear about it. Adapted from The event, a novel by Annie Ernaux published in Italy by L’Orma, the film is raw, sober and brings us in close contact with Anne, played by an intense Annamaria Vartolomei, 22, who we will surely meet again in the future. In any case it would be nice to be able to see The event to the cinema at a time when many achievements of reason are being questioned in the name of fear, insecurity and superstition.
Instead, the second of the three French films in competition will certainly be distributed (by I Wonder Pictures), Lost illusions by Xavier Giannoli (the third is Another world by Stéphane Brizé). Giannoli’s film is a classic transposition of Balzac’s novel, quite faithful except for a few small liberties taken to make some characters more captivating. In particular that of Louise, played by Cécile de France (who after the first hilarious episode of the series Call my agent I can no longer see with the same eyes).
In this “big movie” in costume there is a long sequence that tells the entrance of the protagonist, the poet Lucien, into the frenetic world of the “free” press in the Paris of the restoration. The description of the hustler and buffalo industry alone is worth the whole film and deserves to be shown in journalism schools. Right after watching Lost illusions I sympathized with a press officer who, besieged by journalists looking for shortcuts, told me disconsolately: “Here. We are at the fish market ”.
What else will we bring with us from the 78th edition of the exhibition? Definitely Neil, played by Tim Roth in Sundown, written and directed by Michel Franco. In his laconic drama, the Mexican director repeatedly tries to mislead the audience before leading them to the depressing conclusion that happiness is a strenuous construction and that drifting away, staying under the radar, is perhaps the only way not to be tracked down by social impositions and thus being able to extinguish slowly, postponing all suffering to tomorrow.
We will carry with it the stubbornness of Hatzin, a little boy mestizo (not white) who arrives in northern Mexico to “collect” the remains of his father, found in one of the mass graves filled by drug traffickers in the middle of the desert. But Box by Lorenzo Vigas speaks only indirectly of drug cartels. While Hatzin is on his way home, he sees a man like his father (a white man) on the street and begins to follow him. In search of some trace of his roots he ends up in a world of exploitation and death, of petty and unscrupulous small entrepreneurs, who if they have nothing to do with the notorious cartels, are still capable of thriving among their poisons.
Finally, we will also bring with us the antics of three matadors, Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martínez, in the comedy Official competition by Gaston Duprat and Mariano Cohn. The three actors make fun of each other and make fun of the world of cinema, of the privilege and self-centeredness of those who animate it. The film is funny, each of the three stars has his moment in which he can “gigione” freely, but perhaps overall the satisfaction of the authors and performers exceeds any possible satirical intent.
We close in joy. Wanting to force his hand a little Halloween kills it could perhaps also be translated as “Halloween will take us to the grave”. The film, yet another chapter in the Michael Myers saga, made by David Gordon Green, is clearly the result of the 250 million dollars raised at the box office from the previous Halloween, of 2018, which was already supposed to be the definitive chapter of the series. It doesn’t matter how it turns out Halloween kills: the possibility of yet another, very last, definitive, later chapter will always exist, at least as long as horror cinema exists.
All this just to underline the presence at the Lido of Jamie Lee Curtis who debuted in the first Halloween, that of 1978 by John Carpenter. The legendary actress went to get a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement accompanied by Michael Myers who peeped out from the movie posters scattered around the Lido. For the next chapter maybe we will see them together on a cruise.
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