Venice Film Festival

New Venice Film Festival Head Says Malick's 'To The Wonder,' PTA's 'The Master' & De Palma's 'Passion' All Likely

Kevin Jagernauth — Tue, 29 May 2012 13:04:00 GMT

The Cannes Film Festival has barely had time to put away the red carpet, and already eyes are looking to August and the Venice Film Festival. And perhaps in an effort to beat speculators to the punch, the fest's new artistic director Alberto Barbera is looking to make his first year memorable, and recently revealed to THR the titles that cinephiles can expect to pop up on the Lido. And it's a pretty envious batch of movies.

Among the "likely candidates" to premiere at the fest according to Barbera are Terrence Malick's long-awaited (aren't they all) and newly titled romantic drama "To The Wonder"; Paul Thomas Anderson's highly-anticipated "The Master," which recently had its first footage unspooled at the Cannes festival, and Brian De Palma's sexual potboiler "Passion" starring Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace. Now, of course, this all depends on a variety of factors. Firstly, who knows if the mercurial Malick will have his movie finished, continue to tinker, or simply decide he doesn't want to bother with a big festival bow. Of all the titles, "The Master" seems most likely given that Harvey Weinstein had moved his previously tipped Venice pic "Lawless" to Cannes along with "Killing Them Softly," and will presumably want a big awards season movie to show off. As for "Passion," we'd wager it will depend on if De Palma can finish it in time; the film only started shooting a few months ago.

But no matter what gets selected, it will be among an exclusive bunch. Barbera has decided to scale back on the amount of films playing the fest, with less than 50 expected to be selected for the three categories: In Competition, Horizons, and Out Of Competition. This is being done to give a bigger shine to the movies that are selected to play Venice, and it seems to be not unlike the Cannes Film Festival, which adopts a similar format (In Competition, Un Certain Regard, Out Of Competition).

So what else might appear? Your guess is as good as ours, but if we were to roll the dice on a few prospects: Derek Cianfrance's "The Place Beyond The Pines"; Ramin Bahrani's "At Any Price"; Joe Wright's "Anna Karenina"; Olivier Assayas' "Something In The Air"; Cate Shortland's "Lore"...anyway, all stuff that's in the realm of possibility.

So we'll see what Barbera can pull together in the next couple of months, but if he can snag both Malick and Anderson, that alone will be one helluva coup.

Rome Fest Officially Hires Ex-Venice Artistic Director Marco Müller

Peter Knegt — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 14:14:37 GMT

After numerous delays in voting to make it official, Marco Müller has been appointed as artistic director of the International Rome Film Festival. It's a significant move toward raising the profile of the festival.

This comes after Müller was not asked back to his role in the same position at the Venice Film Festival -- which clearly overshadows Rome as Italy's most renowned film festival -- earlier this year, which followed 8 years in that position. Previous to that, he had worked for both Rotterdam and Locarno.

Müller's appointment by the board of directors of the Cinema per Roma Foundation, chaired by President Paolo Ferrari and board members: Michele Lo Foco (The City of Rome), Salvatore Ronghi (Lazio Region), Massimo Ghini (Province of Rome), Andrea Mondello (Rome Chamber of Commerce) e Carlo Fuortes (Musica per Roma Fondation).

"I am really satisfied with this election of Marco Müller as artistic director of the International Rome Film Festival," said Paolo Ferrari in a statement. "I am sure that he is an extraordinary professional estimated both in Italy and abroad".

"I could not be happier," Müller himself said, "to be back in my city, Rome, after twenty-two years. I'm proud to work on an exciting project, to develop a Festival that wants to respond to different needs: film makers, exhibitors, and audience".

Scott Free, YouTube & Emirates Announce 'Your Film Festival'

Sophia Savage — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 05:01:03 GMT

YouTube, Scott Free and Emirates want to find the world's best storytellers and they're doing it through Your Film Festival.

YouTube users will pick 10 finalists; they will attend and screen their work at the Venice Film Festival. The top winner will also get a $500,000 YouTube original production grant for their next production with Scott Free.

People are invited to submit a 15-minute, story-driven video of any format, style and genre here between February 2 and March 31. Fifty semi-finalists will be chosen by Scott Free; those 50 will compete for the YouTube audiences' vote.

More info below:

The competition brings together YouTube’s cutting-edge technology with the finest traditions of the world-renowned Venice Film Festival, to help discover and nurture new talent. Directors, producers and writers from around the world will be encouraged to submit their films and the voting will ultimately belong to the YouTube community at large.

Submissions, which open February 2, 2012 and close on March 31, 2012, will be reviewed by Scott Free and narrowed down to 50 semi-finalists from around the world in the summer of 2012. The YouTube community will then vote for ten finalists who will be flown to unveil their films in a special program at the 2012 Venice Film Festival. In Venice, a jury will vote among the ten films to select one Grand Prize Winner. The winner will receive a development deal with Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions. "Short filmmaking is exactly where I started my career 50 years ago, so to be helping new filmmakers find an entry point like this into the industry is fantastic," says Ridley Scott. "It's great to be partnering with YouTube again for this global search for the next generation of exciting filmmakers."

"Faust" Beats Out "Shame" for the Venice Film Festival's Top Award

Nigel M Smith — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 10:50:02 GMT

"Faust," a new take on the German legend from Russian director Aleksander Sokurov ("The Sun") walked away with the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival, beating high-profile contenders such as "Shame," and "Carnage."

The former, a sexually explicit drama that just got picked up by Fox Searchlight, didn't go away empty handed: lead Michael Fassbender was awarded Best Actor for his turn as a sex addict.

In other awards, the Silver Lion for Best Director went to Cai Shangjun for the Chinese entry "People Mountain People Sea;" Deanie Yip won Best Actress for her performance in "A Simple Life;" Yorgos Lanthimos' follow-up to "Dogtooth," "Alps" nabbed Best Screenplay; and Andrea Arnold's stab at "Wuthering Heights" was awarded the prize for Best Cinematography.

Al Pacino, who brought "Salome" to the festival, received the Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award.

The Complete List of Winners:

GOLDEN LION for Best Film:
"Faust," directed by Aleksander Sokurov (Russia)

SILVER LION for Best Director to:
Cai Shangjun, "People Mountain People Sea" (China)

SPECIAL JURY PRIZE to:
"Terraferma," directed by Emanuele Crialese (Italy)

COPPA VOLPI for Best Actor:
Michael Fassbender, "Shame" (UK)

COPPA VOLPI for Best Actress:
Deanie Yip, "A Simple Life" (China)

OSELLA for Best Screenplay to:
Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou, "Alps" (Greece)

MARCELLO MASTROIANNI AWARD for Best Young Actor or Actress:
Shôta Sometani and Fumi Nikaidô, "Himizu" (Japan)

OSELLA for Best Cinematography to:
Robbie Ryan, "Wuthering Heights" (UK)

Luigi De Laurentiis”Venice Award for a Debut Film:
"Là-bas," directed by Guido Lombardi (Italy)

ORIZZONTI

Orizzonti Award (full-length films):
"Kotoko," directed by by Shinya Tsukamoto (Japan)

Special Orizzonti Jury Prize (full-length films):
"Whores’ Glory," directed by Michael Glawogger (Austria, Germania)

Orizzonti Award:
"Accidentes Gloriosos," directed by by Mauro Andrizzi and Marcus Lindeen (Sweden, Denmark, Germany)

Orizzonti Award (short films):
"In attesa dell'avvento," directed by Felice D'Agostino and Arturo Lavorato (Italia)

Special Mentions:
"The Orator," directed by Tusi Tamasese (New Zealand, Samoa)
"All The Lines Flow Out," directed by Charles LIM Yi Yong (Singapore)

CONTROCAMPO ITALIANO

Controcampo Award (for narrative feature-length films)
"Scialla!," directed by Francesco Bruni

Controcampo Award (for short films)
"A Chjàna," directed by Jonas Carpignano

Controcampo Doc Award (for documentaries)
"Pugni chiusi," directed by Fiorella Infascelli

Special Mentions:
to the documentary "Black Block," directed by Carlo Augusto Bachschmidt
to Francesco Di Giacomo for the cinematography of "Pugni chiusi"

Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement
Marco Bellocchio

Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award 2011
Al Pacino

Persol 3D Award for the Most Creative Stereoscopic Film of the Year
Zapruder Filmmakers Group (David Zamagni, Nadia Ranocchi, and Monaldo Moretti)

L'Oréal Paris Award for Cinema
Nicole Grimaudo

Check out all of Shane Danielsen's dispatches from the festival:

Venice 2011 Offered Too Much Chaos and Rape, Not Enough Drama and Passion

Venice Film Festival Fulfills Expectations, but the Films? Not So Much.

Andrea Arnold's "Wuthering Heights" Premieres in Venice to Wildly Mixed Responses

Indiewire Staff — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 11:32:51 GMT

Andrea Arnold, the director of "Fish Tank" and "Red Road," turned heads when it was announced she would tackle a large-scale adaptation of Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights." The choice was surprising, given that her previous two features are gritty modern-day tales, evoking the British kitchen-sink realism of the 1960's.

The film premiered today at the Venice Film Festival, and the early reviews suggest that Arnold has not lost her singular vision with the film, despite the literary genre's formulaic traditions. This "Wuthering Heights" drops much of Brontë's famous dialogue in exchange for impressionistic, handheld camerawork from the great Robbie Ryan and a meditative, exploratory pace. Notably, much ink has been and will be spilled over one of Arnold's major revisions: This version's Heathcliff is an Afro-Caribbean orphan.

Despite the discussion surrounding the film, the reaction has thus far ranged from negative to extremely positive. Several critics have found fault in her liberties - Movieline even called them pretentious - while others, like The Playlist, found her vision a "remarkable reinvention."

The film, which has not found a U.S. distributor yet, screens next in Toronto and opens in the the UK on November 11.

Variety - NEGATIVE
The dragginess is due to not only Nicolas Chaudeurge's unvaried rhythms but also the monotony of some of the performances; young Glave and Beer as deliver every line in the same flat, affectless way, and although at first it's interesting to see a version of the story with so much less screaming and crying, it sort of lacks a point after a while.

Telegraph - MIXED
Nature is the true star of Andrea Arnold’s "Wuthering Heights," a raw and affecting adaptation that will bring a new audience to the Brontë story. Windswept moors have never looked as bleak as they do here, nor as rain-sodden. The Yorkshire Tourist Board shouldn’t expect a boost in visitor numbers.

The Playlist - VERY POSITIVE
It’s not quite a tearjerker, Arnold playing up the anger of the novel, and we sort of feel that’s the way that it should be. It is, however, incredibly powerful, extremely sexy (there’s one scene that takes place between Cathy and Heathcliff after the latter has been caned that’s more erotic than anything we’ve seen in a while), and a truly remarkable reinvention of a text that beforehand, we weren’t sure we ever needed to see on screen again.

The Guardian - MIXED
What I found more of a problem was the faint stiffness and self-consciousness of the acting and the crucial lack of chemistry between the adult Heathcliff and Cathy. We need to believe in this love in order for Arnold's gloriously bruised and brooding vision to properly hit home and I never did, quite. This duo don't like us; they won't hold our gaze. So all we can do is sit in the dark and admire their travails from afar, like peering through binoculars at some big cat at play on open ground; one that is too wild – too unwilling – to draw too close.

The Hollywood Reporter - POSITIVE
That said, the film’s audacious unconventionality and a cast headed by a quartet of total unknowns make it, on paper at least, a tough commercial sell. But such is the enduring power of "Wuthering Heights" as a popular cultural phenomenon that, aided by what is likely to be very strong critical reactions and a healthy awards haul, there’s no reason why director/co-writer Arnold’s third feature shouldn’t prove an international arthouse success in the mold of her last effort, "Fish Tank" (2009).

Movieline - MIXED
And in the end, I didn’t get the emotional charge from "Wuthering Heights" that I was waiting for, hoping for. But it’s certainly one of the thorniest and most thought-provoking films of the festival. And although it’s been some 25 years since I read the book, I was surprised at the way Arnold reminded me of its unnerving emotional undercurrents, and of Bronte’s mystical-brutal view of the presence of nature in love and sex. As literary adaptations go, it’s both doggedly faithful and willfully untamed — a movie that’s hard, maybe, to love, but easy to respect.

iW's Online Video of the Day: Madonna Loathes Hydrangeas. Really.

Nigel M Smith — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 07:34:31 GMT

Madonna's largely reviled "W.E." isn't the only thing courting bad press for the Material Girl in Venice.

At a press conference for the film a fan handed her flowers, transforming the pop icon into a case study for ingratitude.

Note to Madonna fans: Watch the video below to learn what not to do when in the presence of the legend. And for all would-be legends: learn what not to do.

[Hat tip: Our own Peter Knegt.]

Here's The Top Grossing Venice Golden Lion Winners

Peter Knegt — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 09:35:44 GMT

indieWIRE has a new weekend feature: A retrospective box office chart, based on a debuting indie release or a current event on the international film scene. Today, iW is taking a look at the track record of Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion winners, in honor of the ongoing edition of the festival.

Listed below are the top 10 grossing winners of the Golden Lion, which is a juried prize handed out to the best feature film at the festival. For those currently in competition at the festival, it suggests winning the top prize doesn't exact translate into cash money: Only two winners have ever grossed over $15 million dollars.

Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain" is far and away the top grossing Golden Lion winner, taking in $83 million back in 2005 (or $101.3 million if adjusted for 2011 inflation). A distant second is Darren Aronofsky (who is currently the president of the jury at this year's festival), whose 2008 film "The Wrestler" grossed just over $26 million.

Beyond that, an additional trio - Mira Nair's "Monsoon Wedding," Louis Malle's "Atlantic City" and Neil Jordan's "Michael Collins" - took in over $10 million (adjusted for inflation, "City" is actually #2 with a $36.4 million gross). Overall, only six Golden Lion winners topped out over $5 million.

Here's the overall top ten; figures are for North America only and not adjusted for inflation. It also only includes films since the Golden Lion was reinstated in 1980 after a decade of non-existence due to availability of information.

1. Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005) - $83,043,761
2. The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, 2008) - $26,238,243
3. Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair, 2001) - $13,885,966
4. Atlantic City (Louis Malle, 1980) - $12,729,675
5. Michael Collins (Neil Jordan, 1996) - $11,092,559
6. Short Cuts (Robert Altman, 1993) - $6,110,979
7. The Magdelene Sisters (Peter Mullan, 2002) - $4,890,878
8. Lust, Caution (Ang Lee, 2007) - $4,604,982
9. Au Revoir, Les Enfants (Louis Malle, 1987) - $4,542,825
10. Gloria (John Cassavetes, 1980) - $4,059,673

Venice Film Festival Fulfills Expectations, but the Films? Not So Much.

Dana Harris — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 08:51:26 GMT

“And yet we come back,” a colleague remarked as we stood with about 60 or 70 others waiting for a boat to take us from the airport into Venice -- a boat that might come soon or not, a boat that, when it did arrive and we made it to the head of the line, was not the one we wanted and was already full besides. He sighed, smiling sadly. “Why is that?”

At that moment, no ready answer suggested itself. Perhaps because last year’s program had been so spectacularly good, neatly shoring up the deficits of Cannes. "Black Swan," "Silent Souls," "Post-Mortem," "13 Assassins," "Incendies"… every day seemed glorious, somehow.

This year’s lineup looked less promising – but that, too, was to be expected. Like some hellish lover, Venice gives you just enough to keep you coming back, but never quite enough to stop your eye from wandering, wistfully, whenever things get tough. As, inevitably, they do. No other major festival has the power to infuriate as quickly or as thoroughly as this one.

Case in point: You turn up to collect your accreditation – but don’t have the confirmation form printed out to show the guard at the door. If you had the form, the guard would then hand you a red pass that would allow you entry to the bureau in the Palazzo del Cinema (less than ten meters from where you’re currently standing) to collect the badge that would in turn allow you to attend the festival.

But you have the code on your phone. You show it to him. No, you need the form printed out. Won’t your passport suffice? It will not. And anyway, he adds, even if you had the form you wouldn’t be allowed in, because you have a suitcase with you and no suitcases are allowed inside the Palazzo del Cinema; you’d have to leave it in the baggage area.

"Where is that?" you ask. He points beyond the maze of scaffolding, the timber structure still mostly unfinished with the festival’s opening less than 24 hours away. ‘Is it open?’ He shakes his head. ‘So then?’ And he shrugs: That all-purpose Italian response. "It is a problem," he says.

It is a problem. This should be the festival’s motto.

(So you return, some time later, with an email printed out – though, as an experiment, you’ve actually printed a message from your sister, chatting mostly about her kids, your dad’s health, a mutual friend. The guard at the door barely glances at it and waves you inside; the token gesture – of authority, of obedience – is sufficient.)

Year after year, Venice exhibits the kind of chronic mismanagement you might expect from some African republic in an Evelyn Waugh novel. The pointless bureaucracy. The weird mix of officiousness and thoughtless disregard. The rules made for no reason, serving no discernible purpose. One hesitates to use the rather-too-modish term "first-world problems," but it’s hard to know what else to call these. They are many and are frustrating only in the sense that we are here to work, and that work is constantly stymied.

And yet we come back. Why is that?

George Clooney might have been wondering the same thing at a press conference for "The Ides of March" that, while lacking much of the usual Venice shenanigans (no one stripped off this time to profess their amore), consisted nonetheless of little more than a string of ladies taking turns to tell him that he was, in fact, really, really great – so much so, perhaps he should run for president?

His film, meanwhile – serious, principled, perhaps a little too much in love with its own high-mindedness – barely rated a mention, despite its maker’s valiant attempts to steer the conversation back in its direction.

If I was ever-so-slightly disappointed with "Ides," it was partly because its message (politics will tarnish even the most idealistic souls) hardly struck me as any sort of revelation. But it was also because it failed to deliver what I desired most (and here I must defer to the inspired phrasing of British critic Guy Lodge): a long-awaited "schlub-off" between its chief supporting actors, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti.

I have a friend, an Asian cinema specialist, who’s forgotten much more about Chinese cinema than I’ll ever know. And for years I’ve argued against his disregard for the Sixth Generation director Lou Ye (currently banned from shooting in his homeland), who he claims is "basically just a sell-out, making Western arthouse films for Europeans." I love "Suzhou River" and "Purple Butterfly," and the first two-thirds of "Summer Palace," too much to agree.

After seeing ‘Love and Bruises,’ though, I don’t think I’ll argue with him any more. For one thing, this cross-cultural amour fou (Chinese woman, French man) felt oddly anonymous, the kind of "exotic" softcore any Frenchman – Jean-Claude Brisseau, say – could toss off in his sleep.

Lou hinted that he understood the invidiousness of his position. In one scene, he had his female lead visit something (a film? a play? it was obscured by a jump-cut) with a French classmate, who complained to her afterwards, in Mandarin, that whatever they saw was ‘not Chinese enough.’ Meant, presumably, to deflect criticism against his own foray into the West, this was in fact what Confucius might call Having It Both Ways.

Corinne Yam's Hua was beautiful and inert, a study in self-abnegating passivity presumably meant to signify something quintessentially "Asian." Tahar Rahim, as Mathieu, played easily the worst onscreen boyfriend since Gerard Depardieu’s Loulou.

Ah, but with a difference. Loulou had a few undeniable qualities – charisma, for one thing (in those days, Depardieu possessed a certain brutish allure) and a gutter-level cunning. Mathieu, by contrast, had only that boundless sense of injustice that cleaves to the truly stupid. “You women,” he whined at one point. “You always betray me.”

That was pretty rich, considering he’d just allowed Hua to be raped by his best friend – something you’d think might constitute something of a dealbreaker. ("See, that’s the problem with raping women,’ a friend remarked to me afterward. ‘It just makes them fall harder for you. Because apparently THEY LOVE IT.") Likewise, discovering – as Hua did – that one’s new boyfriend has a pregnant wife with whom he shares an apartment.

But her forgiveness knew no bounds; she took understanding to some new, martyred level. After the screening, my (female) neighbor tried to assure me that no, no, “She had agency” – the kind of phrase I can’t believe people actually say aloud. I just walked away.

Which is not to say the film was entirely without virtues – Yu Lik Wai’s cinematography was lovely, at least when the camera wasn’t jerking like a fish on a line. Lou has never been strong at endings; after the first acts, his films tend to trail off into muddled uncertainty. But for a film depicting an insatiable sexual passion, it was oddly tame: no glimpse of bush, for example, and not so much as a hint of cock, erect or otherwise.

Still, with its combination of wobble-cam and pervy-yet-unsatisfying sex, it completed one of the most unfortunate transformations of the past decade, as Lou finally became what his last film, ‘Spring Fever,’ had implied: His country’s answer to Mike Figgis.

So where was the great film, the one that would silence every complaint? Polanski's "Carnage" was funny and fleet, despite the softness of its targets (the urban bourgeoisie) and the unevenness of its cast, ranging from a strangely off-key Kate Winslet to a sly, scene-stealing turn from Christoph Waltz.

Despite some inspired blocking, you felt the staginess of the material at every moment – and I would have preferred James Gandolfini (who appeared in "The God of Carnage" on Broadway) to John C. Reilly – but it was at least entertaining. In a way that the latest from Philippe Garrel – “That Summer,” a banal slice of post-nouvelle vague solipsism, starring his petulant, dead-eyed son Louis – most definitely was not. Remarkably, it had not one new or interesting thing to say about its ostensible subject: the pull of desire and disgust between men and women.

"I found out he uses whores," Monica Bellucci's character confides to another woman. "He says he's not interested in conventional bourgeois notions of monogamy..." Seriously? Forty years since Garrel's debut, and this is the best he can come up with? These tired, shopworn banalities?

And then there was Madonna's "W.E." Which has to be seen to be believed, since even the most well-chosen words falter before its galactic-level awfulness. Yet there I was, like everybody else, positively glued to my seat throughout. Not since Lee Daniels' "Shadowboxer" have I seen something so utterly wretched on every level, yet so absolutely compelling. From its script, packed with howlers ("Well, if it isn't Sotheby's favorite ex-researcher! How's it been going since you married that hotshot doctor of yours, huh? Mrs. Married Lady."), to production design so fussy and overwrought it made "A Single Man" look like Loach's "Ladybird, Ladybird." It's a new high-camp classic -- like "Johnny Guitar," except without the talent.

Few things are as grating as bad taste masquerading as good taste, and there is a lot of that here. But whatever you do, don't accuse its maker of being shallow. No, this is a film with Something To Say: Specifically, that Edward and Mrs. Simpson were IN NO WAY Nazi sympathizers.

This, despite a wealth of historical evidence to the contrary, including but not limited to: their post-abdication visit to Berlin in October 1937, during which both Edward and Wallis gave Nazi salutes to Hitler (curiously unmentioned here, despite the wealth of flashbacks and shifts in locale); FBI records from 1941 showing that Wallis had maintained regular contact throughout the previous year with Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, one of her former lovers; and Edward's rather injudicious decision, after settling some civil unrest in Nassau during his brief tenure as Governor of the Bahamas, to blame the strife on communists and "men of Central European Jewish descent." (Wallis, meanwhile, though depicted here dancing gaily with A Black at a party, was more succinct about the local population, calling them "lazy, thieving niggers.")

So: inept, gauche and mendacious. In this light, Madonna's decision to thank, in the closing credits, both John Galliano and, I kid you not, Leni Riefenstahl (whose name she misspelt) makes a kind of sense. Edward and Wallis were "the greatest love story of the 20th century," she would have us believe. But that whole Nazi thing? It is a problem.

Cronenberg's "A Dangerous Method" Splits Critics In Venice

Indiewire Staff — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 08:26:05 GMT

David Cronenberg has been a polarizing director since his days as an artfully bizarre Canadian B-movie director, and his latest work "A Dangerous Method" is proving that he has no interest in winning over his most skeptical critics. The film, which premiered today at Venice, will no doubt leave festival as one of its most controversial movies.

The film, adapted from the stage play "The Talking Cure," is an articulate, unrelentingly intellectual chamber drama on Jung, Freud and the the primordial days of psychoanalysis. It features a trio of respected leading actors: Keira Knightley, Michael Fassbinder and Cronenberg favorite Viggo Mortensen. Surprisingly, Knightley is the one bringing home most of the critical attention, both negative and overwhelmingly positive, for her high-pitched performance as the hysterical patient-turned-psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein.

The film has been picked up by Sony Pictures Classics and will open stateside on November 23. In the meantime, it should continue to divide critics at the Telluride, Toronto and New York Film Festivals.

The Guardian - NEGATIVE
What the spanking can't do, unfortunately, is knock some life into this heartfelt, well-acted but curiously underwhelming slab of Masterpiece Theatre. A Dangerous Method feels heavy and lugubrious. It is a tale that comes marinated in port and choked on pipe-smoke. You long for it to hop down from the couch, throw open the windows and run about in the garden.

The Playlist - POSITIVE
All in all, it’s a pacy, absorbing picture, and one of real substance (certainly more so than the enjoyable, but somewhat hollow “Eastern Promises”). But if anything keeps it from quite hitting the heights that it could, it’s Hampton’s scripting. It’s not so much the uncompromising manner of the material—an audience member could probably get by on the briefest knowledge of psychoanalysis, which in this day and age most have, and, while the dialogue is sometimes tortuously wordy, the cast are able to make it fly, with only one or two lines sounding clunky.

The Hollywood Reporter - VERY POSITIVE
Cronenberg's direction is at one with the writer's diamond-hard rigor; cinematographer Peter Suschitzky provides visuals of a pristine purity augmented by the immaculate fin de l'epoch settings, while the editing has a bracing sharpness than can only be compared to Kubrick's. Along with Knightley's excellent work as a character with a very long emotional arc indeed, Fassbender brilliantly conveys Jung's intelligence, urge to propriety and irresistible hunger for shedding light on the mysteries of the human interior. A drier, more contained figure, Freud is brought wonderfully to life by Mortensen in a bit of unexpected casting that proves entirely successful.

Movieline - POSITIVE
In A Dangerous Method Cronenberg takes this meeting of minds and finds the crackle in the connection. It’s never dull for a moment, which is an achievement for a movie about two guys who built whole therapeutic disciplines around the acts of talking and listening. Cronenberg is attuned to the inherent drama, and the pitfalls, in what these men did. As a filmmaker, he’s as good a listener as he is a talker.

Variety - MIXED
Rather less assured, and initially the film's most problematic element, is Knightley, whose brave but unskilled depiction of hysteria at times leaves itself open to easy laughs. The spectacle of the usually refined actress flailing about, taking on a grotesque underbite, and stammering and wailing in a Russian accent is perhaps intended to clash with her co-stars' impeccable restraint, but does so here in unintended ways.

The Telegraph - MIXED
Much of this material (adapted from Christopher Hampton's play The Talking Cure) is frankly uncinematic, and Cronenberg has compensated with sumptuous locations – Swiss lakes, opulent houses and ravishing costumes. Knightley is decked out in an impressive series of blouses, bustles and corsets. The main performances are fine, with Fassbender conveying seething emotion beneath a calm veneer. But it’s Knightley that one remembers, for a full-on portrayal that is gutsy and potentially divisive in equal parts.

Roman Polanski's "Carnage" Goes Over Well in Venice

Indiewire Staff — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 12:48:36 GMT

Roman Polanski's latest film "Carnage," adapted from playwright Yasmina Reza's masterwork, made its premiere in Venice this morning. The response was mostly positive and has so far focused on the performances of its four stars (with Jodie Foster and Christoph Waltz earning the most praise) and Polanski's claustrophobic direction.

Some critics noted that the film marks a footnote in Polanski's career and lacks many of Polanski's cinematic trademarks.

It opens the New York Film Festival on September 30 and opens in limited release on December 16 through Sony Picture Classics.

The Playlist - MIXED
But it’s also a film of very little ambition, a minor entry in the director’s canon. Perhaps it was just the desire to shoot something fast and quick after his brush with justice, which is certainly understandable, but he has essentially taken a pre-existing script, cast four A-listers, locked them in a room, and shot it. There are few directorial flourishes beyond a firmly Polanski-esque opening shot, and almost nothing to enable the identification of the movie as a Polanski picture; for once in his career, it feels like almost anyone could have directed it.

David Gritten (Thompson on Hollywood) - POSITIVE
Initially courteous, their meeting lapses into prejudiced attacks and furious rows. As discussed, there’s vomiting and also drunkenness – a vase of tulips, a mobile phone and glossy art books are among the casualties. Waltz, a phenomenally rude and insensitive character, gets most of the best lines. It’s well-acted and giddily enjoyable, if slightly less so once the characters start to analyse their descent into barbarism.

The Hollywood Reporter - POSITIVE
The basic dramatic format of bright, seemingly well-adjusted people eventually baring their teeth, claws and souls in the course of an alcohol-fueled encounter is familiar to anyone with a passing acquaintance with modern theater; call it the "Virginia Woolf" syndrome.

The Guardian - POSITIVE
That aside, the film barely puts a foot wrong. The acting comes at full throttle while the pacing cranks up the tension in agonising, incremental degrees. At one point this is all too much for Nancy, who proceeds to vomit copiously over the coffee table, coating Penelope's cherished Oskar Kokoschka book. It is an astonishing scene, an icebreaker like no other. And at the Venice screening, the viewers greeted it with a wild abandon, howling with delight and applauding like thunder, perhaps relieved that someone had cracked before they did themselves.

Variety - POSITIVE
Couple turns against couple, husbands against wives, and the tulips, handbags and bodily fluids begin to fly, in a payoff that has as much zing here as it did in the play. Yet while "Carnage" is still largely a hoot, it never divorces itself from the talky trappings of the stage; the considerable effort expended to let the piece breathe onscreen merely exposes its underlying artifice, making it fairly easy to reject Reza's thesis that individuals live in a natural state of opposition according to gender, class and personal philosophy.

Madonna's "W.E." Gets Slammed at its Venice Film Festival Debut

Indiewire Staff — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 09:55:07 GMT

When Madonna arrived in Venice today for the premiere of "W.E.," her second feature as director, to a media frenzy, she was surely hoping the film would have a better reception than "Filth and Wisdom," her critically challenged debut. Unfortunately, that isn't going to be the case, and some critics have argued that the high-profile project might be even worse.

The film, which was snapped up by The Weinstein Company and has been receiving good buzz for months for its ambitious storyline - a dual narrative about Wallis Simpson and a contemporary counterpart - and its bold casting of Abbie Cornish and Andrea Riseborough. But Madonna is the master of buzz, even when it turns out to wholly unwarranted.

Nobody was expecting Madonna to come up with a masterpiece, but it seems the Weinsteins have a real dud on their hands.

Movieline - MIXED
A weirdly sympathetic portrait of Wallis Simpson, the woman for whom a king gave up his throne, W.E. is the story of a life told through stuff: Evening gloves, cocktail shakers, baubles from Cartier, little hats trimmed with netting. It’s as if Madonna went back in time and forgot to talk to actual people, to find out how they lived and what they thought — but she sure did a lot of shopping.

The Telegraph - MIXED
It all looks good, or at least glossy, in the manner of high-end cosmetics commercials. Exotic locations (Portofino, Cap d’Antibes) are visited and luxury brand names (Moet, Cartier, Schiaparelli) tossed around. Wally pays repeatedly visits an auction of the Windsors’ possessions; W.E. often feels like an extended infomercial for Sotheby’s New York. Occasional flashes of wit intrude. “Your Majesty, you know your way to a woman’s heart,” Wallis says. “I wasn’t aiming that high,” he replies. But such moments are rare.

The Playlist - VERY NEGATIVE
All in all, we can only imagine that the Weinsteins bought the film sight unseen, or that they’re hoping to make a fast buck off the back of “The King’s Speech,” because despite a couple of solid performances, the film can’t be redeemed. We’ve never looked forward to Madonna going back on tour more, if only because it means that we’ll know, for certain, that she won’t be using that time to direct another movie.

The Hollywood Reporter - MIXED
This feeling of inevitability, backed up by snippets of Wallis' own letters registering feelings of being trapped, and her and Edward's eventual sorry fate as “the world's most celebrated parasites,” is the one aspect of the story that rings true on a human level and is appealing and almost touching for that. The rest, unfortunately, feels artificial, programmed, rote.

The Guardian - NEGATIVE
For her big directoral flourish, Madonna has Wallis bound on stage to dance with a Masai tribesman while Pretty Vacant blares on the soundtrack. But why? What point is she making? That social-climbing Wallis-Simpson was the world's first punk-rocker? That – see! – a genuine Nazi-sympathiser would never dream of dancing with an African? Who can say? My guess is that she could have had Wallis dressed as a clown, bungee jumping off the Eiffel Tower to the strains of The Birdy Song and it would have served her story just as well.

FUTURES | Ami Canaan Mann Follows in Her Dad's Uncompromising Footseps with "Texas Killing Fields"

Nigel M Smith — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 07:41:31 GMT

Hometown: West Lafayette, Indiana.

Why She's On Our Radar: Ami Canaan Mann, daughter to Michael Mann ("Heat," "Public Enemies"), is one of this year's most highly touted new talents behind the camera. Her feature film debut, "Texas Killing Fields," starring Sam Worthington, Chloe Moretz and Jessica Chastain, world premieres at the Venice Film Festival and hits theaters October 14.

The thriller, produced by her father, tells a gruesome story inspired by true events: A local Texas homicide detective (Worthington) pairs with a transplanted cop from New York City (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) to track a sadistic serial killer dumping his victims' bodies in a nearby marsh locals dub "The Killing Fields." Moretz plays a local abused girl who goes missing.

What's Next: She has two screenplays in the can since wrapping. "Hopefully one of them will come together," she says.

Congratulations on the film. I was deeply unsettled by it.

Oh, I’m glad.

How did you come on board to direct it?

Well, Michael [Mann] and Don [Ferrarone, the screenwriter] had been developing it for some 10 years. Don had been a drug enforcement agent and he was sent on assignment to Texas City where he met the two detectives played in the film. When he retired and decided to write screenplays, he wrote his first screenplay based on the events that he learned about while there.

The script's gone through various mutations. The end result was that it ended up with me. I met with Don and told him what I’d like to do, the approach I wanted to take. Don was on board and off we went.

What was it about the script that appealed to you?

Don is such a good writer, so there were a couple things that appealed to me.

The first thing that really struck me was the quality of the dialogue. Being a writer for hire for 10 years, I could tell that there were things in the exposition and certain pieces of dialogue that you could only have written if you had lived those moments. So there were elements of sense memory in the screenplay. Those are like gold, they are so valuable.

The other thing that struck me equally was the research. The script came with a pile of research. In one of the newspaper articlesm there was a map of where the bodies had been found and pictures of the girls. That was the first moment it stopped me in my tracks and I couldn’t stop staring it. It’s the map we replicated for the film that the detectives use. The girls look right at you. It was hard for me not to be compelled.

There’s no 'Hollywood gloss' in this tale. You captured an authentic sense of milieu in the film.

Thank you, I’m glad that was your takeaway impression. That was certainly my intent. I had the good fortune of being able to go to Texas City, being able to have access to the cops, being able to have access to real families in crisis, being able to go inside prison facilities and morgues. I just pursued all those avenues.

My objective was to portray these people, this town and these circumstances with as much authenticity as possible. I felt like the way to do that was to dive into these real people and that real town and those real places.

I tried to make it feel real, to sink the audience into that environment by making that environment not seem false. And then I was lucky enough to have a cast and crew who was willing to go on this journey with me. The depths of research that everyone did was astonishing.

As a first-time filmmaker, were you wary of working with such a young actress as Chloe Moretz, given the dark nature of the material?

Chlor Moretz, when she walked into the room and spoke her first couple of lines, I knew she had the part. She approached it in a completely unique way.

I grew up in a small town in Indiana. There were hard times for the people in the town I grew up in. So I felt like asking, "What are the qualities that really strike me about children in difficult circumstances?" If they have nothing to compare their circumstances to. They’re just trying to survive the place that they find themselves in.

What really struck me about Chloe was that she was able to capture that, because she didn’t play the character as having enough self awareness to know she’s in a bad circumstance. We as adults look at her and feel tremendous sympathy. But when you’re child like that, you’re just trying to survive. She was really able to capture that. She didn’t feel sorry for herself.

She was incredible to direct. I feel lucky that she’s in my film.

Before you took on filmmaking, you worked with your dad on film sets, including “Heat," right?

My main job was “Heat” was I was a second assistant to the line producer, which was the greatest job ever. My assignments were get access to Fulton Prison for Robert DeNiro, go do interviews with girlfriends of the brotherhood guys, go check out infrared camera technology. It eventually culminated to directing second unit. But I was on the film for a year and a half. I wanted the experience of working on a film from the front all the way to the end.

Was filmmaking always on your radar back when you started to work on sets like these?

No, because where I grew up people didn’t have movies as a frame of reference. They weren’t that many movie theaters. It was always books for me. That’s where I got interested in storytelling. And then when I was 16, I worked on one of my dad’s TV shows, “Crime Stories,” and as soon as I stepped on set I fell in love with filmmaking.

How did your father react?

Well, he was encouraging, because I was obviously excited. We just had to figure out which film school to go to. I ended up going to the University of Southern California.

What kind of pressure to you feel now, given your association with your father and the Venice debut?

You know, my primary reaction is I’m honestly just so thrilled that the work that cast and crew did telling this really tough story will be able to be seen by a large audience. Everyone worked so hard with such good intentions. I’m just very pleased and relieved.

What do you have planned next? Are you going to follow it up with something as dark or are you set on lightening up the mood a bit?

I should probably do something with small children and puppies (laughs). You know, for me the decision on what to do next has to do with the world the story lives in. I think we’re so lucky as storytellers to sink ourselves so deeply into a world of characters. That’s the thing that always attracts me, when I was a writer for a hire and now certainly directing.

We’ll see. I definitely don’t have any requirements that the next film I delve into should have serial killers (laughs). It’s more about the people and the place for me.

George Clooney's "Ides of March" Debuts In Venice To Mixed Reaction

Nigel M Smith — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 09:43:21 GMT

As the opening night film of the Venice Film Festival, George Clooney's "The Ides of March" made its debut tonight in Italy, kicking off two straight weeks of non-stop high profile premieres at Venice, Telluride and Toronto.

A star-studded political thriller starring Ryan Gosling, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Evan Rachel Wood, Marisa Tomei and Clooney himself, the film is an adaptation of the Beau Willimon off-Broadway play "Farragut North." It follows an idealistic staffer (Gosling) for a newbie presidential candidate (Clooney) who gets a crash course on dirty politics during his stint on the campaign trail.

Expectations were high for the film to be a major player in this year's Oscar race. However, doubts are already being placed on its potential as critics are generally calling the film solid but somewhat minor.

Here's highlights of five of the reviews so far:

The Playlist: Positive
It can also be a difficult world to make truly cinematic, but Clooney makes it work here, thanks undoubtedly to DP Phedon Papamichael (”Sideways”), who gives a real chill to the Midwestern landscapes, and makes effective use of some Gordon Willis-esque silhouettes—although it should be said that the director overplays his “let’s frame the characters in front of the American flag” a little in places. But it never feels small-scale, and fully embodies the addictive chaos of the campaign trail, something that keeps people like Stephen “married to the job,” and that’s certainly a victory for a film like this.

Variety: Mostly Negative
Emerging three years later amid widespread disillusionment, bitter partisan squabbles and still-crippling economic woes, "The Ides of March" would seem ideally suited to these embittered times, and it retains enough of Willimon's crafty plotting and wicked zingers to work as slick bigscreen entertainment. Yet by opening up the structure of Willimon's taut morality play -- whose spare genius lay in its applicability to any campaign, any party -- the screenwriters have attempted to make the text feel more specific and contemporary, but instead have inflated it into something implausible, toothless and weirdly dated.

The Hollywood Reporter: Mixed
Had writer/director George Clooney and his co-scripters Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon injected "The Ides of March" with the intimate political conviction that made Good Night, and Good Luck a critical standout and a frontrunner for liberal patrons, the exit polls would be more positive on this political thriller juggling idealism and corruption with fairly predictable results. Not just its softer narrative and dingy Midwestern setting but its structural lack of heroics is likely to keep the popular vote down on “Ides,” which can in any case bank on tense pacing and a superb cast, lead by a ruthlessly idealistic Ryan Gosling, to win festival votes beginning with its Venice bow.

The Guardian: Mixed
"The Ides of March" is tense and involving, a decent choice for the festival's opening-night film. And if that vote seems a little grudging, that's only because I can't help feeling that there were surely wilder, more interesting contenders that fell by the wayside. What remains is your classic compromise candidate: a film that set out with a crusading zeal but had its rough edges planed down en route to the nomination.

Time Out London: Mixed
"‘The Ides of March" is solid enough as a minor moral tale about politics – but its teeth are not as sharp as its ponderous title, overplayed final scene of co-star Ryan Gosling staring into a television camera or more flat noir-ish elements would all like to suggest. However, taken as a diverting aside on our world and with its more awkward pretensions forgiven, it’s captivating enough and well-performed by a strong cast, even down to the smaller ensemble roles.

Oscilloscope Buys Nicholas Ray's Last Film, "We Can't Go Home Again"

Brian Brooks — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 08:17:17 GMT

North American rights to Nicholas Ray's final film, "We Can't Go Home Again" have been picked up by Oscilloscope Laboratories ahead of the late director's centenary of his birth. A restored/reconstructed version of the film will debut at the Venice Film Festival followed by the New York Film Festival in October.

Along with the film, Oscilloscope will release a new doc titled, "Don't Expect Too Much," Directed by Nicholas Ray's widow, Susan Ray, it explores her late husband's vision for "Home Again" in his own words and those of his students. Susan Ray also supervised the feature's restoration. (For more about both titles, be sure to check out our interview with Susan Ray.)

After an extensive festival run in addition to screenings at repertory houses, universities, archives and other special engagements, Oscilloscope plans a DVD and multiple digital platform release in 2012. Both films will air on Turner Classic Movies in late October.

Full acquisition release follows:

Oscilloscope Laboratories announced today that it has acquired North American distribution rights to Nicholas Ray's WE CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN, the director's pioneering last film, for release in honor of the centenary of his birth. A pristine new restoration/reconstruction of the film will make its world premiere at the upcoming Venice International Film Festival, and its domestic debut at the New York Film Festival in October.
Accompanying the film, Oscilloscope will also release a new documentary, DON'T EXPECT TOO MUCH, which explores in his own words and those of his student crew Ray's vision for WE CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN. Using never-beforeseen footage and audio from the Ray archive, as well as contemporary interviews, the fulllength documentary reveals Ray's unique approach to directing and examines the relationship between his life and art in the latter years of his life. The documentary is directed by Ray's wife, Susan Ray, who also supervised the restoration of WE CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN in collaboration with The Nicholas Ray Foundation, EYE Institute Netherlands, and The Academy Film Archive.
Oscilloscope will continue to screen both films at festivals, in repertory houses, at universities and archives, and in special engagements around the country; and will release them on DVD and multiple digital platforms next year. Both films are also scheduled to air on Turner Classic Movies in late October. Long shrouded in mystery and uncertainty, Ray's final film is a groundbreaking work made with his students in the early 1970s at SUNY Binghamton in upstate New York. The film premiered as an unfinished work at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, and Ray continued to shoot and edit it until his death in 1979. In the film, we observe Ray undertaking the bold experiment of teaching collaboration and filmmaking to a novice crew while making a feature film. The film also aims to document the history, progress, manners, morals, and mores of everyday life at a critical moment in American history, through an expressionistic use of multiple image.
"Nicholas Ray is, quite simply, one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of cinema," said Oscilloscope Laboratories in a statement. "In his last film, he shows the same trailblazing spirit, bold style, and interest in grappling with contemporary social concerns that have defined all of his previous work. We are thrilled and honored to be collaborating with Susan Ray and The Nicholas Ray Foundation to get this important and landmark film out into the world at last. We feel this film, along with Susan's illuminating new documentary DON'T EXPECT TOO MUCH, will be a delight and a resource for cinephiles and film professionals for many years to come."
Quote from Susan Ray: Nick has been called an innovator and pathfinder, a visionary a good 40 or 50 years ahead of his time. This is never truer than in We Can't Go Home Again. Now, 40 years after it was shot, this is a film whose time has finally come. The Nicholas Ray Foundation is delighted to join forces with Oscilloscope in offering this film to a new generation of viewers ready to receive it.

Venice 2011: A Guide To The Film Festival

Peter Knegt — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 12:26:17 GMT

The Venice Film Festival kicks off Wednesday, August 31st with the world premiere of George Clooney's "The Ides of March," leading into eleven days that feature some of the most anticipated premieres of the year, from David Cronenberg's "A Dangerous Method" and Roman Polanki's "Carnage" to Madonna's "W.E." and Steven Soderbergh's "Contagion."

It's one of the year's major international cinematic events and indieWIRE will be offering a variety of coverage over the course of the fest. We have also put together film pages for a number of titles at the festival and will be updating them as the festival progresses to include links to coverage, criticWIRE grades and any other information that might come along. A handy guide to the pages (which already include photos, plot synopses, and trailers), is below.

The Venice Film Festival runs through September 9th, closing down with the world premiere of Whit Stillman's "Damsels in Distress."

In Competition:

"4:44 Last Day on Earth" (USA) [Film Page]
Director: Abel Ferrara; Cast: Willem Dafoe, Shanyn Leigh, Paz de la Huerta, Natasha Lyonne

"Alps" (Greece) [Film Page]
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos; Cast: Aggeliki Papoulia, Aris Servetalis, Johnny Vekris, Ariane Labed

"Carnage" (France/Germany/Poland/Spain) [Film Page]
Director: Roman Polanski; Cast: Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster, Christoph Waltz, John C. Reilly

"Chicken With Plums" (France/Belgium/Germany) [Film Page]
Director: Marjane Satrapi; Vincent Paronnaud; Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Maria De Medeiros, Golshifteh Farahani, Isabella Rossellini, Chiara Mastroianni

"A Dangerous Method" (France/Ireland/United Kingdom/Germany/Canada) [Film Page]
Director: David Cronenberg; Cast: Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen, Keira Knightley

"Dark Horse" (USA) [Film Page]
Director: Todd Solondz; Cast: Selma Blair, Justin Bartha, Christopher Walken, Donna Murphy, Mia Farrow

"The Exchange (Hahithalfut)" (Israel/Germany) [Film Page]
Director: Eran Kolirin; Cast: Dan Navon, Rotem Keinan, Sharon Tal

"Faust" (Russia) [Film Page]
Director: Aleksander Sokurov; Cast: Johannes Zeiler, Anton Adasinskiy, Isolda Dychauk, Hanna Schygulla

"Himizu" (Japan) [Film Page]
Director: Sion Sono; Cast: Shôta Sometani, Fumi Nikaidô, Tetsu Watanabe, Mitsuru Fukikoshi

"The Ides of March" (USA) [Film Page]
Director: George Clooney; Cast: Evan Rachel Wood, Marisa Tomei, Ryan Gosling, George Clooney, Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jeffrey Wright, Max Minghella

"Killer Joe" (USA) [Film Page]
Director: William Friedkin; Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Thomas Haden Church, Gina Gershon, Juno Temple

"Life Without Principle" (Hong Kong) [Film Page]
Director: Johnnie To; Cast: Lau Ching Wan, Richie Jen, Denise Ho

"Quando la notte" (Italy) [Film Page]
Director: Cristina Comencini; Cast: Claudia Pandolfi, Filippo Timi, Michela Cescon, Thomas Trabacchi

"Saideke Balai" (China/Taiwan) [Film Page]
Director: Te-Sheng Wei; Cast: Da-Ching, Umin Boya, Landy Wen, Lo Mei-ling

"Shame" (UK) [Film Page]
Director: Steve McQueen; Cast: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale, Nicole Beharie

"A Simple Life" (Hong Kong/China) [Film Page]
Director: Ann Hui; Cast: Andy Lau, Deanie Ip, Wang Fuli, Qin Hailu

"Terraferma" (Italy) [Film Page]
Director: Emanuele Crialese; Cast: Filippo Pucillo, Donatella Finocchiaro, Mimmo Cuticcho, Giuseppe Fiorello, Timnit T.

"Texas Killing Fields" (USA) [Film Page]
Director: Ami Canaan Mann; Cast: Chloe Moretz, Sam Worthington, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jessica Chastain, Annabeth Gish

"That Summer (Un été brûlant)" (France/Italy/Switzerland) [Film Page]
Director: Philippe Garrel; Cast: Monica Bellucci, Louis Garrel, Céline Sallette, Jérôme Ro

"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" (UK/France) [Film Page]
Director: Tomas Alfredson; Cast: Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong, Stephen Graham, Ciaran Hinds

"L'Ultimo Terrestre" (Italy) [Film Page]
Director: Gipi; Cast: Gabriele Spinelli, Anna Bellato, Roberto Herlitzka, Teco Celio

"Wuthering Heights" (UK) [Film Page]
Director: Andrea Arnold; Cast: Kaya Scodelario, Oliver Milburn, Nicola Burley, James Howson, Paul Hilton

Out of Competition: (selected titles)

"Alois nebel" (Czech Republic/Germany/Slovakia) [Film Page]
Director: Tomás Lunák; Cast: Miroslav Krobot, Marie Ludvíková, Karel Roden, Leoš Noha, Alois Švehlík, Voríšková

"Contagion" (USA) [Film Page]
Director: Steven Soderbergh; Cast: Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Bryan Cranston, Lawrence Fishburne

"Crazy Horse" (France/USA) [Film Page]
Director: Frederick Wiseman

"Damsels in Distress" (USA) [Film Page]
Director: Whit Stillman; Cast: Greta Gerwig, Adam Brody, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Analeigh Tipton

"Summer Games" (Italy/Switzerland) [Film Page]
Director: Rolando Colla; Cast: Armando Condolucci, Fiorella Campanella, Alessia Barela, Antonio Merone, Marco D'Orazi

"The Moth Diaries" (Ireland/Canada) [Film Page]
Director: Mary Harron; Cast: Scott Speedman, Sarah Bolger, Lily Cole, Sarah Gadon, Valerie Tian

"W.E." (UK) [Film Page]
Director: Madonna; Cast: Abbie Cornish, Natalie Dormer, Oscar Isaac, James D'Arcy, Annabelle Wallis, Richard Coyle

"Wilde Salome" (USA) [Film Page]
Director: Al Pacino; Cast: Al Pacino, Jessica Chastain, Kevin Anderson, Estelle Parsons, Roxanne Hart

Johnnie To's "Life Without Principle" Added to Venice Film Festival Slate

Indiewire Staff — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 08:07:26 GMT

The 22nd film announced in the competition section Venezia 68 at this year's Venice International Film Festival is Johnnie To's latest, "Life Without Principle," the event revealed Tuesday. The festival will take place August 31 - September 10.

"Life Without Principle" tells the story of three characters: an ordinary bank teller turned financial analyst is forced to sell high risk securities to her customers in order to meet her sales target; a small-time thug delves into the futures index hoping to earn easy money to post bail for a buddy in trouble with the law; a straight-arrow Police inspector, who has always enjoyed his middle income lifestyle, is suddenly desperate for money when his wife puts a down payment on a luxury flat she can’t afford and his dying father wants him to look after a young half-sister he never knew he had. Three little people who are in dire need of money for the predicaments in their respective lives have nothing in common until a bag of stolen money worth $5m pops up and lands them in an intricate situation that forces them into making soul searching decisions about right and wrong and everything in between on the morality scale. [Synopsis courtesy of the festival]

Director and producer Johnnie To said about the film: "“This is a turbulent world. In order to survive, people have no choice but play the game. No matter how hard you try to follow the rules, sooner or later, a part of you will be lost.”

Venice Film Festival Announces Official Lineup

Peter Knegt — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 16:17:01 GMT

Though highly speculated earlier this week, the lineup for the 2011 Venice Film Festival was officially announced this morning. Joining previously announced opening and closing films "The Ides of March" (directed by George Clooney) and "Damsels in Distress" (directed by Whit Stillman) were a mostly expected list including new works from David Cronenberg, Steven Soderbergh, Roman Polanski, Todd Solondz, Alexander Sokurov, Tomas Alfredson, Mary Harron, William Friedkin and Madonna.

Notable differences from earlier suggestions of the lineup were that Madonna's "W.E." would be playing out of competition, as would Steven Soderbergh's "Contagion" and Mary Harron's "The Moth Diaries" (which together reduced the female-helmed films in competition by two). "Wilde Salome," directed by Al Pacino, was an inclusion in the out-of-competition lineup that was not noted earlier this week. The film stars Pacino alongside 2011's big breakout Jessica Chastain (who after being the next big thing at Sundance with "Take Shelter" and Cannes with "The Tree of Life," is also in Venice's "Texas Killing Fields").

Overall, the English-language presence at the festival is quite considerable. In addition to the four U.S. films in competition ("Ides of March," "4:44 Last Day on Earth," "Killer Joe," "Dark Horse"), there's Tomas Alfredson's "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" (an Italian production), David Cronenberg's "A Dangerous Method" (Canada-Germany), Roman Polanski's "Carnage" (France-Germany-Spain-Poland), and U.K. entries "Wuthering Heights," directed by Andrea Arnold, and "Shame," directed by Steve McQueen.

As a result, the festival is remarkably star-studded. George Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster, Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, Madonna, Jude Law, Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Al Pacino are just some of the celebrities with films heading to the Lido.

Full lineup listed below. More from indieWIRE as it comes in.

Competition
"The Ides of March," George Clooney (U.S.) - Opening Night Film
"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," Tomas Alfredson (Italy)
"Wuthering Heights," Andrea Arnold (U.K.)
"Texas Killing Fields," Ami Canaan Mann (U.S.)
"A Dangerous Method," David Cronenberg (Germany, Canada)
"4:44 Last Day on Earth," Abel Ferrara (U.S.)
"Killer Joe," William Friedkin (U.S.)
"The Exchange," Eran Kolirin (Israel, Germany)
"Alps," Yorgos Lamthimos (Greece)
"Shame," Steve McQueen (U.K.)
"Carnage," Roman Polanski (France, Germany, Spain, Poland)
"Chicken With Plums," Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud (France, Belgium, Germany)
"A Burning Hot Summer," Philippe Garrel (France)
"A Simple Life," Ann Hui (China, HK)
"Faust," Aleksander Sokurov (Russia)
"Dark Horse," Todd Solondz (U.S.)
"Himizu," Sion Sono (Japan)
"Seediq Bale," Wei Desheng (Taiwan)
"Quando la Notte," Cristina Comencini (Italy)
"Terraferma," Emanuele Crialese (Italy)
"L'Ultimo Terrestre," Gipi (Italy)

Out of Competition
"Damsels in Distress," Whit Stillman (U.S.) - Closing Night Film of Festival
"Vivan las Antipodas!" Victor Kossakovsky (Germany, Arg, Neth, Chile, Russia) - Out of Competition Opening Night Film
"La folie Almayer," Chantal Akerman (Belgium, France)
"The Moth Diaries," Mary Harron (Canada, Ireland)
"W.E.," Madonna (U.K.)
"Il villaggio di cartone," Ermanno Olmi (Italy)
"Wilde Salome," Al Pacino (U.S.)
"Contagion," Steven Soderbergh (U.S.)
"The Sorcerer and the White Snake," Tony Ching Siu-tung (China, HK)
"Giochi d'estate," Rolando Colla (Switzerland, Italy)
"La Desintegration," Philippe Faucon (Belgium)
"Alois Nebel," Tomas Lunak (Czech Rep., Germany)
"Eva," Kike Maillo (Spain, France)
"Scossa," Francesco Maselli, Carlo Lizzani, Ugo Gregoretti, Nino Russo (Italy)
"La Cle des chanps," Claude Nuridsany, Marie Perennou (France)
"Tormented," Takashi Shimizu (Japan)
"Marco Bellocchio, Venezia 2011," Pietro Marcello (Italy)
"La Meditazione di Hayez," Mario Martone (Italy)
"Tahrir 2011," Tamer Ezzat, Ahmad Abdalla, Ayten Amin, Amr Salama (Egypt)
"The End," Collective Abounabbara (Syria)
"Vanguard," Collective Abounabbara (Syria)
"Evolution (Megaplex 3D)," Marco Brambilla (U.S.)

Reports: David Cronenberg, Roman Polanski and Madonna Heading To Venice Film Festival (UPDATED)

Peter Knegt — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 07:09:15 GMT

While the official announcement won't occur until Thursday, Variety is reporting what appears to be the majority of the lineup for the 2011 Venice Film Festival, including new works from David Cronenberg, Steven Soderbergh, Roman Polanski, Todd Solondz, Jonathan Demme, Alexander Sokurov, Mary Harron, William Friedkin and Madonna. They come in addition to the already announced "The Ides of March," George Clooney's political drama that will open the festival.

The article also suggested that new films Walter Salles, Wong Kar Wai, Luc Besson, Brillante Mendoza and Fatih Akin will not be ready for the festival.

Below is the full list of films the article notes. Read Variety's story here, and check back with indieWIRE Thursday when we'll have the officially announced lineup.

In Competition:
"Alps," directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
"A Burning Hot Summer," directed by Philippe Garrel
"Carnage," directed by Roman Polanski
"Contagion," directed by Steven Soderbergh
"A Dangerous Method," directed by David Cronenberg
"Dark Horse," directed by Todd Solondz
"The Exchange," directed by Eran Kolirin
"Faust," directed by Alexander Sokurov
"Himizu," directed by Sion Sono
"Killer Joe," directed by William Friedkin
"The Ides of March," directed by George Clooney (Opening Night)
"Last Day on Earth," directed by Abel Ferrara
"The Moth Diaries," directed by Mary Harron
"Poulet aux prunes," directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud
"Quando la notte," directed by Cristina Comencini
"Seediq Bale," directed by Wei Te-sheng
"Shame," directed by Steve McQueen
"Terraferma," directed by Emanuele Crialese
"Texas Killing Fields" directed by Ami Canaan Mann
"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," directed by Tomas Alfredson
"L'ultimo terrestre," directed by Gipi
"W.E.," directed by Madonna
"Wuthering Heights," directed by Andrea Arnold

Out of Competition:
"La folie Almayer," directed by Chantal Akerman

Horizons section:
"I'm Carolyn Parker: The Good, the Mad and the Beautiful," directed by Jonathan Demme
"Sal," directed by James Franco

Whit Stillman's "Damsels in Distress" To Close Venice Film Festival

Peter Knegt — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 08:28:53 GMT

Whit Stillman's "Damsels in Distress" will close out the 68th Venice Film Festival on Saturday, September 10th, it was announced today. Screening out of competition, Stillman's much-anticipated fourth film joins what looks to be a considerable lineup for the festival, with new works from David Cronenberg, Steven Soderbergh, Roman Polanski, Todd Solondz, Jonathan Demme, Alexander Sokurov, Mary Harron, William Friedkin and Madonna all expected to be in the mix.

Sony Pictures Classics already has worldwide rights to the film, which stars Greta Gerwig, Adam Brody, Carrie MacLemore, Megalyn Echikunwoke and Analeigh Tipton.

Full press release below.

Damsels in Distress, the comedy that marks the return of American director Whit Stillman (Metropolitan, Barcelona, The Last Days of Disco) and a new phase in his highly personal journey into the world of American youth, is to be the Closing night film (Out of Competition) at the 68th Venice International Film Festival (31 August – 10 September 2011), directed by Marco Müller and organized by la Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta.
Damsels in Distress will have its world premiere screening Saturday September 10, in the Sala Grande (Palazzo del Cinema), following the awards Ceremony.
Damsels in Distress, written, produced and directed by Whit Stillman, is produced by Martin Shafer and Liz Glotzer, and stars the new young talents of American cinema Greta Gerwig - the muse of the independent American film movement known as "Mumblecore" (Hannah Takes the Stairs, Baghead, Nights and Weekends), who also starred in the recent Greenberg and was chosen by Woody Allen for his new film Bop Decameron - and Adam Brody (In the Land of Women, Jennifer's Body, Scream 4). Also starring are Carrie MacLemore, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Analeigh Tipton, Hugo Becker, Ryan Metcalf, and Billy Magnussen.
Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics and produced by Westerly Film Production, Damsels in Distress is a comedy about a trio of beautiful girls as they set out to revolutionize life at a grungy American university – the dynamic leader Violet Wister (Greta Gerwig), principled Rose (Megalyn Echikunwoke) and sexy Heather (Carrie MacLemore). They welcome transfer student Lily (Analeigh Tipton) into their group which seeks to help severely depressed students with a program of good hygiene and musical dance numbers. The girls become romantically entangled with a series of men—including smooth Charlie (Adam Brody), dreamboat Xavier (Hugo Becker) and the mad frat pack of Frank (Ryan Metcalf) and Thor (Billy Magnussen)—who threaten the girls’ friendship and sanity.
Damsels in Distress is Whit Stillman’s fourth film as writer-director and his third in collaboration with producers Martin Shafer and Liz Glotzer. His first film, Metropolitan (1990), was a hit at Sundance and the Director’s Fortnight in Cannes, as well as receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. His next two films, Barcelona (1994) and The Last Days Of Disco (1998), again won awards and positive receptions. The latter story he developed into a novel - The Last Days of Disco, with Cocktails at Petrossian Afterward - published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Stillman is a graduate of Harvard where he was an editor of the Harvard Crimson. After stints in book publishing and journalism he became involved in the Spanish film industry, working on and appearing in Fernando Colomo’s Manhattan-set comedy Skyline. For a decade after his last film he was based in Europe, living in Paris and Madrid. He has two daughters, one in college in the States and the other studying law in Dublin.

George Clooney's "Ides of March" Opening Venice

Peter Knegt — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 06:47:34 GMT

George Clooney's fourth directorial effort, "The Ides of March," will open the Venice Film Festival on August 31st. This marks the first of what will be a series of announcements surrounding the major fall festivals, which indieWIRE extensively speculated about Monday.

"Ides of March" is an adaptation of the acclaimed off-Broadway play “Farragut North.” Clooney directed, co-wrote (alongside Grant Heslov) and co-starred in the film, which also features an impressive cast in Ryan Gosling, Paul Giamatti, Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood. It follows an idealistic staffer (Gosling) for a newbie presidential candidate (Clooney) who gets a crash course on dirty politics during his stint on the campaign trail. Sony will release the film in theaters in October.

Last year, Darren Aronofsky's "Black Swan" began its massive pre-release buzz by opening the fest. This year, Aronofsky is heading the jury.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul to Head Venice's Orizzonti Jury

Nigel M Smith — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 06:59:49 GMT

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, winner of the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes for "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Loves," will head the jury for the Venice Film Festival's Orizzonti (Horizons) sidebar. The section focuses on cutting edge international cinema. Weerasethakul competed in the festival's main section back in 2006 with "Syndromes and a Century."

In other jury announcements, Italian director Carlo Mazzacurati, whose "La Passione" competed in Venice last year, has been named president of the jury judging the "Luigi De Laurentiis" Award for a Debut Film; while Roberta Torre will head the jury for the Italian cinema showcase, the Controcampo Italiano selection. Her latest feature, "Lost Kisses," opened the same section last year.

As previously announced, Darren Aronofsky will serve as the president of the International Jury, who award the Golden Lion and other official prizes.

The 68th Venice International Film Festival runs (August 31 – September 10, 2011. For more on this year's jury go here.

Darren Aronofsky To Head Venice Jury

Peter Knegt — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 08:15:14 GMT

Darren Aronofsky will head the jury for the 2011 Venice International Film Festival, it was announced today. No stranger to the festival (his "Black Swan" premiered there last year, and "The Wrestler" won the festival's top prize in 2008), Aronofsky will be the president of the International Jury for the Competition for the 68th edition of Venice, which runs August 31-September 10, 2011.

Full press release below.

Oscar nominated American director, producer and screenwriter Darren Aronofsky (author of the opening film of the 67th Venice Film Festival, Black Swan, and winner of the 2008 Golden Lion for The Wrestler) – a key figure in contemporary film, whose work constantly engages the evolution and mutations of the many languages of art – will be the president of the International Jury for the Competition at the 68th Venice International Film Festival (August 31 – September 10 2011). The International Jury will award the Golden Lion and the other official prizes.

The decision was made by the Board of Directors of the Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta, which accepted the recommendation by the Director of the Venice International Film Festival, Marco Müller.

Darren Aronofsky garnered extraordinary critical and commercial success worldwide for Black Swan, a film that was able to infuse the sensibility of the boldest independent cinema, which shaped Aronofsky’s early years, with mass appeal, and to combine the pulp universes of melodrama and horror with a totally original and sophisticated artistic vision. Dedicating the cover of the February 2011 issue to the film, the magazine Cahiers du Cinema described Aronofsky as the “leader of a new generation”. Black Swan, which upon its release established a new box office record for Fox Searchlight Pictures, received 5 Oscar nominations including best director and best picture and 4 Golden Globe Award nominations. Black Swan swept the Independent Spirit Award (the Oscars of independent filmmaking) winning best feature, best director, best female lead and best cinematography.

Natalie Portman’s magnificent interpretation, which had previously moved the Venetian public and was acclaimed by critics all over the world, won her the Oscar as Best Actress, the Golden Globe, the BAFTA (the British Oscar), the Independent Spirit Award, the Screen Actors Guild Award and prizes from the major associations of film critics.

For his earlier work The Wrestler (2008), Aronofsky was awarded the Golden Lion at the 65th Venice International Film Festival, and later won the Independent Spirit Award for best feature. For his memorable, heart-rending interpretation, the star Mickey Rourke won the Golden Globe, the BAFTA and the Independent Spirit Award, as well as an Oscar nomination, and prizes from all the major associations of film critics.

Darren Aronofsky made his debut in 1998 with π, earning the prize of best director at the Sundance Film Festival and best screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards. His second film, Requiem for a Dream, from the novel by Hubert Selby Jr. was presented at Cannes in 2000, and later won wide international recognition, including an Oscar nomination for Ellen Burstyn as best actress. The formal audacity and visceral quality of the film have made it an important point of reference for young filmmakers.
In 2006 Aronofsky participated in the Competition at the 63rd Venice International Film Festival with The Fountain, a romantic and psychedelic science fiction film starring Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. Premiere Magazine’s Glenn Kenny stated that The Fountain, “may well restore your faith in the idea that a movie can take you out of the mundane and into a place of wonderment.” Since its release The Fountain has garnered a highly devoted fan following becoming a true cult sensation in the world of cinema.

Venice '10 | Miike, Affleck, Gallo, & More Make Venice a Fest that Ended Too Soon

Bryce J. Renninger — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 12:24:38 GMT

A samurai flick. A French comedy. An intellectually rigorous, quietly wrenching Greek drama. An heir to the classic Russian arthouse tradition. A lyrical US slacker pic. A punishing drama of racial and sexual exploitation. A martial-arts extravaganza. An almost four-hour Italian historical drama. A low-budget B&W indie indebted to Warhol and early Cassavetes. The first Monte Hellman feature in 21 years. Others.

I like to be surprised. That’s why I go to film festivals: not just for the heart-quickening thrill of seeing good work, still as intense and seductive today as it ever was, but also to have my expectations upended and, ideally, surpassed. I like to be slightly off-balance, shifting constantly between all kinds of work, from the loftily high-minded to the frivolous and fun, from all different parts of the world. It’s especially ironic, here, given that one of the main problems with spending any substantial amount of time in Venice is the city’s mono-diet – the omnipresence of pasta and pizza on any restaurant menu, and the concomitant impossibility of getting, say, a boeuf bourguignon, or a bowl of Tom ka gai, or even a simple burrito, be it good, bad or indifferent.

In the same way, I can’t live on arthouse cinema alone. No one should; it’s like calling yourself a music fan when, really, all you like is Metal. Which is precisely why this year’s Venice competition was about the best I can remember, and why it eclipsed so many other recent competitive strands – in particular, those of Berlin and Cannes. Not only for the way it ignored the artificial distinctions between Serious and Commercial filmmaking, mixing ambitious films d'auteur (“Attenberg”, “Post Mortem”, “Silent Souls”) with unabashed crowdpleasers (“Detective Dee and the Mystery of Phantom Flame,” “13 Assassins”); but for the sense of thoughtful curation from Artistic Director Marco Muller – a genuine engagement with the virtues or defects of the works on offer, not just the reputations of their makers.

I say this because, doubtless out of necessity, they’ve chosen a different, more interesting path to Cannes: eschewing the predictable list of anointed greats – the Kiarostamis and Hanekes and Loaches, et al. – and instead taking some genuine risks, elevating newer filmmakers to competition status (Kelly Reichardt, Pablo Larrain, Alexsi Fedorchenko), while also rewarding those who’ve toiled long on the back benches (Takashi Miike, Alex de la Iglesia). And deservedly so, since almost every one of these filmmakers stepped up and delivered a piece of work that justified its inclusion in the official selection.

As consistently engaging as it was to sit through, the Concorso also signaled that this is a festival looking outward rather than inward. One actively engaging with a cinema landscape that’s both smaller and more disparate than ever before – while at the same time, seeking to move us past the classic, modernist paradigm of what can or should constitute A Festival Film, an idée fixe that has, in the past decade, yielded increasingly arid, hermetic and unsatisfying returns. Necessity, in this case, proved the mother of invention.

Which is not to say it was all sunshine and lollipops. The Italian entries were uniformly dismal. de la Iglesia’s “Ballad of a Sad Trumpet” (an arthouse title par eminence) was a loud, incoherent mess, unredeemed even by the inclusion of killer clowns. And the surprise movie, also in Competition – Wang Bing’s “The Ditch” – proved something of a damp squib for many viewers. (Perhaps it’s the Maoist in him, but Muller appears intent upon leaching every aspect of pleasure or reward out of the whole “film sorpresa” concept: you get the feeling that his idea of a big surprise would be to bound up and inform you loudly that your mother was dead.) My own, earlier suspicion, based on its “North American Premiere” status at Toronto, that the surprise entry would turn out to be Ji-woon Kim’s serial-killer movie, “I Saw The Devil,” proved sadly unfounded; Signor Muller’s distaste for South Korean cinema appears intact.

Firmly on the credit side of the ledger, though, was Takashi Miike’s “13 Assassins”, which as a lover of the classical samurai film (my favourite: Kobayashi’s great 1967 “Rebellion”), I’d approached more out of curiosity than actual hope. For one thing, Miike’s prolificacy, like Michael Winterbottom’s, often gets the better of him. So much of his work seems rushed, insufficiently thought-through or developed. If he made half as many features, you sense, they’d likely be twice as good.

Then there was the matter of his sensibility, his tendency to embrace the cruelest and most grotesque elements of any situation, often at the expense of the story he’s trying to tell. Having just endured an hour of Sion Sono’s camp, wearying “Cold Fish” – a serial killer movie derailed by its maker’s inability to pitch a scene at anything quieter than a shout – I feared that, despite the fact this is technically a remake (of Eichi Kudo’s 1963 original), Miike might choose to take an similarly glib, “subversive” spin on the material.

To my relief, he did no such thing. Instead, he approached the story with respect and affection, but not timid reverence. It began with the chief sword-for-hire, Shinzaemon (played by the great Koji Yakusho, a leading man in the classic, Gary Cooper mold), methodically assembling his team of doomed, noble samurai and stray ronin, all eager, in that Japanese way, to die in the service of a good cause – in this case, the slaughter of a young lord of the Shogunate, whose violent cruelty to his subjects exceeded the usual droit de seigneur, and tipped over into something else, a philosophically-inclined nihilism.

For the first fifty minutes, it gathered steam. Men were enlisted, plans outlined. There were conversations about the nature and limits of honor, the implacability of fate and and the longing unto death. The mood was both wry and tender, resigned to the fate these men had chosen. And then the battle began. From the ingenuity of the Thirteen’s methods (two words: flaming boars), to the relentless, well-choreographed carnage of the final half-hour, this was a treat, by turns funny and gripping and sad – and one which, in the process, revealed those recent Yoji Yamada samurai flicks for the polite, pedestrian efforts they are.

Another genre flick – Ben Affleck’s “The Town,” screening out of competition – boasted a similar degree of care in its execution, and provided just as much pleasure. A heist flick, set in and around Charlestown, Mass., a neighbourhood populated almost exclusively by Irish-Catholic bank robbers and their shrill, badly made-up molls, it confirmed what “Gone Baby Gone” had announced: that its actor-maker is actually a gifted director, capable of infusing commercial filmmaking with a quiet, unshowy intelligence.

As with “13 Assassins,” much of the beauty here lay in the details: the way the robbers, in the midst of their first hold-up, microwaved the hard drives of the bank’s security cameras. Or the bleach they splashed over every surface in their wake, scouring any trace of fingerprints or DNA from the crime-scene. Affleck’s character was interesting, too: an essentially decent guy, aware of his need to improve himself, yet unable to stop himself from doing every shitty thing his upbringing and his nature conspired to make him do. In what appeared to be a tip of the hat to Michael Mann's “Heat”, he was set against his antithesis: an FBI agent of unwavering moral rectitude, played by “Mad Men”’s Jon Hamm. Whose performance here, and whose popularity at the subsequent press conference, served notice that he’s well on his way to becoming the major Hollywood star he deserves to be. (Ironically, until “The Town,” the best American thing I’d watched in Venice had been episode seven of this season’s “Mad Men” – “The Suitcase” – back in my hotel on Monday night.)

As such – and like the Miike – it achieved a difficult thing, honoring the various conventions that constitute a genre, without treating them like hackneyed clichés. “You know what's funny?” a friend remarked on the way out. “If this had Clint Eastwood’s name on it, every critic in America would be calling it a masterpiece.”

He was right; far too many critics have a tendency to respond, tail wagging, to the name on the tin, rather than the work on the screen. In fact I think it’s better than the recent Eastwood’s: brisker, less stiffly concerned with its own achievement and legacy. You’d call it a strong journeyman effort, were it not for the many themes and motifs it shared with his debut – and not just the Boston setting (evoked as meticulously as you’d expect), but the fascination with absent or inattentive mothers, with broken families and ruined fathers and the at-times almost intolerable burden of male friendship. An assured and coherent storyteller, Affleck displays a deep interest in social determinants, an almost 19th-century belief in character-as-destiny, and an apparent distaste for overstatement. Frankly, Hollywood could use more of him.

My friend and colleague Leslie Felperin nailed the Vincent Gallo feature in her Variety review, I think, when she noted that it ultimately satisfied no one: neither his many detractors (for whom it wasn't terrible enough to be dismissed as a fiasco) nor his smaller band of supporters (for whom it wasn't excellent enough to justify what has been an often thankless faith).

For the record, I consider myself among the latter group. Gallo may be a poseur and a publicity-seeker, but he arrived in Venice with two excellent films to his name. (Long before the critical tide turned in his favour, Manohla Dargis and I were about the only two people at Cannes who admired "The Brown Bunny" on its premiere, in its original cut – a judgment that proved, in the words one former friend, that I "knew nothing whatsoever about cinema.") He is a talent, despite his neuroses and bullshit. But his inability to play well with others prevents him from accepting the good advice that might curb his excesses.

Compared to those earlier features, "Promises Written In Water" felt thin and oddly half-hearted. Ostensibly a meditation on bereavement, it actually seemed even more narcissistic than his earlier work; suffice it to say, when Gallo holds the screen, no other actor matters, and his female co-star was often reduced to a fleeting, barely-glimpsed presence. Seemingly influenced by Warhol, and shot in a grainy B&W reminiscent of the early 1960s, it contained a handful of interesting individual shots – a woman dancing in a bare room; her face, later, turned in profile – among long scenes of pointless duration. But by far its most interesting feature was its willingness to play with dialogue, with Gallo repeating the same phrases, with minute variations, up to a half-dozen times, as if giving an editor various line-readings from which to select. Except that Gallo is his own editor, and will not cut anything. With the effect that the device that reeked less of attempted naturalism, than some William S. Burroughs-like cut-up, draining the words of any sense or purpose. Perhaps that was the point: the suggestion that, before a grief as powerful as this one, language itself becomes meaningless, mere sound.

But then, what would I know? Another friend forwarded me the following, from Gallo's own website: "Vincent Gallo has forever rejected any explanation of the concept, story, process, or rumors surrounding the making of his new film, stating, 'None of it would fit easily into tabloid format, and so writers and journalists would be forced into simplistic interpretations to avoid their own shortcomings and the shortcomings of the press in general.'” Cheers, Vinnie G. We'd just watched his short, "The Agent", a companion-piece of sorts to the feature, shot by the same cameraman, on the same stock, and starring Sage Stallone (who'd cameoed in "Promises") as a Hollywood agent conducting a one-sided conversation with his client (guess who!), a set-up that encouraged him to utter the same word-soup, with phrases like "You're a punk," "They want you," "You should be happy," and "What else can you do?" materializing in various combinations, more or less at random.

I liked it, liked its provocation and its aesthetic – and that affection turned to flat-out love when the end-title screen came up, noting that the film was (and I quote) "bought to you by the Gray Daisy Films Foundation. A viewer-supported organization dedicated to the advancement of outspoken Caucasian non-Jewish heterosexual good-looking male filmmakers and movie stars", which "needs your support to continue bringing you high-quality films." Below this text was an address for donations.

The message stayed onscreen for two full minutes. Further proof (as if any were needed) that Gallo belabors his punchlines, but also a hint that there might be slightly more self-knowledge there than many give him credit for.

What else to say? It was, in all, an extraordinarily good year, here in Venice. There was "Road to Nowhere", and "News From Nowhere" – and "Somewhere". There was "Black Venus" (excellent, punishing, reminiscent at times of Pasolini's "Salo") and "Black Swan", "The Black Sheep" and "Black Ocean". There was "Norwegian Wood", which for me elicited the single funniest line of the festival, when someone at dinner one night mentioned its title, and British critic Damon Wise remarked, calmly, "Isn't it good?" There was “Barney’s Version”, boasting superb performances from Paul Giamatti and Rosamund Pike, and “I’m Still Here” – which I didn’t bother to catch, having no interest whatever in l’affaire Joaquin, only to later regret missing. There were few truly awful films, and some very, very fine ones. Unique in recent memory, this year’s festival gave the impression of being over all too soon.

Venice '10 | Masterful "Souls" and Hollow "Somewhere" Greet the Lido

Brian Brooks — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 09:03:21 GMT

Let's start with something breathtaking: the Russian film in competition, Alexsi Fedorchenko's "Silent Souls," which announced its excellence from the very first shot - of a man on a bicycle riding down a country road, a wooden birdcage balanced behind the seat. The surface of the road glittered, cobalt-blue and black; beside it were shoulders covered in autumn leaves, and beyond this, the long, damp, pea-green grass. Overhead, the sky was low and heavy, the colour of wet clay.

With this perfectly judged palette, and the unfussy elegance of its composition, the image had the vivid clarity of an hallucination, yet proved to be only the first of many visual splendours here. From a mansion wreathed in morning mist, like an apparition from late Tarkovsky, to a bridge comprised of a linked string of floating pontoons, coiling in the water like a serpent, to a long, unbroken take of two men reverently washing the pale, limp body of a dead woman, every shot was surprising, deeply considered, intensely satisfying. And every cut had the force of a small detonation.

Its plot was deceptively simple: Miro, the owner of a paper mill, enlists a friend who also works at the mill - Aist, the film's narrator - to help him cremate his recently-deceased, much younger wife. They are not Russians in the strict sense, but Merjans, "a peculiar people," descended from the Finno-Ugric tribes rather than the Slavs, and particular to the north-west of the country. As such, they must commit the woman's ashes to the waters which, for them, connote immortality. But along the way the audience learns some of the Merjans' rituals, and a little of their temperament, until it is left finally with the suggestion - so subtle as to barely register - that what the audience has been watching is actually a kind of murder-mystery. The implication being that the wife met with foul play, almost certainly at the hands of her husband, and that he is now considering revenge upon the man he thought to be her lover.

The Russian title, "Ovsyanki," refers to a species of birds, though sadly loses much in its English translation ("Buntings"). It's a superior title - less Gogol-like, more commonplace and mysterious, and as such, better suited to the film's narration, which unfolds like an unusually eloquent short story. I watched it unfold in a state of rapt fascination; two days later, unable to get it out of my head, I went back to see it again. Fedorchenko's direction was masterful - no other term applies - and the soundtrack was extraordinary, veering from eerie, nearly subliminal electronic pulses, accompanied sometimes by a soft, wordless moan, to a whirling, Arcade Fire-like flurry of tuned cymbals, keening horns, and fiercely strummed guitar.

Similarly extraordinary was "Post Mortem," Pablo Larrain's follow-up to his remarkable 2008 debut, "Tony Manero." As grim as its title would suggest, the one focused again on the brutality of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, viewed this time through the perspective of another outsider: a middle-aged civil servant with a haircut only slightly less unfortunate than his mostly unrequited desire for the dancer who lives across the road; like Tony Manero, he was played by the creepily imperturbable Alfredo Castro.

This was far less ironic than that film, though. Darker, more anguished. As the bodies piled up, and the protagonist meekly acquiesced to every cruel command, dragging heaped trolleys of the dead through the dark basement corridors of the hospital where he worked, one had the sense of a filmmaker still passionately enraged by the crimes of that era, and determined to make a definitive statement, albeit in the most low-key and tangential of ways.

I like the way Larrain shoots: his keen compositional sense, his intelligent use of negative and off-screen space, his eye for the sordid and pathetic; I like the grungy texture of his desaturated, 16mm images. But most of all I appreciate his ability to refract political tumult through the lens of private experience, his awareness that the most telling historical points may be revealed, not via grand set-pieces (though there was a street-march here - glimpsed through a car windscreen, yet vaguely reminiscent of Angelopoulos), but by charting, in unflinching detail, the deformation of an individual psyche, the squalour of a man's soul having much to say about the culture that shaped him.

Sofia Coppola might well agree, though to be honest, I can't be sure. I don't know her politics and I'm not entirely sure she does, either. I don't have a problem with her, per se - though it's clear that many do. What's interesting, I've noted, is that often this has less to do with the predictable resentments (her illustrious lineage, the many doors that have opened like magic in her path), than with her chosen subject-matter, the fact that all of her films to date have been set in the same gilded world she has inhabited since birth.

I've never understood this, and never will. Why, exactly, is a drama about working-class people a priori more interesting, more worthy of attention or respect, more "real," than one about those with wealth and power? The idle rich undoubtedly exist - indeed, more so today than ever; they are an empirical fact. Therefore their lives, while undoubtedly different to yours or mine, are no less deserving of scrutiny.

Unfortunately, scrutiny is precisely what Coppola does not bring to bear. Emblems of an unexamined life, affectless and jejune, her films have the air of a child taking someone into their bedroom to show off all their cool stuff. The images are exquisite. The music is terrific. And the surfaces are uniformly sleek and covetable. The trouble is, the viewer never so much as scratches them, to see what might lie beneath.

Here one witnesses what appears to be the Existential crisis of an A-list Hollywood actor (Stephen Dorff), a man saddled with a loving, if slightly anxious daughter (played, beautifully, by Elle Fanning), a seemingly loyal best friend, and the tender ministrations of a succession of attractive, quickly naked young women, apparently single-minded in their eagerness to share his bed. This is not, it should be noted, necessarily a recipe for contentment; something may yet be amiss here. But Coppola so obviously sides with her protagonist, in his ennui and self-pity, that she never bothers to ask why he might be such the asshole that a series of anonymous text-messages suggests...a plot-point breezily dismissed by character and director alike.

When this kind of thing is done well, one gets "The Leopard" and "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis" and "The Beautiful and Damned." When it's done badly, one has an episode of "Entourage." Coppola's film was not a disaster by any means. It had weaknesses - almost every joke, for example, went on one beat too long - but it also displayed craft and affection, indeed perhaps too much affection, and not the depth, the rigour of analysis, required to make this seem like anything more than a Vanity Fair cover story. But for this reason, it was tough to shake the feeling that "Somewhere" was simply an upscale version of Daddy-Daughter Day, made by someone determined to keep working out their own issues in public.

In this sense, Coppola is like the hedgehog who only knows one big thing: how it feels to be isolated amid extreme privilege, and to believe yourself wiser and more sensitive than any of the shallow, coked-out wastrels around you - a stance that might mean a little more were the end credits not packed with shout-outs to the Chateau Marmont set. As a result, she's made some interesting, callow films about extreme solipsism, and only come badly unstuck when this stance bumped up against the harsher lessons of history. (What was her Marie Antoinette, anyway, except an Olympic-level consumer, a lonely young girl with a Platinum card?)

Ultimately, the best, most complete review of "Somewhere" may be the tattoo glimpsed on the underside of Dorff's bicep. It read, simply, "Made in the U.S.A."

Personally, I felt a good deal sorrier for Quebecois filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. Who with "Incendies" delivered his most ambitious feature to date, and was reportedly all lined up for a Competition slot at Venice - only to get bumped down to Orrizonti, the festival's George & Ringo section, in favour of Julian Schnabel's similarly-themed "Miral," a work of such staggering ineptitude in every aspect of its manufacture, that you wondered if its maker might have suffered some kind of stroke. (Which would at least explain that headache-inducing wobble-cam.)

A meditation on the way violence can alter the trajectory of individual lives, "Incendies" took the viewer inside the tinderbox of the Middle East, to follow a Canadian brother and sister as they attempt to honour the final wish of their recently-deceased mother - herself a veteran of the conflict, a witness to atrocities - and make contact with a father long thought dead, and the brother they never knew they had.

Photo by Anne Thompson.

The action alternated smoothly between past and present, its stages marked by chapter-headings (like Schnabel's, alas), and slowly, steadily turned up the heat, leading to a final revelation, a twist in this bitter little tale, that was both appalling and at the same time, a kind of coup de theatre. Villeneuve is a phenomenally gifted writer and director, as anyone who saw "August 32nd on Earth" or "Polytechnique" will attest; and this film stands as the summation of his achievements to date. The standing ovation he received at its public premiere was entirely deserved. Not least, for sidestepping both the cliches and the slippery moral equivocation that made other films on the same subject - "Miral," for instance - so laughable.

Similarly harrowing was "Beyond," the feature directorial debut for actress Pernilla August: a painful study of a woman (Noomi Rapace) coming to terms, both in the present day and via flashbacks, with her alcoholic mother and father, and the death of her young brother. The storytelling seemed less restrained, in that Scandinavian way, than clenched tight with grief and anger; I spent most of its 95 minutes either fighting back or succumbing to tears. It set out to shake and, to move - and it did. Perhaps for this reason, I vastly preferred it to Kelly Reichardt's latest, "Meek's Cutoff," which began majestically, with ravishing images of 19th-century American families crossing a barren Oregon landscape - shot in natural light and Academy ratio (!), to better convey the vastness of the sky and earth - but soon ground to a halt amid the dust and dirt, much like their convoy of wagons.

Here, as in "Old Joy," Reichardt - who began as an experimental filmmaker - seems a little too in love with protraction for its own sake, and while this film's longeurs could be said to serve a narrative purpose (if nothing else, we certainly shared the travellers' sense of interminable distance), they also presented a serious impediment to the audience's sympathies, rendering what might have been a gripping tale of survival a rarified, self-selecting slice of Arthouse Cinema. By 40 minutes in, I looked around, blearily, to find that almost everyone in my vicinity was fast asleep.

A pity, since there were some good points being made, mostly about the powerlessness of women in Ye Olden Days, with the wives obliged to walk demurely behind the wagons, frightened by the alien world they move through, yet utterly subordinated to the decisions of their menfolk. (The script was apparently inspired by diaries kept by pioneer wives of the period.) Yet even on its own, lofty terms, it wasn't entirely successful: for the first half-hour or so, the dialogue was almost entirely inaudible; and while Michelle Williams was excellent as ever, hearing Bruce Greenwood's accent, as the eponymous, boastful Meek, I was instantly and unfortunately reminded of the Jive-talking passengers from "Airplane!"

Regrettable. But then, but one's sense of humour grows steadily more juvenile as a festival proceeds. (During Tsui Hark's flashy, tricked-out "Detective Dee and the Mystery of Phantom Flame" - perhaps the best title Scooby-Doo never used - a huge laugh greeted the subtitle, "We have to see Donkey Wang!") Perhaps it's cabin fever, or the self-conscious Gravitas of too many of the entries. I could barely contain my giggles, for example, at Antony Cordier's "Happy Few," a tale of unusual reciprocity among two married couples, which played just like a visit to a swingers' club: the couples could swap, and the girls could get it on...,but if the guys so much as touched, they were out of there.

A textbook example of a film that wanted to have it both ways - if you'll excuse the expression - it titillated with some reasonably explicit sex scenes (including one flour-covered four-way, which frankly just looked uncomfortable), only to subsequently condemn its characters for their reckless immorality, sentencing them to lives of hollow misery forever and ever after, amen. It actually ended with one wife staring wistfully out her kitchen window, lost in memories of the polyamorous fun she'd had, and lost...C'est une grande tragedie, c'est vrai.

A friend remarked to me afterwards, "This is basically everything that's wrong with French cinema. And the French." Thankfully, the same could not be said for the Francois Ozon movie, "Potiche," which seemed to me the best thing he's done since "Sous le Sable": a sharp, funny, flab-free adaptation of a French theatre classic, it featured sparkling performances from both Catherine Denueve and Gerard Depardieu, and a final song, from the former, that was surprisingly moving, like some bittersweet summation of her career to date. Or, for that matter, the small, quietly powerful, Normandy-set drama "Angele et Tony," whose virtues were all quiet, enduring ones, the finest kind.

Meanwhile, in the world outside the screening rooms, Italy continued to assert itself in the most curious of ways. In our press boxes, on the first day, we were surprised to find a 2GB data stick, compliments of RAI, possibly Silvio Berlusconi's most public organ. Two days later, it abruptly stopped working; all data stored there was lost. (One hates to point out the obvious - that it was hopelessly corrupted - but hey, I'll take my symbolism where I can.) In fact, I considered myself lucky to have escaped so lightly. To judge from RAI's TV programming, had it given my laptop a virus, it could only have been herpes.

Venice '10 | A Mixed Launch But a Terrific "Swan"

Brian Brooks — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 06:08:10 GMT

Every film festival, like every orchestra, has a characteristic uniquely its own, a particular tone, running faintly but unmistakably beneath its noise and clamor. Berlin's watchword is efficiency. Cannes runs on glamour. Rotterdam promotes (I think falsely) the sense of moral improvement that is the raison d'etre of the ascetic. For Venice, the constant is inconvenience.

Part of it, admittedly, is its location: one of the world's most beautiful (and improbable) cities, it's also one of the most famously difficult to negotiate, placing the visitor strictly at the mercy of what few options there are. And, being Italy, one can depend on nothing. The boat will come, but it will be late. There are other, more certain options, yes, but they cost far more. Little wonder, then, that in Venice every departure has the air of an evacuation, tourists piling onto vaporetti with a barely-masked hysteria. Or that locals seem to run on Veneto Time, their internal clock ticking a couple of beats slower than any visitors'.

But the broader effect is more pernicious: an air of extortion that sees no reason to disguise itself. For the festival, it begins with the water-taxi from the airport (one hundred Euros, thank you very much), continues through your press pass (sixty Euros), and reaches its apogee with your hotel bill: running into a friend on the first day, she complained that her regular room had risen, this year, to a crippling four hundred and fifty Euros a night. ("And it's absolute shit!").

Yet it also extends downwards, to your morning espresso, or a gelato, or that half-liter bottle of soda, all of which can range anything from five to eight Euros a time. You're here now, these vendors seem to say, and you're trapped. What other options do you have?

(I'm reminded of a line from an American critic of my acquaintance, who traveled once to Cannes for the festival and never went back. When asked why, he said simply, "Because the fucking you get's not worth the fucking you get." Venice, you feel, would have turned his hair white with frustration and impotent rage.)

All this would be bad enough, had the Mostra itself not been in the grip of some vast, slow, Ovid-like transformation. Venues have closed, or become almost inaccessible; streets have been dug up; nearby hotels have shut - most notably, the Des Bains, the "Death In Venice" hotel, where the famously officious staff would do precisely nothing for you unless you tipped them a C-note when you arrived. Formerly one of the two main festival centre's, it's now dark and silent behind locked gates, and soon to be converted into luxury apartments.

The main promenade, already too narrow, is littered with hundreds of bicycles, strewn carelessly about, and various implements of heavy construction, stacks of metal pipes and wooden sleepers and seemingly-abandoned containers, making it almost impossible to walk the streets, or get from one screening room to another.

To be fair, a little of this is unavoidable: the entire festival zone, situated in the bland suburban precincts of the Lido, is currently under renovation, with a large new building, somewhat like Toronto's Lightbox, set to supersede the old Fascist-era Casino and Palazzo del Cinema. But when I peered behind the fence this time, the razed, empty patch of ground, devoid of even the most basic signs of activity, seemed to have advanced not at all from its state last year. At this rate, and given the Italians' seemingly boundless capacity for procrastination, the ribbon-cutting ceremony should coincide with the end of global oil, or of cinema. (Apparently, I later discovered, the project has already run out of cash.)

Still, if it does ever happen, it will at least mark an improvement on the current screening facilities, which with the exception of the Sala Grande, are badly unworthy of one of Europe's top three festivals. Sitting in the Sala Darsena or the Sala Volpi, with your knees pressing up against the chair in front of you, and your shoulders bumping against those on either side of you, feels a little like being transported in the Middle Passage. Worst of all, it places an extra burden upon the film being watched, which now must be very good indeed to make you forget the sheer discomfort of the experience.

This was not the case, alas, with my very first screening: "The Happy Poet", by Paul Gordon. Knowing only too well the tender sensibilities of US indie filmmakers - particularly when criticized on this website, which seems to be considered akin to sucker-punching your kid brother in his own bedroom - I should refrain from much comment, except to note two things. Firstly: that hi-def, even as carelessly lit and composed as here, is horribly unforgiving of people's complexions. And secondly, that of all human attributes, extreme diffidence is by some margin the least interesting - and certainly the shakiest upon which to base an entire narrative. So pale and uninteresting was this film's protagonist, you soon stopped caring if he succeeded in his venture (the vegan fast-food stand that gives the film its title), or not - or even, for that matter, whether he lived or died.

It's not like I'm demanding that characters be as charismatic as Milton's Satan. I just want someone slightly more interesting than the tree they happen to be standing next to. Someone who projects something deeper and more compelling than mere indifference.

To compare this effort to the latest from Darren Aronofsky, "Black Swan", would on the face of it seem unfair. One is a micro-budget indie; the other, a Fox Searchlight production. However this is not about money spent, or resources at hand, but something else: a fundamental competence and assurance with the medium. By which I mean the ability to conceive and compose visual images, to move the camera, to utilize sound, to direct actors - and to piece these elements together in a way that's vividly, undeniably cinematic. You can do this for almost no budget whatsoever - as Aronofsky himself proved with his debut film, "Pi." "Black Swan" is a bigger production, of course. But it's also in every respect a superior one.

Charting a crack-up, the descent into madness of Nina, an ambitious young ballerina (played by Natalie Portman), it played less like "The Red Shoes" - as everyone kept insisting - than another Archers' film, "The Tales of Hoffmann". Crossed, naturally, with "Repulsion" and "Single White Female". The result was overblown, melodramatic, faintly ludicrous - and as such, perfectly congruent with the milieu it was depicting. One friend disliked it, claiming that, while Portman certainly _looked_ the part of a ballerina, her dancing was terrible; she had, he said, no sense of the body's weight or how it was distributed. He might be right: he's certainly a ballet aficionado. But I have about as much interest in la danse as he has in drone-metal, and to be frank, the only technique I was noticing was the director's. Which was virtuosic.

Whether in rehearsals or in the final, climactic concert, the ballet scenes were tense, thrilling - filmed mostly in long, unbroken takes, with the camera rushing behind the dancers, following their feet onto the vertiginous darkness of the stage, like divers preparing to leap into the void, then coming up close, moving with them, wheeling as they pirouette or leap, seeming itself part of the choreography. (Baz Luhrmann, take note: this is how you film a dance sequence.) Another scene, in a nightclub, a succession of strobe-lit vignettes, was similarly remarkable - and as beautifully edited as the rest of the film. And Portman herself was mesmerising: her voice half-an-octave higher than usual, her manner raw and petrified throughout.

Complaints as to the film's improbability seemed to me to miss the point, given that any pretence at strict realism had been swiftly dispensed with - certainly from the first moment we saw her mother (Barbara Hershey), a figure of Grimm-like malevolence. This was as much a fairy tale as "Swan Lake" itself: a story of fragile, spiteful, broken-bodied little girls, who puke up their meals and mortify their flesh until it bleeds. The scenes of Portman carefully lacing her wounded feet into slippers, then scoring their soles with a pair of scissors, had the air of a soldier preparing for combat. Like Aronofsky's previous film, "The Wrestler", "Black Swan" is ultimately about the extraordinary toll, both physical and psychological, a form of entertainment exacts upon its participants.

What's also remarkable, is how well they each work as entertainment. How can two films be so programmatic in their narratives, so utterly unsurprising in their revelations (nothing about the doubling of Nina and her doppelganger, played by a strong Mila Kunis, could be called either subtle or unexpected) - and yet at the same time, be so gripping, and so finally moving as these?

There was a similar level of craft - and another young woman sliding into madness - in Tran Anh Hung's long-awaited adaptation of Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Wood". The production design was immaculate; Jonny Greenwood's score was suitably anxious; and Mark Lee Ping-Bin's cinematography established beyond question his equal mastery of digital and celluloid. (One long, high shot, of clouds casting a deep green valley into shadow, was worthy of Malick; another, of sunlight coming through a kitchen window, caressing a woman's neck and shoulders, of Vermeer or Bonnard.) And one can never underestimate the elegance of Tran's direction: both as a maker of exquisite images, and as a poet of melancholy, he is almost freakishly gifted.

Why, then, did this feel so hollow? The problem resides, I think, in the source material. Of leading contemporary novelists, Murakami is one of the most wildly uneven, and despite its bestseller status, this novel very much falls among his Lesser Works. Without much of a story to tell, the energy and momentum of its first half-hour began to leak away. Scenes became almost comically attenuated, and silences grew deeper (it is, for the most part, an unnervingly quiet movie), until finally you were left with a beautifully mounted, dramatically inert study of some attractive young Japanese men and women rather too enamored of suicide, a 133-minute bummer.

Ironically, one of the only other Murakami adaptations to make it to the screen so far, Jun Ichikawa's 2004 take on the short story "Tony Takitani" - while far less visually ravishing - provided a rather more acute and moving study of most of this novel's concerns: bereavement, mourning, love and sexuality suspended by fate. And did so, furthermore, in a concise 75 minutes.

Briefer, but no better, was "The Clink of Ice", the latest from veteran French provocateur Bertrand Blier. Essentially a stage piece, a two-hander transposed none too subtly to the screen, it was little more than a series of dialogues about life and death and art and - being Blier - sexual rapacity, between a bitter, alcoholic old novelist (Jean Dujardin), and a literal personification of the cancer (Albert Dupontel) that's set to kill him in three months. Perhaps befitting this conceit, the film itself had a hollowed-out, convalescent quality, suggesting that the now 71-year-old filmmaker's best work, from "Buffet Froid" (1979) through to "Un, Deux, Trois, Soleil" (1993), is now behind him. Alas.

[Editor's Note: Due to a technical error the first several paragraphs were regretfully left out of this article when it was originally published. iW apologizes for the error.]