Venice Film Festival

Sam Mendes to Lead Venice Film Festival Jury — Indiewire's Wednesday Rundown

Zack Sharf — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 16:01:23 GMT

Sam Mendes, director of Oscar winner "American Beauty" and recent James Bond films "Skyfall" and "Spectre," will lead the Venice Film Festival Jury this year. The event takes place August 31 - September 10. The last time Mendes attended Venice was back in 2002 for the premiere of his Tom Hanks-starring period drama "Road to Perdition." The rest of the festival jury will be announced in the coming months.

Read below for more of today's breaking news stories:

- Indiewire's own Melissa Silverstein, the founder and publisher of Women and Hollywood, will receive the Marie C. Wilson Emerging Leader award at the 28th annual Ms. Foundation's Gloria Awards: A Salute to Women of Vision this evening at the Pierre Hotel in NYC. The awards are a yearly celebration to benefit Ms. Foundation grantees around the country and to recognize those who ignite policy and create change. The Ms. Foundation for Women was founded in 1973 by Gloria Steinem, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Marlo Thomas, and Patricia Carbine. Silverstein and her Women and Hollywood are currently bound for a new home over at Medium. We couldn't be more proud of Melissa and her growing body of work!

- The Nantucket Film Festival has announced additional honorees, signature programming, and talent for the 2016 line-up. Molly Shannon, Sian Heder, Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady will be honored at the annual festival, joining previously announced award recipient Oliver Stone and Screenwriters Tribute host Seth Meyers. Additional programming picks include "Goat" and "Miss Sharon Jones!"

- "24" took a four-year break before returning with "24: Live Another Day" in 2014, but fans won't have to wait that long for a continuation of Jack Bauer's "Legacy." "24: Legacy" has been picked up by Fox for the 2016-2017 season, starring Corey Hawkins ("Straight Outta Compton"), Miranda Otto ("Homeland") and Jimmy Smits ("The West Wing"). The first season will chronicle a "race against the clock" (of course) as agents rush to stop a devastating terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Fox also picked up "Star," another Lee Daniels vehicle in the same vein as "Empire." "Star" stars three newcomers, Queen Latifah and Benjamin Bratt as music businessmen — and women — trying to navigate a cut-throat industry. Dazzling original music is promised, and the network is undoubtedly hoping for "Empire" Season 1 ratings, not Season 2.

- Canadian filmmaker Bruce LaBruce is gearing up for his next film with a newly launched Kickstarter campaign. "The Misandrists" will follow "a secret cell of feminist terrorists that is planning to liberate women, overthrow the patriarchy, and usher in a new female world order." You can learn more about the project and donate on its Kickstarter page.

- The Women In Film Los Angeles 2016 Finishing Fund has announced that applications are now open for its 2016 round of grants. The application period runs through June 30, 2016. Recipients will be announced in November. Interested filmmakers can go to the WIF website to apply. Now in its 31st year, Women In Film will give up to $25,000 cash, in-kind and consultation grants for films by and/or about women as represented in documentary, narrative, animated and/or experimental films, shorts or feature length.

Watch the trailer for Sam Mendes' "Spectre" below...

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Watch: Ralph Fiennes and Tilda Swinton Get Swept Up In 'A Bigger Splash' Clip

Mike Lown — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 22:36:15 GMT

READ MORE: Watch: Tilda Swinton and Ralph Fiennes Get Obscene in 'A Bigger Splash' Trailer

American audiences will have to wait a few more months until "A Bigger Splash" crashes into theaters. However, audiences from the other side of the world have had more luck after it premiered at the Venice Film Festival last year, with a British release planned for next week, February 12. Studio Canal UK has just put out a new clip for the latest from the acclaimed Italian director Luca Guadagnino. Check it out above.

The erotic thriller film stars Tilda Swinton as rock 'n roll legend vacationing with her filmmaker boyfriend (Matthias Schoenaerts) on the volcanic island of Pantelleria. However, their peace and quiet is disrupted by the sudden arrival of her former record producer/old flame (Ralph Fiennes) and his beautiful daughter (Dakota Johnson). The reunion soon brings back dormant memories along with arousing new desires. As you can tell from the clip above, the film has every bit of the raw sensuality that made Guadagnino's last film ("I Am Love," also starring Swinton) such a hit in the arthouse circuit.

"A Bigger Splash" will be released May 13 by Fox Searchlight.

READ MORE: Venice Review: Luca Guadagnino's 'A Bigger Splash' With Tilda Swinton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Ralph Fiennes & Dakota Johnson

Watch: 'Marguerite' Hits a High Note in Feel-Good Trailer for Festival Sensation

Kristen Santer — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 18:48:18 GMT

READ MORE: Cohen Media Group Acquires Venice Premiere 'Marguerite'

Xavier Giannoli's "Marguerite" premiered to rave reviews at both the Telluride and Venice Film Festival last year. The movie is loosely inspired by the life of Florence Foster Jenkins, an American socialite who was ridiculed for her poor singing ability. Catherine Frot stars in the titular role, and she's accompanied by André Marcon, Michel Fau, Christa Théret and Denis Mpunga.

The film is set during the 1920s in Paris, as a wealthy women spends most of her time singing opera and performing in elaborate costumes. Marguerite is an enthusiastic performer, but she is also terribly and comically out of tune. She eventually is deluded into thinking that she's a talented diva.

"Marguerite" will be released in New York this April. No other release date information has been set. Watch the debut trailer above.

What Happened to Scorsese's $70-Million Short 'The Audition' Starring DiCaprio, De Niro and Pitt?

Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 19:05:00 GMT

What happened to Martin Scorsese's "The Audition," the 15-minute short film slated to premiere on the Lido this year? The screening was canceled at the Venice Film Festival on September 7th due to "technical problems." Now the short has finally debuted in Macau, where it was unveiled by its stars, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and Martin Scorsese. (More details of the showing are at VanityFair.com.)

Doubling as a promotion for a set of new casinos in Asia, "The Audition" stars Scorsese as a director opposite his muses DiCaprio and De Niro as actors vying for a lead role. Brad Pitt also co-stars in the film penned by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Terence Winter, Scorsese's collaborator on upcoming HBO 70s drama series "Vinyl."

READ MORE: Scorsese Loads Up HIs Burgeoning Slate, Renews Paramount Deal

With a reported budget of $70 million, its Venice inclusion may have been problematic because the short was financed by casino-resorts Macau Studio City and Manila City of Dreams, though Venice director Alberto Barbera also told THR, “It’s a Scorsese film, not a commercial. The casino paid for the film, but it’s not in the film at all.”

Thus indeed Macau hosted the film for the opening of Melco Crown Entertainment Ltd.’s Hollywood-themed Studio City resort. At a press conference, the trio talked about working together. DiCaprio first co-starred with De Niro in his debut film, "This Boy's Life" at age 15, and De Niro then turned Scorsese on to DiCaprio. Word is Scorsese steals the show. And producer Brett Ratner teased that he would like to see the short adapted into a feature.

First Look: Exclusive Poster for Denmark's Oscar Entry, 'A War'

Ruben Guevara — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 19:58:28 GMT

In "A War," writer/director Tobias Lindholm—perhaps best known to American audiences as the wordsmith behind popular TV series "Borgen" and Thomas Vinterberg's "The Hunt"—follows up 2012's "A Hijacking" by delving into the Danish military's involvement in Afghanistan. When company commander Claus M. Pederson (Pilou Asbæk) is forced to make a terrible battlefield decision, the consequences play out not only for him, but also for his wife (Tuva Novotny) and three children back in Denmark.

The film premiered at this year's Venice Film Festival, where The Playlist's Jessica Kiang called it a "bruising two hours of you-are-there cinema," and the heartfelt, fly-on-the-wall realism of this exclusive poster bears out that assessment. Distributor Magnolia Pictures will release "A War," Denmark's official Oscar submission, in the U.S. on Feb. 12, 2016.

Watch: A Curious Spirit Cannot Be Tamed in Exclusive 'Theeb' Clip

Sonya Saepoff — Thu, 08 Oct 2015 14:59:00 GMT

READ MORE: 35 Films That Could Become Foreign Language Oscar Submissions

In this exclusive clip from the Jordanian film "Theeb," which won the Best Director award at its Venice Film Festival 2014 premiere, the titular young boy will not give up his search to discover what is in the Englishman's box. The movie marks director Naji Abu Nowar's debut film.

The U.S. release of "Theeb" will take place on November 6, and the film was just selected as the official Jordanian entry for the 88th Academy Awards.

The official synopsis reads: "1916. While war rages in the Ottoman Empire, Hussein raises his younger brother Theeb ('Wolf') in a traditional Bedouin community that is isolated by the vast, unforgiving desert. The brothers' quiet existence is suddenly interrupted when a British Army officer and his guide ask Hussein to escort them on a treacherous journey. The young, mischievous Theeb secretly chases after the travelers, but they soon find themselves trapped amidst threatening terrain riddled with mercenaries, revolutionaries, and outcast raiders, forcing Theeb to live up to the name given to him by his father."

Watch the exclusive (and very rebellious) clip above.

READ MORE: 'The Tribe' Among 9 International Must-Sees Headed for New Directors/New Films Series

In Engrossing 'De Palma,' One Of America's Great Stylists Reflects On His Career

Demetrios Matheou — Thu, 01 Oct 2015 21:17:00 GMT

“Logic” is a word that Brian De Palma uses a lot. It turns out that many of his most notorious scenes weren’t conceived for effect, but as a result of problem solving. The almost comically overblown shootout that closes “Scarface” came about because Al Pacino had injured his hand, so De Palma had to keep filming his assembled gunmen for two weeks while awaiting his star’s return. The great length of drill that kills Deborah Shelton in “Body Double” – its preposterous size adding to the furor from women’s groups – was simply because it needed to be long enough to pass through its victim, her floor and the hero’s ceiling.

These observations are made by the director himself in this utterly engrossing documentary by Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow. And they’re pertinent to so much about him – the controversy that has peppered his career and his ongoing battle with the ratings board, his unapologetic attitude, and the type of filmmaker he is – focussed, pragmatic, and one who puts cinematic effect before character.

“You people start with character and build outwards,” he tells his interviewers. “I start with construction and fill it in.”

“De Palma” was one of the densest and most exhausting two hours spent in Venice, in the best way possible. Whether one likes the American’s films or not, time spent with him is akin to attending a filmmaking masterclass whose every minute demands notation.

And the film is, literally, focused on him: it doesn’t involve the views of colleagues or friends, narration of any kind, or the presence of Baumbach and Paltrow, other than when De Palma acknowledges their shared profession himself. The camera is fixed on the septuagenarian as he sits and reflects on his career, film by film, touching on his filmmaking process, the parallels between his life and movies, people he’s worked with, successes, failures, controversies.

It opens with a clip from “Vertigo,” just as any discussion of De Palma starts with Hitchcock – something that he acknowledges, claiming here that he is the only practitioner to have actively attempted to follow in Hitch’s footsteps.

“Hitchcock is making movies about what a director does – creating a romantic illusion, then killing it,” he says. Among other things, like his hero De Palma takes a perverse delight in putting women in peril; and like Hitchcock, for whom “the run up to what happens is more interesting” than what finally happens, in De Palma’s films “the run up goes on forever.”

But he also mentions Orson Welles, not in terms of theme or style, but as a fellow maverick. “I had the Orson Welles problem,” he says of his career in the early Seventies. “I had big ideas. I needed a lot of that stuff. I needed to go back into the system.” He duly managed to do that with “Carrie,” one of his great films. But in fact De Palma has had far more studio opportunities than Welles. Of the generation of Seventies movie brats that included Scorsese, Spielberg and Lucas, his work has never been in fashion, but always interesting, and more diverse than people might think: “Greetings” and "Hi Mom!" (he, not Scorsese, was the man who launched De Niro), “Sisters,” “Carrie,” “Dressed to Kill,” “Blow Out,” “Scarface,” “The Untouchables,” “Casualties of War,” “Carlito’s Way,” “Mission Impossible.” It’s not a bad CV.

He’s a rum interviewee, frank, funny, not afraid to seem arrogant, as when he recounts the pleasure he’s had watching the “Carrie” sequel and remake, “seeing other people make all the mistakes you avoided.” He can get away with such moments, because he’s equally forthright about the failures, whether ones that stank because of his own misjudgement (“Bonfire of the Vanities”) or the more painful sort, like “Carlito’s Way," of which he’s very proud. And the way he speaks about writers, production designers and in particular composers suggests a true collaborator.

There’s a film buff’s delight to be had in hearing his stories about Pacino’s novel way of escaping a demanding night shoot on “Carlito’s Way,” or Cliff Robertson’s shameless attempts to sabotage his more talented co-star Genevieve Bujold on “Obsession,” or Sean Penn’s more productive shenanigans to coax a performance out of Michael J Fox on “Casualties” (“Good old Sean, he’s exciting to work with”). But the greatest value is in listening to what makes the man tick as a director, whether personal history (Keith Gordon’s pursuit of his mother’s killer in “Dressed to Kill” was inspired by the young De Palma’s shadowing of his adulterous father) or the shooting strategies and technical approaches to his films, always with the aim of making his scenarios play out in new and exciting ways, and which make his style so singular.

De Palma appears to be wearing the same clothes throughout the documentary, suggesting that he’s talking through decades of filmmaking in one, extended sitting. Whether he is or not, the effect adds to the intensity of the experience. He would appreciate that.

Brian De Palma has received the Venice Film Festival's Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker 2015 Award, dedicated to personalities who have made particularly original contributions to contemporary cinema.

New Site Tracks Women Directors at Festivals, Publishes Stats for Venice and TIFF

Laura Berger — Fri, 25 Sep 2015 16:00:00 GMT

When festivals announce their lineups, Women and Hollywood crunches the numbers to determine the percentage of female directors behind the films being screened. While the numbers vary according to each festival, women are generally horribly underrepresented. So it comes as no surprise that new research published on the data-visualization site Silk.co led The Guardian to conclude that women filmmakers "are being sidelined in selection for major film festivals, even in programmes expressly designed to nurture emerging talent."

The Women at International Film Festivals of 2015-2016 project launched to track women's presence at major film festivals. The site observes that although women are often the focus of attention at film festivals, it's actually their fashion and accessories that get written about. In contrast, there's little recognition given to how few women behind the cameras are represented at the festival, as the overwhelming majority of the films are male-directed.

So far Silk.co has produced graphs and data for two festivals, Venice International Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival. In 2015, Venice featured 13 percent of women directors and 31 percent of women writers out of 55 films in competition, while Toronto included 26 percent of women directors and 27 percent of women writers of the 405 films in competition. (Note: Some of the information on women writers is missing, or incomplete, so the percentages are not wholly accurate. We're assuming that the numbers they've produced for Toronto include shorts: Women accounted for just 20 percent of the features screened at TIFF this year but 45 percent of shorts.)

Of the 400-plus films screened at TIFF, 69 were directed by a woman and included a female writer, whereas 229 films were comprised of all-male directors and writers.

Silk.co will be updated with more information and graphs as festival lineups and award nominees are announced, such as those for Sundance, SXSW and the Academy Awards.

[via Women at International Film Festivals at Silk.co and The Guardian]

Music Box Films Acquires Alexander Sokurov's Acclaimed 'Francofonia'

Sonya Saepoff — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 21:21:16 GMT

READ MORE: Watch: Nazi-Occupied Paris Comes Back to Life in 'Francofonia' Trailer

Music Box Films has announced the acquisition of Alexander Sokurov's "Francofonia," an account of how the Louvre's artwork was saved from harm during WWII. The film ultimately becomes a grand cinematic essay on the precariousness of art, culture and civilization. The Russian filmmaker's latest work premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it was voted the Best European Film by a jury of film critics. It had its North American premiere in Toronto.

The official film synopsis reads: "Beginning as a portrait of Paris' world-renowned Louvre Museum, the film slowly expands into a monumental canvas upon which Sokurov traces France's role as a dedicated supporter of the arts. Sustained through the centuries, France's reverance for culture has remained unequalled by any other European nation. With tremendous intelligence and a singular attention to form, Sokurov surpasses all previous attempts to craft a cohesive cinematic vision of a country's art and history, charting France's evolution from the Middle Ages onward as it rose through times of war and peace to its peak as the dominant cultural hub in the heart of Europe."

"In 'Francofonia,' Sokurov does for the Louvre what he did for the Hermitage in 'Russian Ark': he makes a museum a vivid, living dramatic personae," said Edward Arentz, Music Box Films Managing Director. "And it's our great privilege to bring it to U.S. audiences."

The deal for U.S. distribution was finalized at TIFF between Berlin-based Films Boutique and Music Box Films, who is planning a Spring 2016 theatrical release. The film opens in France this November.

READ MORE: Music Box Films Acquires Heavy Metal Documentary 'We Are Twisted F*cking Sister'

Denmark Picks Tobias Lindholm's Searing Drama 'A War' as Oscar Entry

Carlos Aguilar — Wed, 23 Sep 2015 14:39:45 GMT

The Danish Film Institute announced this morning that Tobias Lindholm's "A War" (Krigen) will be the country's official entry in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 88the Academy Awards. The film was selected from a 3-film shortlist that also included Anders Thomas Jensen's "Men and Chicken" and Joshua Oppenheimer's "The Look of Silence."

This is Lindholm's followup to his highly acclaimed debut "A Hijacking," and follows a group of Danish soldiers in Afghanistan and the morally complex decisions they face while in a war zone. Pilou Asbæk's lead performance and Lindholm's incredible talent to create compelling and challenging human narratives around divisive issues have garnered critical acclaim. The film premiered at the most recent Venice Film Festival.

The official synopsis for the film describes it as follows: "Company commander Claus M. Pedersen (Pilou Asbæk) and his men are stationed in an Afghan province. Meanwhile back in Denmark Claus' wife Maria (Tuva Novotny) is trying to hold everyday life together with a husband at war and three children missing their father. During a routine mission, the soldiers are caught in heavy crossfire and in order to save his men, Claus makes a decision that has grave consequences for him - and his family back home."

International sales are being handled by Studiocanal. Magnolia Pictures has U.S. rights.

Denmark was last nominated in the category back in 2014 with Thomas Vinterberg's "The Hunt," a film that Lindholm co-wrote. The last time the Scandinavian nation won the award was back in 2011 with Susanne Bier's "In a Better World."

Poland Taps Thriller '11 Minutes' as Oscar Entry in Foreign-Language Race

Carlos Aguilar — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 18:04:05 GMT

The Polish Film Institute announced today that an expert committee led by Oscar-winner Pawel Pawlikowski unanimously selected the thriller "11 Minutes" as the country's Oscar submission in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 88th Academy Awards. The film prevailed over more traditional period pieces that were released in the European nation this year.

READ MORE: Ophir Award-Winner 'Baba Joon' Becomes Israel's Firs-Ever Farsi Language Oscar Entry

"11 Minutes" is the latest film by veteran Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski and recently screened at the Venice Film Festival were it won a Special Mention award. This is Skolimowski's first directorial effort since 2010's "Essential Killing," and the one he considers his most personal film to date as it's inspired by personal tragedy.
The filmmaker has also played small roles in American films such as "The Avengers" and "Eastern Promises."

The festival's synopsis of the film describes it as a story about "a jealous husband out of control, his sexy actress wife, a sleazy Hollywood director, a reckless drug messenger, a disoriented young woman, an ex-con hot dog vendor, a troubled student on a mysterious mission, a high-rise window cleaner on an illicit break, an elderly sketch artist, a hectic paramedics team and a group of hungry nuns. A cross-section of contemporary urbanites whose lives and loves intertwine. They live in an unsure world where anything could happen at any time. An unexpected chain of events can seal many fates in a mere 11 minutes."

READ MORE: France Surprisingly Picks Turkish-Language 'Mustang' as Oscar Submission

International rights are being handled by HanWay Films. U.S. rights are still available.

Poland is the returning champion in the category having won the award for the first time this year with "Ida."

Italy Shortlists Nine Films as Potential Oscar Submissions

Carlos Aguilar — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 20:19:13 GMT

Earlier today Italy's National Association of Cinematographic and Audiovisual Industries (ANICA) announced a shortlist of nine films that are being considered to become the country's official Oscar entry in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 88th Academy Awards. A selection committee made of industry professional including directors, journalist, and even composers, will meet on Monday September 28th to make their final decision.

Here are the 9 shortlisted films:

"Anna" (Per amor vostro)

Dir. Giuseppe M. Gaudino
PC: Minerva Pictures Group
U.S. Distributor: None Yet

"Blood of My Blood" (Sangue del mio sangue)

Dir. Marco Bellocchio
PC: Kavac Film
U.S. Distributor: None Yet

"Don't Be Bad" (Non essere cattivo)

Dir. Claudio Caligari
ISA: Kimerafilm
U.S. Distributor: None Yet

"Latin Lover"

Dir. Cristina Comencini
ISA: Rai Com
U.S. Distributor: None Yet

"Leopardi" (Il giovane favoloso)

Dir. Mario Martone
ISA: Rai Com
U.S. Distributor: None Yet

"My Mother" (Mia Madre)

Dir. Nanni Moretti
ISA: Films Distribution
U.S. Distributor: Alchemy

"Sworn Virgin" (Vergine giurata)

Dir. Laura Bispuri
ISA: The Match Factory
U.S. Distributor: Strand Releasing

"The Wait" (L'attesa)

Dir. Piero Messina
ISA: Pathe International
U.S. Distributor: None Yet

"You Can't Save Yourself Alone" (Nessuno si salva da solo)

Dir. Sergio Castellitto
ISA: Beta Cinema
U.S. Distributor: None Yet

The shortlisted films include the apparent frontrunner, "My Mother," which premiered at Cannes, and well as several titles that just premiered at the Venice Film Festival: "Blood of My Blood" by revered auteur Marco Bellocchio; "Anna," which won the Best Actress award; "The Wait," starring Juliette Binoche, and "Don'd Be Bad." The list also features older festival favorites like "Sworn Virgin," set in Albani, and biopic "Leopardi." While Moretti seems like a safe bet, this is such a strong group of titles, there is still room for an unexpected surprise.

Italy has the distinction of being the country with the most awards in the category, the country's most recent win came in 2014 with Paolo Sorrentino's "The Great Beauty."

Interview: Brian De Palma, Noah Baumbach & Jake Paltrow Endearingly Discuss Doc 'De Palma'

Jessica Kiang — Thu, 17 Sep 2015 16:01:00 GMT

"Would you mind awfully if Brian De Palma was also present at your interview?" is maybe the definition of a rhetorical question. In Venice to promote the terrifically entertaining documentary "De Palma," directed by Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow (review here), the co-directors, who were due to do interviews as a pair, and the film's titular star, had decided to do all their press engagements as a threesome. In reply, employing my world-class poker face, and, sounding only very slightly put out, I told the organizer that no, I would not mind awfully. In fact, of course, I was delighted to be meeting De Palma, and had I not been, for some crazy reason, prior to watching the film, "De Palma" would have seen to that. It's a doc so genial and witty and candid that could turn even a lukewarm non-fan into a weak-kneed acolyte.

One of its chief charms is a sense of intimacy achieved because De Palma is the only character in the film, aside from in the many well-chosen clips, and when he speaks, it's like he's speaking directly to the viewer. So it was slightly disorienting to sit down in front of him for real, with Paltrow and Baumbach flanking — a little like this interview was simply a continuation of a conversation we'd already been having. I apologized in advance for any overfamiliarity that might ensue as a result.

There's a great sense of intimacy in "De Palma" that results from the directorial decision that no one else, not even you two, appears in the film, even in voiceover. How did you hit on this approach?
Noah Baumbach: I think it was an early idea.
Jake Paltrow: You know, we never even miked ourselves. We felt, this is not about us.
NB: It's true. We never miked ourselves. So we've must've known way back then — and we did the interviews over five years ago. I think it felt intuitive.

And yet it being you guys behind the camera does have a very clear effect.
NB: Yes, I mean, it wasn't about us, but obviously the relationship would be present. Like you said, you felt like he was talking to you. The intimacy, the relationship, the friendship, the candidness is a kind of story in the movie — without being the story. And it seemed like the best way to tell that was directly rather than, you know, cutting to us nodding. And doing that whole "let's take that nod from the bit about 'Blow Out' and use it in 'Mission: Impossible.'" That just wasn't relevant.

Lillian Ross did a great book of interviews with actors where she took her voice out, so it's just them and that was something we talked about at that time too. I think, as you pointed out, it creates a particular effect. It's like listening in. I mean, this is sort of what Direct Cinema was, you know, like the Maysles and Pennebaker. They're supposed to not be there and be there at the same time. In "Grey Gardens" you very much feel that they're talking — she's flirting with him — and yet they're not really there.

Yeah, I sensed a lot of flirtation going on in this film too.
NB: Oh yes, Brian... Brian is a terrific flirt.

Ha! So the interviews took place five years ago. Brian, has anything changed since then? When you watch the film, is there anything that you think of differently just because of the passage of time?
Brian De Palma: No, not really. And I think unless I told you it was five years ago, you wouldn't really know… it sure feels like it was yesterday. It was [Jake and Noah] who told me we did this interview five years ago and I said, "Really?"
NB: Because we feel like we do it every Thursday.

So you do you all meet regularly?
BDP: Yeah, Thursday nights.
NB: We try to be pretty strict with it.
JP: But now it's like kids, families and things.
BDP: [sounding genuinely irked] That always happens! The family thing.
NB: But Brian, you were away! You were all, "I'm still in the Hamptons, boys. I'm not coming back!"

Ah, so you're the one who's been flaking?
BDP: Lately, maybe. But you were in Los Angeles….
NB: Yeah, I've been gone a bit too.
JP: I stick around!
NB: You guys have met without me! I always hate that.
BDP: But we do manage to make it the three of us usually. I don't think we've ever gotten down to just two?
NB: We've done two. But two doesn't count as a group. It's just like you and me chatting.
JP: Like it was the two of us ended up meeting the last time.
BDP: Huh, that's right.

But it's great that you work on keeping it up, after such a long time. It was like ten years ago or so that you all first met, according to my press notes?
JP: Longer than that. Noah's is definitely longer, like twenty or something.
NB:  It was '97 — no, earlier. '96.
BDP: Was it at Paul Schrader's?
NB:  Yeah, his birthday party. I got loaded and hit on Brian, talking about his movies. I remember Brian at one point saying to me [incredulously]"'Get To Know Your Rabbit'?!" — I mean, I was really overdoing it, trying to get my bonafides out there.

Right, as in "I have honestly seen absolutely every thing you've ever made!"
NB: Yes, and Brian was basically not gonna have "Get to Know Your Rabbit." He wasn't buying it.

So you approached him as a fan first and became friends thereafter?
NB: Yeah, and then Jake met him separately.
JP: I met him through another friend of ours. I'd just finished my first movie and was editing it. And it had gotten into Sundance and I was thinking of making these changes — I didn't know what to do. I remember, I talked to him a bit about it that night and then my friend emailed me the next day saying, "Brian would love to share some more ideas about this, would you be up for that?" And I remember thinking: "Wow."
BDP: And I remember my advice: "Don't do it, Jake! Don't use your own money! Stop!"
NB: Now that you say that, I think that Brian called me too. I woke up the next day after the party thinking like, well that was fun to have met Brian De Palma. But then Brian called me that day and he was like, "Let's get together." He was so open.

You must get approached by people all the time, Brian, so why do you think you became friends with these particular gentlemen?
BDP: There was just an immediate rapport. And directors are desperate for friendship from other directors they respect. And since I came up in the '70s with a lot really talented directors, I got used to the fraternity of directors. And I think I sort of missed it. When I came to New York, I was looking for another group to join.

So this film would probably not have been made had this particular group not coalesced?
NB: Yeah, I think it's safe to say, this film wasn't going to be either us or another film crew. It was either this, with the two of us, or never.
JP: It grew out of the way we talk and interact. The more you talk to Brian, the more valuable this stuff is and at a certain point, we just thought, "It must be recorded!" Even just for us — selfishly at first. And then when we started doing it, we realized that 50% of this really is the delivery. The way it's being told. That itself is so alive, that it's its own movie, kind of besides the content of what he's giving us.

Very true, and it's also edited so in such a rapid fire manner that it really does give the impression that there's loads more stuff there, like you could make six more of these...
JP: I think we'll hopefully see some more stuff, like on the DVD or something. All twenty-nine hours of it.
NB: Jake thinks it's 30 hours. I have that it's more in my head.
JP: Maybe it's more, maybe it's 40.
NB: In digital, you can just keep talking.

How well did Brian take direction?
NB: We never directed him except in ADR.
JP: I only ever remember directing him with, because we're not that technically oriented: "No maybe don't lean too far forward because the focus is so shallow."

"Stay on your mark!" basically.
JP: Heh. I mean it was a good, professional camera but we couldn't really follow focus. That was about it, right?
NB: Yeah, and Brian would hit his mic sometimes in gesturing. That was about the only direction we gave. Or like, "You've got a hair here…"

And Brian, did you feel at any point the desire to leap in and do a whole "you're doing it wrong" thing?
BDP: No, never. The good thing about directors working with directors is they understand how to be directed. It's the advantage when a director acts in somebody else's movie: he understands the process very well. He knows that they're basically trying to make you as good as you can be and the suggestions, you should listen to. But there really wasn't a lot of direction here. It was just, "Don't hit your microphone. Don't lean out of focus. And wear the same shirt."

Aha, that's the magic of movies then, because it does give you the impression that it is all taken from one continuous interview
NB: It was a short period of time, but it was not just one interview.
JP: Several sessions, yes.
NB: And just to elaborate on the last point, because I've worked with a few directors in fiction movies too...

Bogdanovich, for example, right?
NB: Yeah, and Ben Stiller's a director. And Jake, actually — Jake had a small role in "Greenberg." I actually find directors are ... because they're so controlling on their own things, they are actually happy to give it up if they trust the person they're working with. It's actually a relief. I can totally understand that.

But it is an ego-driven profession — did that cause any problems with co-directing here? Did you two split the directing duties up?
NB: We were in it together.
JP: Really, it was so nice. People always feel envious of the Coens, like they get to have two minds on everything. Now I don't have any idea what their process is like, but that thing when you just feel like there's someone else to pick up on things... It was a great experience.
NB: I mean, our relationship as co-directors came out of friendship too. Jake and I met separately from Brian, and then when we all started hanging out, it had the pleasures of like, "We're having dinner anyway, so let's work on the movie."

In the film, several times you mention your theory that it's only when directors are in their thirties, forties and fifties that they make their most interesting films...[Here De Palma's partner, who is sitting in on the interview and has obviously had words with him before about this act of gentle self-sabotage sighs "How many times did you have to say that?" and De Palma lets out a gust of laughter in response]
BDP: I'm sorry! What can I say? I'm a student of directors, and I noticed that.

Yeah, and the Hitchcock example you give in the film is perfect.
BDP: Exactly. "Torn Curtain" is not really the greatest picture. And let's not forget "The Birds" with that model stumbling about.

So what does that mean for your future directing career?
BDP: I'm finished. I'm done.
[Widespread protest. Expressions of disbelief.]
BDP: Anything else is just for kicks.

You can't be.
JP: You have like three things on!
NB: Oh dear. It was this interview that did it. The final ending.
JP: Oh come on, when are we gonna see your "Trouble with Harry," Brian?
BDP: [relenting a bit] Oh, I don't know. I always have ideas, and being on the independent film making stage, we try get them together. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. But yes, I'd like to keep working, because the brain keeps clicking. I guess I'll keep doing it until in the immortal word of William Wyler, "You can't walk anymore."

Pshaw, you can still be wheeled on.
NB: Thing is, you get to prove yourself wrong now. So with your next movie, all the critics will say, "Brian proves himself wrong, makes his best picture."
JP:  All shot in your apartment from your La-Z-Boy
BDP: Maybe. If it was shot in the apartment.
JP: That would bring its own aesthetic.

Honestly, I feel like if you'd had a Kickstarter up at the end of the screening last night the audience would've have put their hands in their pockets and you'd probably have got instantly financed.
NB: So maybe now's the time to strike!
BDP: I'm open to offers….

You must have some passion projects somewhere in a drawer.
BDP: Oh, there's always passion projects...
[At this point I'm given the one-last-question signal, but De Palma kindly insists the PR gives us a little more time]

So obviously, you're quite famous for having a few run ins with censors...
BDP: Ugh, the ratings board.

I wonder if you feel that there's any role for censorship whatsoever or should it all be abolished?
BDP: The interesting thing is now, with cable, they don't have those problems. That puts the movies in a kind of strange situation, because they have to meet a rating code and the guys on television can put all that stuff in and then we can't put it in movies. That's kind of odd. Certainly in terms of eroticism, you can't compete with stuff on cable or the internet, that's why I think it's left movies for the most part. Because they can be a little more explicit, a little more dangerous on TV, that you can never get away with in making movies. When you're making a studio movie, there's all this pressure to be, what is it...? You try to make your action [movies]...
JP: PG-13
NB: Because then everybody can see it.
BDP: PG-13, yeah. But normally, my pictures were all X. They were always X. My first successful picture, "Greetings" was an X. "Hi Mom" was X. I battled with the ratings board for years and with "Scarface" we even overturned it, right? But today it's kind of strange, because of cable. Certain things have gone out of cinema, that I used to deal with all the time.

And speaking of cable, I understand you yourself had a slightly miserable experience with HBO? [on the mooted Al Pacino/Joe Paterno project, which was cancelled].
BDP: Yes, I did.

So you probably wouldn't think of going to cable yourself?
BDP: Eh, it's just the old studio system. Now you have a lot of intrusive executives who sit there and give you tons of notes. It's basically a producer/writer medium and the directors just come in by contract. I mean, with the big successful shows, I assume with something like "Breaking Bad" they had to wrestle in the beginning, but because of the success of the show then they basically leave you alone. I guess, I don't know, I would assume — because they're pretty wild in what they do, and they're very original. But you have to get through that first process which is dealing with the tons of notes and I found it very intrusive. And everybody says you can't get final cut on television which is what you fight for as a director. Once you get that, you never want to give it up.

Yes, it's hard to imagine how your films would look if you didn't have final cut, it seems crucial to your style. Speaking of, it's a style that's very different from that which we associate with Noah or Jake. What is it about De Palma's films that particularly attracted you despite a seemingly different sensibility?
NB: I think just the personality. That they're so of him. I mean, they are some of my favorite movies anyway, and there are personal filmmakers I don't like too. But I think in terms of my "in" to them, before I met Brian, it was the personality of them. That they were just singular. And I think every movie I've made, to some degree, brings me back to my childhood — even just the desire to invent something out of nothing. And Brian's movies were part of that. They were also things I heard about before I could see them.

Because of those ratings.
NB: Because of all those Xs. My parents loved them and were also disturbed by them. My father was the big champion, my mother was initially upset by them, then she became the huge champion. And so I had an idea of them before I even saw them and I think I even had to see them a few times to almost figure my own reactions, because they had loomed so large in my life. It brings me back to that, to thinking about movies for the first time.

Yes, I think that that's quite easy to do with a lot of De Palma movies. Watching the movie, you think about movies, you think about the process of movie-making.
NB: You do. And then also you get totally involved in it.

In the story of course, yes. Do you have a favorite De Palma film?
BDP: That is a terrible question.

It is? Oh God, I apologize.
BDP: Why do people keep asking that?

It's a nice sound bite? It's an easy line? It moves us from the general to the specific?
BDP: It's the worst question in the world! Because there really is not an answer. We have to make one up to please you.

I'd be okay with that.
NB: Heh, you know, having worked on this and also knowing Brian, it has almost become like with our own movies, where you can't pick a favorite. I almost feel like I can't pick one of Brian's now.
JP: Though I do go through jags with some of them. Like "Carlito's Way," a few months ago, was on my mind so much, I kept thinking about it, going back to it. And — related to it what Noah was saying, all of which I totally agree with — but my household was probably a little bit different. I wasn't allowed to see R-rated movies.

But I had a friend who was very into his movies and I was able to talk my parents into starting to let me see these films because I was very into special effects — that's where I was hoping my life was going to be, in making movies. So I kind of tricked them into letting me see some of Brian's films for like the blood and guts. And so they're just so elemental in my mind.

I don't think you're alone in having a De Palma movie be your one of your first experiences of all that. Brian, I think you're probably responsible for introducing a lot of people to blood and guts and sex and all those good things — for which an entire generation or two of filmgoers thank you.
[Baumbach and Paltrow laugh in agreement, De Palma allows himself one tiny, fleeting moment of self-congratulation as he accepts the compliment and I feel redeemed after my "favorite film" faux pas.]

"De Palma" will be released in the U.S. by A24.

Interview: Julie Delpy On Sociopaths, Feminists, 'Lolo' And Whether She Could Handle A Big Studio Film

Jessica Kiang — Wed, 16 Sep 2015 16:58:28 GMT

Julie Delpy is a wonderful contradiction. Never fitting easily into the "pretty blonde European starlet" mold, though she has all those qualities in spades, almost from the first she revelled in more thoughtful, spikier roles. From Dominique in "Three Colors: White" to her most famous international role as Celine in Richard Linklater's 'Before' trilogy, she has often played the beautiful object of a man's desire, or even obsession, yet she's rarely passive. Delpy's characters tend to have actual personality, they have kinks, they have wit, they have a command of language (French and/or English). They have interior life, something that characters with her external attributes are often denied. Perhaps it was only natural that she would move behind the camera at some point, but now, as female director with six features under her belt, she is in another way, statistically speaking, close to a contradiction in terms.

READ MORE: Venice Review: Julie Delpy's Funny, Flawed 'Lolo'

Her latest film, "'Lolo" (review here) which played in the Venice Days sidebar at the Venice Film Festival, and in which she also stars, shows some of those slightly paradoxical instincts: it's a comedy with a dark-spirited center in which the tone varies from breezy to bawdy to base. It's frequently very funny, but a little all over the place — a little like how our chatty interview on the Lido went, then, as Delpy talked about raising a sociopath in "Lolo," feminism, motherhood, and whether or not she'd take a crack at directing a Marvel movie.

There was a lot of laughter at my screening of "Lolo." How has the reception seemed to you?
Good, yes — I mean, the film will offend some people and some of the jokes are kind of obvious. But I wanted something simple and fun and enjoyable. I'm not trying to make a huge statement or anything, I'm not saying "all kids are sociopaths," I'm not saying "all women are neurotic." I know that some people find some of the language offensive though.

And do you think that's because — this is a question I'm getting really sick of asking, so I'm sure you're sick of answering —
I know. I am sick of answering it, but go ahead!

Do you think that people give a sort of scrutiny to the film because you're a woman, that they wouldn't necessarily if it came from a male director?
Yeah, probably. I think some people accept less in terms of crudeness coming from a woman. It's like, "Yes, you can make movies, but this is what you need to do. This is how far you can go." But I wanted this character to be crude, and funny, and disrespectful, and I don't give a shit if it makes for easy jokes. I know people like that. I am a bit like that — I'm the worst. I make crude jokes all the time. If people heard my conversations with my father, they'd be horrified. Life is short and I don't know, I've reached a level where I don't even care if people get upset at it.

The great consolation of getting older is just giving less of a fuck about everything, actually.
Exactly. I give less of a fuck and I feel better.

Funnily enough, the crudity of the two women was the thing I loved most in "Lolo." I think a lot of women watching it will find it refreshing.
Thank you... And some people will find it offensive. I know that.

It's inherently feminist that these two women are talking, often about sex, and they have this strong relationship, but it's not politically correct. It's an interesting area where you can be feminist but not PC.
Well, that's me! I'm a feminist and I'm not PC. I'm very dedicated to feminism, but I can laugh at women also. I can laugh at my own feminism sometimes, and my own feminist side. I have a friend, for example, that was horrified at "Borat," when he's sitting around the feminists and he's saying the most horrible things. I thought it was hilarious. I'm kind of past that — I know we're not there yet, but I think by feeling good in myself about being a woman and about being a feminist, I can make fun of it too. I think that's the next step.

And you know, when people say, "Oh, the world would be a better place if it was governed by women," I'm like, "Not necessarily. Not all women are good." Even if I'm a feminist, I don't think all women are perfect. If we're equal to men, we are also imperfect like men.

And we should fight to be allowed to be imperfect.
Yes, that's part of feminism, to embrace the fact that we are imperfect. Often, men who want to be feminist, try to say they think that women are better than men, and I want to tell them, "No."

I'd kind of suspect those guys of not really being feminists, though. Like, maybe they're just trying to get into your pants.
Yeah! That's probably what it is.

In my review, I mention the film is a bit like a hate letter to motherhood. Does that seem right to you?
[Laughs] It's a weird thing, because I love being a mother, yet I made a film that's... I mean the character of Ariane says, "What a pain in the ass to be a Mom." Because the truth is sometimes it is really hard to be a mother. For example, I work and I'm completely constantly filled with guilt. If I was a man, a father, I would not be filled with guilt. Just that makes me angry at being a woman at times, because I have so much guilt in working. I've never met a man that had that kind of guilt.

And I don't want to give up my life as a working woman because first of all, I've got to pay the bills, no one pays them for me. But also I don't think it's good to give an example, to especially a little boy, that a woman is giving up everything to raise a child. I keep on working also because I think it's a good example to give to the next generation of kids about equality.

But there's a side of me that would love to never work again and just take care of my kid. But it wouldn't be right, for me or for him, for that matter.

Your character in "Lolo" perhaps feels a similar guilt? Is that part of what feeds into her son's behavior?
Yeah. It's exactly what this is about, which is she probably felt guilty because she was working, so she never said no to him.

She overcompensated.
Yes, she's overcompensating, and then you kind of raise monsters. Not always, thank God. But you have to be careful when you have that guilt, because then you start letting the kid do whatever they want and you completely lose authority. Children need limits.

Is this where the idea for "Lolo" came from, like a worst case scenario of what could happen in your life?
Oh, haha, the very worst case. It's not going to be like that. I wanted to study a sociopath, because it's this very small part of the population that everyone's talking about now. It's on "House of Cards," all those narcissists. And when you meet them, it's very striking: such a crazy personality, just completely perverted and sadistic and they like to hurt.

I knew this person, he would fire people or do terrible things to someone, and he would have a giggle about it beforehand. It was terrifying. I find that really evil. It's so creepy. I thought it was funny to use a kid as that, because on top of it it's so far from reality. My kid is six, he's a sweet bunny.

Though the mom in "Lolo" thinks her boy is a sweet bunny too...
Oh, you think my son is really preparing my...

He's definitely planning your downfall as we speak.
Oh no! He's been plotting it since he was two! No, I think not. I think kids are actually beautiful and if you raise them well they're the most loving, wonderful thing you can have in your life.

But it is true that this type of personality is very good at play acting.
They actually can make you believe that they're the nicest person on the planet! Then you realize they are the worst person on the planet. It's actually crazy to which extent they can make you believe that they're a good person.

Maybe it's because they believe it. In Jon Ronson's book, "The Psychopath Test," there's a kind of checklist of traits that psychopaths, many of whom are wealthy and successful, have. And apparently most people reading start to wonder….
"Am I a psychopath?"

Exactly. But his thing is if you've ever asked yourself that question, you're not a psychopath. They don't think that way.
I was talking to my shrink about it and she said, "Psychopaths, sociopaths, all those people, those extreme narcissists, they always think they're right. They rarely go to therapy, because they think they have no problem."

You know how they spot a sociopath? There's a list of things that shrinks in America ask you. "Have you ever been depressed? Do you ever think of suicide? Have you ever been angry?" A sociopath will check 'no' to everything. They've never lost their temper…? Who has never lost their temper, anyway? They're "perfect" people.

I wanted to explore that a little bit with the son, but obviously in a funny, silly way. I wanted to make the things obvious. You know he's going to do bad things every time he's going to do it. To me it was important that it's announced, so it doesn't become a thriller, it stays a comedy.

I was wondering about that, how you negotiated that balance between the comedy and the darkness.
When I was editing, I was like, "Oh, I could do it more serious and more scary, but it's not as funny." It's fun to know more or less that he's there to destroy him. And he's amused by it, because that's one side to sociopaths. They love doing bad things and not getting caught. Pushing [Jean Rene, his mother's boyfriend] to madness is a good thing for him, it's fun: "Look at this dork. He's going to end up crazy, and I'm going to destroy his life!"

It's interesting as well to have Jean Rene be so dorky. Perhaps she's attracted to the naivete in him that her son does not have?
And should have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's completely pure in a way. Also, I find the most attractive quality in a man is pure kindness. Maybe it's because I'm in a world of fucking cynical everything — and there's also this thing where in the movie he is from an opposite kind of world from her.

Thats right — one of the things the film does too is this divide between sophisticated, snobby Paris and the rest of France. And actually, many of your films yours have a very strong sense of place. You seem to take a lot of inspiration from certain cities.
Since I started writing my films I always kind of decide on the place [early on] For example the 'Before' trilogy: Vienna was decided by Richard [Linklater] but Paris, we decided the city first, even before starting to write it. For Greece it was a little different, but basically we wrote it there. And we always knew it was going to be a place by the Mediterranean Sea. Either Italy or Greece.

I feel places define a lot who you are. If you're Parisian, it's specific. If you're a New Yorker, it's specific. And because I've traveled and lived in different cities all my life, I've always felt strongly a sense of me being the stranger. I always love to talk about being the outsider, like in "2 Days in Paris," he's coming to Paris, and "2 Days in New York," the guy feels an outsider in his own city, because he's invaded by the French. It's always a great thing for comedy, being the outsider.

Tell me about your upcoming projects. One of the things that I read about is that you're writing a TV series, about women in their 40s. Is that right?
I'm developing one, for Amazon. We'll see if it happens. You never know, but I wrote the pilot. We're going to rewrite it and then we're going to see. It's a very slow process.

Would you be in it?
Possibly, yes. Also I have a project called "Zoe" that I really want to do, but it's a drama, so it's harder to put together.

It's harder to put together dramas?
Yeah, because I'm known for comedies and I think people are more comfortable with me directing comedies. The only drama I've made is called "The Countess."

Which is very much what we're talking about with sociopaths and psychopaths.
Yeah, there's another one there! And also there was the inequality — in that it's a woman. But not many people in America saw it, and so it's very hard for me to promote myself, to convince people, because they don't know that I can direct drama.

How about the Todd Solondz movie, "Wiener Dog," that you're in, has that finished?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's finished shooting, went great, was great. I play a monstrous woman — it was a lot of fun.

And finally, being part of the Marvel machine [Delpy had a tiny role in 'Age of Ultron'], even a little bit, how was that?
Oh, it was a very little bit. I was one day on the shoot. But was really interesting to see how those huge movies get made. It has nothing to do with my little films, and it's interesting to see another part of the industry and how it's working. It's in a whole other world.

Is that something that you'd be interested in exploring further if you could?
If I ever get a chance to do a huge movie, if someone ever gives me the chance I would completely do it. I don't think I would have a hard time managing it, because I'm very comfortable working on set with crews and stuff, and if I can manage 60 people, I think I can manage 400.

Yeah. Especially as many of those extra people are really there to manage the rest of the other people for you.
Exactly. I realize how much they delegate. And how much a bigger movie is about delegating more and having more people doing things for you.

So for the record, in case there are people who do not believe that women want the big gigs, you'd take it. You'll take the gig.
Oh, I'll take it, yeah!

"Lolo" will be released in France in October.

For our complete coverage of the 2015 Venice Film Festival, click here

The Best And Worst Of The 2015 Venice Film Festival

Jessica Kiang — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 17:35:00 GMT

While our colleagues in Canada are currently in the thick of TIFF madness and doing God's work there (here's our ever-expanding TIFF coverage link), as a Euro-dwelling Venice attendee, the last big festival of 2015 is now a wrap. Film-wise, it was a peculiar year, with quite a few of the most buzzed titles not quite measuring up to expectation, but as ever there was gold in 'them thar hills', if perhaps rather less of it in the form of 13 ½ inch-tall statuettes given out in February. There are still a few pieces to come to complete our overall coverage of the festival, but for now here's my take on the highlights and lowlights of the 72nd Venice International Film Festival.

Best

5. "A War"
I'm not at all sure why Tobias Lindholm's well-received last film, the tense, gripping "A Hijacking" which also premiered in Venice, did not buy him a promotion out of the Horizons sidebar and into the main competition this time out. "A War" again debuted in Horizons, and, festival politics aside, it marks a confirmation of Lindholm's native ability with stories of men in no-escape, violent situations, as well as a progression: here it's more about psychological imprisonment than actual, literal incarceration. Boasting another terrifically sympathetic performance from soon-to-be 'Game of Thrones' star Pilou Asbaek (he'll be playing Euron Greyjoy), it deals in sober, thrillingly intelligent fashion with the moral ramifications of a completely understandable and relatable split-second decision that has tragic, potentially criminal, consequences. Moving from a typically brilliant and bruising first half (if Lindholm ever decides he wants to make a Hollywood action film, he would kill it) into a more procedural and courtroom-driven second, he even has time and care for the family life of the conflicted soldier, and for how that brings other elements into play beyond merely the workings of military law, and his own conscience. What do we ask of the men and women who serve abroad? Can we truly blame them for making calls that we ourselves would probably have made in the same position? The faultlessly performed and directed "A War" poses vital and provocative questions about the role of personal morality in modern warfare. [Review here]

4. "Free In Deed"
On the one hand, I was almost disappointed when Jonathan Demme, chairman of the Jury for this years Horizons (Orizzonti) sidebar, called out "Free In Deed," Jake Mahaffy's Tennessee-set social realist faith healing drama as the big winner in the section. It debuted late in the festival, after many critics had already left, my screening was sparsely attended and there appeared to be precisely no buzz about the film on social media or around the festival campus when I posted my review. I had that smug feeling of having made a legitimate "discovery," and of riding in like a white knight to champion a little film that no one else knew about. On the other hand, that's a totally ridiculous and self-serving reaction and actually I was of course delighted that a small, difficult but brilliant film like this will get the boost that a win provides. Inspired by a true and tragic story of faith healing gone wrong, what's so remarkable about it, aside from across-the-board great performances from its professional and non-professional cast (Edwina Findlay, from "The Wire" and Ava Du Vernay's "Middle Of Nowhere" is probably the biggest revelation) is that even a Godless heathen like myself can be made to empathize. So where the headline version of this story—Faith Healing 'Exorcism' Of Severely Developmentally Challenged Child Results In Death—might ordinarily make us shake our heads patronizingly and roll our eyes at the backwardness and superstition implied, "Free In Deed" reminds us that faith can be a refuge and a vital support structure for marginalized people abandoned by authority and denied access to the services that a civilized society should provide to all its citizens. [Review here]

3. "Spotlight"
There were a few commentators who suggested that well, yes, of course film journalists would go nuts for a film that portrays journalists in so heroic a light as Tom McCarthy's terrifically absorbing procedural. I'd like to meet a single film reporter who looks at "Spotlight" and even remotely equates its front-line life-or-death stakes investigative journalism with what we do—i.e. sit in the dark watching movies, taking illegible notes and wondering how many times is too many to use the word "oeuvre" (Ans: once. But sometimes it's unavoidable.) The finest film to date in director McCarthy's oeuvre (heh) it's good to see him back on form after the distressing mess that was "The Cobbler" and it provides a wonderful showcase for the fine art of ensemble acting, with a cast that work so well off each other that it feels unfair to play favorites. Suffice to say, Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Liev Schreiber, Billy Crudup, Stanley Tucci and more provide intelligent, restrained (apart from maybe one or two slightly histrionic moments from Ruffalo) often remarkable interpretations of their real-life counterparts, the Boston Globe team who uncovered a huge conspiracy by the Catholic Church in Boston surrounding clerical sexual abuse in the diocese. Both a deeply engaging, unshowy thriller and a tribute to the value of a disappearing mode of journalism and the men and women who practised it, "Spotlight" is also one of the best evocations since "All the President's Men" of how the truth, doggedly pursued no matter how ugly, can set us free. [Review here]

2. "Beasts of No Nation"
There can be no clearer illustration of the fact that Oscar narratives take up too much oxygen at film festivals than that Cary Fukunaga's excoriating yet lyrical adaptation of Uzodinma Iweala's novel premiered to such widespread acclaim on day 1 of Venice, and then promptly disappeared from what we like to pompously call "the conversation" (it's the only one!) Because it's absolutely true that the film is unlikely to be an Oscar player, but that's for all the best reasons: it's uncompromising, brutal and gruelling, as the story of a child soldier caught up in conflict in a war-torn African nation should be. But it's quite beautiful too, in a way that does not romance or sentimentalize the issue, with Fukunaga's camera at all times capturing the horrors and the grisliness of a renegade soldier's life, but as seen through a child's eyes. The central performances are great, with Idris Elba outstanding as The Commandant, but newcomer Abraham Attah (Venice Best Young Actor winner) steals the show entirely, and the intensity of the filmmaking is masterfully sustained and marked by flashes of the surreal and even the playful. That a film like this, made with passion and intelligence, can generate fewer column inches than something as staid and uninspired as "The Danish Girl," purely because Tom Hooper's movie is at least partially a sly play for another set of Academy Awards, is a pretty shameful assessment of state of festival criticism. [Review here]

1. "Anomalisa"
It's been far too long since we got a glimpse inside the mind of fabulous eccentric Charlie Kaufman—though to be fair his 2008 directorial debut "Synecdoche, New York" gave us less a glimpse than a long, unblinking stare and probably provided Kaufman non-fans with more than enough of his brand of morose, meta, man-in-crisis madness to last at least seven years. But screw the naysayers, "Synecdoche" is complete genius, and so "Anomalisa" was high on my anticipated list with one potential concern: it's an animation, and one wondered if that might have marked a compromise choice because Kaufman simply couldn't get the financing to do a new live-action film. One was an idiot to worry. Co-directed by animator Duke Johnson, the winsome and very gently weird "Anomalisa" is actually surprisingly accessible, with the fuzzy-felt style stop-motion puppetry adding a visual warmth and inventiveness to a story that could perhaps feel a little clinical or intellectual if done live-action. And the Kaufman we know and love to watch self-loathe is here in spades too. "Anomalisa" is melancholic, almost despairing at times especially if you take it as the story of the central male character, philandering family man and author Michael, voiced by David Thewlis. But there is also optimism and generosity in its treatment of the perfectly ordinary Lisa (voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh in what might be a career-best performance, no joke) who sort of becomes the real heroine by the end. Featuring dream sequences, high-concept formal devices (all the other characters are voiced by Tom Noonan) and some truly hilarious, pretentiousness-puncturing insights into everything from the tyranny of luxury hotel service to the selfishness of the male midlife crisis, what truly makes "Anomalisa" immediately stand as one of my favorites of the year is that bizarrely, everyone in it kind of gets exactly what they deserve. Even Michael's gift-demanding kid who receives a Japanese mechanical doll that, erm… leaks. A little gutted I didn't get to review this one, as I'm probably even higher on it than Rodrigo's extremely positive write-up from Telluride, "Anomalisa" picked up the second-biggest prize of the festival, but for my money should have been crowned Golden Lion. [Rodrigo's review here]

Honorable Mentions
Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow's immensely enjoyable documentary "De Palma" [review] was one of the best times I had in Venice, and Frederick Wiseman's "In Jackson Heights" [review] is a superlative exploration of the thrumming rhythms of life in the titular New York neighborhood. I had thought that "Free In Deed" (see above) would be my final great film of the festival, but then the very last film I saw, Venice Days closer "The Daughter" [review] proved a very pleasant surprise. Otherwise I liked both Silver Lion Best Director winner "The Clan" [review] and eventual Golden Lion winner "From Afar" [review] though neither would have necessarily been my choice for those prizes. "Rabin: The Last Day" [review] is the first Amos Gitai movie I've ever really felt able to embrace fully: it's dense, absorbing and highly educational about Israeli politics in the last couple of decades, and Luca Guadagnino's bizarrely booed "A Bigger Splash" [review] is an entertaining slice of sunshine noir featuring a terrifically outsize performance from Ralph Fiennes, and easily the festival's best dance sequence.

Most Disappointing/Worst

It's not all ravioli and raves, though. This year's Venice lineup was characterized, in contrast to last year's which featured "Birdman" and "The Look of Silence" (and both of those on the first day, no less), by high-profile films that ended up disappointing against expectations, and a fair few all-out clunkers to boot. Opener "Everest" is a serviceable 3D popcorn disaster movie [review], but I'd begun to forget it almost before I'd left the theater. Scott Cooper's "Black Mass," [review] widely touted as Johnny Depp's comeback vehicle was even more disappointing as hopes had been that much higher; it's by no means a terrible film, but it's marred by a surface approach that is as alienating to any sense of real connection to the story as Depp's mask-like prosthetics and dead-snake contact lenses. Tom Hooper's "The Danish Girl" [review] is exactly as staid and prettified as we might have feared, though turning in a film this complacently Oscar bait-y about a transgender character is its own sort of admirable.

And none of those films let me down quite as much as the depressingly precious "Equals" from Drake Doremus, [review] a sci-fi love story that manages to be both cloyingly lovey-dovey and utterly antiseptic. Atom Egoyan continues to be possessed by the spirit of some filmmaker other than the one who made "Exotica" and "The Sweet Hereafter" with "Remember," [review] which is almost redeemed by a stellar Christopher Plummer performance until you realize what a travesty it is that it wastes such a stellar Christopher Plummer performance. And I haven't really got the heart to add much more to my lengthy pans of Daniel Alfredson's "Go With Me" [review] and Dito Montiel's "Man Down," [review] except to point out that each features at least one great actor (Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman respectively) who should really know better than to turn up in this sort of subpar material and get all of our hopes up.

WTF

And finally the absurdly divisive directorial debut from Brady Corbet, "The Childhood of a Leader," [review] deserves a category all of its own. The trades reviews were mostly scathing, while there were others who declared it their film of the festival, a polarizing reaction that I experienced within myself too. There's no way I can actually genuinely endorse it as a good film, but its ambition and kamikaze confidence is astonishing. And in Scott Walker's enormous, roiling, dissonant score, used to ear-splitting, insanity-inducing effect at certain times, it has inspired the perfect music to accompany the imminent apocalypse, so there's that. A double winner in the Horizons section, I can, despite my reservations about actually sitting through the damn thing, totally understand Corbet receiving the Lion of the Future award. But that he also picked up Horizons Best Director, over the terminally undervalued Tobias Lindholm, for example, seems excessive: "The Childhood of a Leader" defiantly announces that Corbet will yet probably become a great director, but it isn't totally convincing evidence that he is one right now.

Final Thoughts

This is a gorgeous festival. It's only my second year attending but Venice has a very special mixture where it has all the glamorous shenanigans of Cannes, but in a less frenetic and overheated atmosphere. And where last year I had a memorably sublime experience on a vaporetto after watching Andrei Konchalovsky's weird and amazing "The Postman's White Nights," this year also provided a little extra-curricular adventure in the form of a long, tipsy walk back along the Lido beach in the small hours of Sunday morning (shout out to our Senegalese savior who unlocked a crucial gate to allow us to actually make it home at a semi-decent hour).

Lastly, it was a particularly good year for being completely at odds with the hot-take booing/cheering culture that exists here. The boos for "A Bigger Splash," the catcalls at "The Endless River," the critical raves for Aleksandr Sokurov's wilfully indulgent and pretentious "Francofonia" and the lusty hurrays that greeted Jerzy Skolimowski's slapdash "11 Minutes" all served to remind me once again of one of the great mysteries of the medium: that we can all be sitting in the dark together, watching the same images unfolding on the same screen, and yet be having such completely different experiences. Venice, you're nuts, but I love you.

You can find all Venice coverage at this link, with still a couple of interview pieces and a few more reviews to come. Thank you all for reading, and arrividerci.

Venice Review: 'The Daughter' With Geoffrey Rush, Miranda Otto, Paul Schneider, Sam Neill & Newcomer Odessa Young

Jessica Kiang — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 15:55:00 GMT

"I don't ever want to grow up," says a drunken Christian (Paul Schneider) after an evening carousing with childhood best friend Oliver (Ewen Leslie). And you can see how in that maudlin state he might long for the simplicity and security of childhood again. But it's also true that, as Oliver replies flippantly "It's too late"—they have both grown up, into very different men. Simon Stone's "The Daughter" is a sensitive and cinematic exploration of those differences, and a tale of fathers disappointing their sons and sons resenting their fathers, with the titular daughter, Hedvig (excellent newcomer Odessa Young) representing the best chance of breaking that cycle. But for Christian, it is too late—the past has already made him what he is, and now that his present is crumbling (with a wife at home in the States who is leaving him, a drinking problem he is re-embracing and a paternal relationship stressed to breaking point by several revelations surrounding his mother's suicide), it only remains for him to find a way to screw up his future. Or if not his, anyone's will do.

Theater director Stone's film directorial debut, "The Daughter" is adapted from the stage version of Ibsen's "The Wild Duck" which he himself mounted to widespread acclaim in Australia. So his deep familiarity with the material is to be expected, and indeed he clearly knows every tick of the story, every unspoken current of envy or bitterness and every beat of his characters' hearts to perfection, and can elicit great, subtle performances to embody them. What is more surprising is that the film bears no trace of its stage-bound origins, with Stone making the transition to screen in rich, resonant and resolutely cinematic fashion, perfectly complemented by DP Andrew Commis' restrained, evocative framing and subdued, elegant palette. The landscapes have an appropriately wild, widescreen bleakness to them, but the interiors, particularly where he shoots faces in the foreground while the busy background falls away out of focus, are really where the story is told. That is appropriate because it is a film about interiority: the secrets we can conceal inside and the deep-buried resentments that rankle away in there, perhaps dormant, unknown even to ourselves, until they are awoken.

Christian has returned to his childhood home in Australia to attend the marriage of his father Henry (Geoffrey Rush), wealthy mill owner and town bigwig, to his much younger ex-housekeeper ("Fringe"'s Anna Torv). While home he reconnects with his high school buddy Oliver, meets Oliver's wife Charlotte (Miranda Otto), his father Walter (Sam Neill) who is an old associate of Henry's, and Oliver's lovely, bright, beloved daughter Hedvig. Oliver has just been laid off as a result of Henry closing the mill, but his home life is a happy one, and he knows that he is lucky. But as Christian's own personal life collapses, he divines a past transgression that could destroy Oliver's family and threatens to reveal it, sanctimoniously and self-deludingly preaching that Oliver "deserves to know" the truth. But, as you practically want to scream at the screen, Oliver is such a good person, so genuine and kind and loving, that he actually deserves not to know. The only thing that will be satisfied by the ruination of his equanimity in the name of honesty is that little knot of malice that exists inside Christian. Misery loves company, and will create it if necessary.

The performances are strong, with Odessa Young, who was the high watermark of Sue Brooks' Venice competition film "Looking For Grace," even better here as Hedvig, a teenager going through her own coming of age, but one still young enough to have a close, conspiratorial relationship with her adored dad. Ewen Leslie matches her as Oliver—he had played the role on stage and seems to inhabit it completely naturally. Otto, Neill, Rush and Torv all have smaller, though still pivotal roles and all are compelling, with Rush especially charismatic as the wealthy, chilly and perhaps ruthless Henry. If there are stumbles at all they come in the rare histrionics that Schneider's Christian has to negotiate, but then his character is so fundamentally wrong-headed in his actions, and selfish in his motivations that certainly by the end, we can hardly even be meant to sympathize with him.

There are a few flourishes that might feel overly on the nose if they were handled differently. Walter and Hedvig run a sort of makeshift zoo for wounded animals, and early on they get a new one, a duck that Henry had clipped but not killed while hunting. The metaphor might be a heavy-handed one, but it is not overplayed and a climactic scene in which Hedvig desperately tries to get the duck to fly again is surprisingly wrenching. A mid-air coin-toss finale somehow manages to not feel like a cop out, but a necessarily ambivalent coda in which the characters, all caught up in their personal dramas and anguish by this point, can realize that it is the most blameless player in their game of secrets and lies who will be the most affected.

A highly polished film that belies the soap opera melodrama of its plotline by having the twists and turns spring directly from well-observed human behavior, Stone's "The Daughter" is a quiet, immensely affecting triumph that proves how, contrary to accepted wisdom, there are secrets that would better remain untold. [B+]

Check out the rest of our coverage from the 2015 Venice Film Festival by clicking here.

Venice Review: Pablo Trapero's Venice Silver Lion Winner, True Crime Tale 'The Clan'

Jessica Kiang — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 20:45:00 GMT

A story so nuts it could only be true, Pablo Trapero's "The Clan" is the second of two heavily Scorsese-influenced tales of real-life gangsterism to crop up in Venice this year. But it's a superior film to Scott Cooper's "Black Mass" in its examination of the mechanics of tribalism and loyalty within an organised criminal enterprise, and it has brought Trapero this year's Silver Lion for Best Director. That award is somewhat surprising, as the film feels more slick and capable than necessarily hugely inspired, but the sensationalist story it tells and its fascinating setting in Argentina mere moments after the 1983 collapse of the military dictatorship more than compensate. Best of all, the film is about the wider society of the time and the political corruption and ruthlessness that lingered like a hangover to mar the nascent democracy, but it is also the incredible story of a single family —the "clan" of the title— and so it has both sprawl and intimacy, as well as a certain degree of allegorical power, in which the family's corruption mirrors that of Argentina in those unstable years.

The film opens explosively as a young couple's quietly domestic evening is violently interrupted by what appears to be a home invasion —it's a flash forward scene we'll return to late on in the film when what we've learned in the interim casts a very different complexion on our sympathies. After that rude awakening, we spin back in time and begin to tell the initially innocuous story of the outwardly respectable middle-class Puccio family: sons Alex (Peter Lanzani), Maguila (Gaston Cocchiarale) and Guillermo (Franco Masini), daughters Silvia (Gisella Motta) and Adriana (Antonia Bengoechea), mother Epifania (Lili Popovich) and terrifying chilly-eyed patriarch Arquimedes (Guillermo Francella, whose naturally blue eyes give Johnny Depp's distracting contact lenses in "Black Mass" a run for their money in the "demonic" stakes). Alex is a promising rugby star —the film is a mild critique of the culture of sporting hero-worship— about to be inducted into the real family business: his father is an ex-government official for whom old dictatorship-approved habits of kidnapping for ransom, like a lot of his victims, die hard. Arquimedes pursues this lucrative criminal way of life partly for his own enrichment, but also, it is implied, as a means to channel funds back into the junta's coffers, since he and his cohorts all believe that Argentine democracy is but a blip and soon the good old days of dictatorship and oppression will be back again.

But the story gets grimmer still: it is revealed that the Puccio household's basement has been converted into a cell in which to incarcerate pending victims. Despite the efforts to mask the noise, groans and screams that can be heard throughout the house, making Epifania's later assertions that she and her daughters knew nothing of Arquimedes' activities a little hard to swallow. As if to mitigate the potential dourness of the story, Trapero laces some jaunty counterpoint music onto the soundtrack: The Kinks' "Sunny Afternoon" is used twice; "Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall" and "Just A Gigolo" also crop up, with the latter especially effective during the scene of the final kidnapping that will ultimately be the family' undoing. But there is a slight sense that this device, while effective, as well as the frequent cross-cutting between scenes in which the similarities are more circumstantial than thematically illuminating (for example, when the grunts of Alex having sex with his girlfriend are echoed in the groans of a kidnapping victim begging for his life), does not feel quite as organic as it could have been. Trapero is a straight-ahead, serious filmmaker (as previous titles like "White Elephant" and "Carancho" have proven) and there is little irony or inherent wit to his style. Which is not to say he shows no flair: on the contrary, the kidnapping scenes are thrillingly mounted, with a queasy you-are-there immediacy that makes us wholly complicit.

But there are other elements that don't fully convince either. The Jockish Alex is clearly no rocket scientist, but even so, it's a little hard to swallow that he might be unaware that his father is about to kill his friend Ricardo, whom Alex had helped lure, seeing as the thin cover story for the kidnapping (they make it seem as though Alex has been taken too) would be easily refuted when Ricardo returned home and discovered that Alex had in fact been attending rugby practise and feigning surprise at the news of his disappearance all along. And Alex, who is the closest thing to a morally sympathetic character here, is pretty easily corrupted; about to express his disinclination for the family business, he's handed a huge wad of cash by his father, opens his own sporting goods store and appears to forget any moral qualms he may have have over aiding and abetting the kidnap and murder of a string of unfortunates. This means we don't quite get the rich sense of him as an inwardly conflicted Michael Corleone-type, despite the parallels between this family and the Family in that touchstone Coppola classic.

Really, it's Arquimedes who emerges as the film's most indelible character, aided by Francella's fabulously icy performance. Lacking even the warmth of a Don Vito, Arquimedes comes across not as a man who does everything for his family, but as a man who expects his family to do everything, even damn themselves, for him and his twisted, heartless, self-centered worldview. And they do so. While Trapero makes of this material a Hollywood-style crime story with shades of Scorsese and Coppola and an ending that goes full-on De Palma, he also spins it out into a wider analogy for how any behavior can be made to seem normal in a closed, autocratic environment. Whether it's the well-off Puccio family operating under the patriarchal authority of Arquimedes, or Argentine society trying to come to terms with the institutional corruption and rule by terror of the prevailing military dictatorship, the stylishly grimy "El Clan" asks but never quite fully explores one overriding question that applies on both levels: can anyone be innocent of complicity in a crime when they heard and ignored the screams coming from the basement? [B]

Check out the rest of our coverage from the 2015 Venice Film Festival by clicking here.

Venice Review: Jerzy Skolimowski's Brash, Disposable '11 Minutes'

Jessica Kiang — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 14:25:00 GMT

If it's hard to account for which films get booed in Venice, Jerzy Skolimowski's inexplicably well-received "11 Minutes" proves that it's just as surprising what gets cheered. A vapid exercise in borderline kitschy style over substance that really only has its high-concept format to recommend it (and yet goes on to play fast and loose with even that internal logic) it's a set of interlocking/overlapping stories set nominally around a particular town square in Warsaw, on a fateful day between 5 and 5.11pm.

Except the stories, each more cliche melodramatic than the last, don't overlap in a way that feels anything but coincidental, many are left undeveloped, and actually it doesn't all take place during those 11 minutes, so one is forced to wonder what the point of the whole thing is. It's edited and shot with appropriate kicky dynamism, and an eye for a slick, occasionally surreal visual, but it's nothing that hasn't been done better or more efficiently elsewhere,for example in Tom Tykwer's "Run Lola Run" and the climactic sequence of Brian De Palma's "Femme Fatale." All of which makes it a puzzling project from this widely lauded, frequently laureled filmmaker, feeling less like the work of an auteur than the experiment of a student who has nothing urgent to say but needs to turn in something -- anything -- in order to pass his course. So, you know, lusty applause and a standing ovation.

It starts with a kind of found-footage approach as, in a prologue composed of cameraphone images, computer webcam and CCTV imagery we are introduced to a few of our key players (all, tellingly, referred to not by name but by role in the press notes -- Husband, Wife, Courier, Girl With Dog etc). A self-videoing aspiring actress (Paulina Chapko) has sex with her violently possessive new husband (Wojciech Mecwaldowski). A young man leaves a cryptic message for his mother via his computer camera. Another grabs at his laptop to try and film a strange something he's seen in the sky, but it's gone by the time he gets there. And then the film proper begins and we settle into more classical shooting mode, revisiting the stories of these and many other characters, whose lives will glance off each other in some way that we can't yet discern.

If the film has a main strand, it's that of the actress who, unaware she has ingested some drugged champagne (quite a few of the characters are in some sort of drug-induced altered state throughout), has left her marital bed to "audition" for a sleazy film director (Richard Dormer) in an upscale hotel penthouse suite. Elsewhere a coke-snorting courier (Dawid Ogrodnik) narrowly avoids being caught mid-coitus by his lover's husband, and flees on his motorbike into town. A hot dog vendor (Andrzej Chyra) whom we later discover is the courier's father gets spat at by a young girl suggesting a shameful secret in his past. A couple in bed discuss their mountain-climbing plans and a bird flies in through the window, smashing into a mirror. A team of paramedics tries to reach a woman in heavy labor in a grotty apartment block. A twitchy young man attempts to rob a pawn store.

The shattered-glass approach does have its fleeting pleasures as we attempt to piece the bigger picture together and to work out where each of the storylines lies in relation to the others. But the problem is that in the main, those relations turn out to be merely spatial or geographical, simple coincidences that reflect no deeper theme than "any seemingly random event has a lot of causal ingredients." And the surreal, vaguely apocalyptic, foreboding elements that Skolimowski incorporates -- a plane that roars past uncomfortably close, a drip of water that seems to flow upward, a face on a TV screen intoning a doomy phrase, a dead pixel on a monitor mirrored in an ink blotch on a painting and an odd glimmer in the sky -- only serve to tease a more metaphysical angle that never pays off.

Much more often we're involved in the thin soap operatics of the panicky, sweating husband trying to get into the director's hotel room, or the drug-fuelled journey of the courier, who is having an extremely odd afternoon. In fact, everyone collected around the final incident appears to be having a most dramatic day: the film is full of break-ups, illnesses, affairs, suicides, robberies, drug taking and other nefarious activities, meaning we get to skitter nervously across the surface from one rather generic setpiece to another without ever locating any deeper meaning.

It's undoubtedly to be admired that Skolimowski, at 77, is attempting something new and unprecedented within his filmography. And in its vague hints that he's making some sort of statement about modern surveillance culture and our relationship to technology, especially the newly democratized, everyday technology of filmmaking, it certainly feels like an attempt to contend with modern life -- a kind of "this is how we live now" vibe. But that impulse is continually undercut by the plasticky characters that populate these stock scenarios, and by the film's thrust toward a climax that feels more Looney Tunes than "La Ronde." For a movie that is all about accumulation, it adds up to very little, and for a story all about connectedness, "11 minutes," intermittently enjoyable though it may be, never connects. [C]

Check out the rest of our coverage from the 2015 Venice Film Festival by clicking here.

Venice 2015 Review: 'Free in Deed' or the "Exorcism" of Benny

Tambay A. Obenson — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 13:21:16 GMT

There's a lot to like in "Free in Deed," a well-acted, unrelentingly dour experiment in atmosphere, setting and sound that will captivate you throughout. Meticulous in its attention to authenticity, the Memphis, TN-set film, assuredly-directed by Jake Mahaffy, fictionalizes the 2003 accidental death of a child during what was supposed to be a miraculous Pentecostal healing service, concentrating on a humble, predominantly African American church community where faith healings are seemingly routine.

At the center of the consternation are Abe (David Harewood) and Melva (Edwina Findley), a deeply affecting pair - two tormented but steadfast souls striking convincingly noble chords as a burdened evangelist seeking redemption, and the distressed single mother of a child, Benny (RaJay Chandler), with a severe form of autism that makes him prone to unpredictable acts of violence. It's a film that unfolds almost like your favorite demonic child possession horror movie, as science and religion work to rid the child of that which bewitches him (something whose origins aren't entirely understood by the congregation) via a cocktail of drugs at first, and, eventually, after essentially being failed by a system that's there to instead ease the trials and tribulations of families in her predicament, looks to God, via her church, and an act almost akin to an "exorcism" that results in the child's death - the "horror" in this case being psychological. In observing 2 desperate people of circumstance and of faith, commit to dedicating their lives to the healing of a child with an "incurable" illness (wherein the "terror" lies), director Mahaffy is much more interested in the difficult contradictions between belief and actuality.

"Free in Deed" explores the gospel tradition of praying for the sick, the Christian ritual of laying on of hands as both a symbolic and formal method of healing - in effect questioning whether faith and prayer can actually heal. "How can a man crush a child to death, while believing the entire time that he is helping him?" As the filmmaker notes, this was the question that kickstarted the making of the film, 12 years ago. But the drama itself ultimately doesn't set out to ask nor answer that question. Filmed in an observational cinéma vérité style, there is a verisimilitude to "Free in Deed" that the audience gets lost in, so much that one forgets that what you're watching is actually a scripted fictionalized account realized by actors on a stage, delivering wonderfully subtle and effective performances; you never once doubt that they are who they tell us they are. You feel like a fly on the wall of this enclosed morass.

The audience practically becomes a member of a commune, thrust into an unnerving, claustrophobic environment, without any exposition, so much that when it all ends, you feel exhausted having being put through quite an emotional workout, relieved, but deeply affected, motivated to contemplate the world you just left behind - questions you had at the beginning, and those you might have by the end, not all entirely answered.

Lensing by DP Ava Berkofsky is sufficiently stark, clean, and even deliberately inconspicuous, so much that you're unaware of the camera's presence and instead consumed with the truth and crude reality it captures, with much of the drama unfolding inside a storefront church, where parishioners come for deliverance.

A laconic tribe, as if sharing an appreciation for the futility of words, even when the characters speak, it's sometimes in hushed tones and unintelligible (except for those boisterous church scenes of praise and worship, emphasizing their importance, distinguishing between everyday life, and the security a house of God seemingly provides), relying instead on body language to communicate.

There's barely what you'd call a soundtrack, rather a carefully designed mix of ambient sound, with audio effects added for dramatic impact, and in rare occasions, faint mood music. As the filmmaker states, "For Benny, the hyper-reality and painful, un-moderated volume of the natural world will give way to silence during the most intense episodes of sensory over-stimulation. For Abe, the evangelist, the mundanity of daily life will give way to ecstatic sounds of prophecy, revelation and impending doom of the 'last days'."

And smartly used sparingly, it all works seamlessly.

Ultimately, your appreciation for the film will be determined by your assessment of its credibility, and how receptive you are to its trancelike state of great rapture. As a non-believer who would typically dismiss the overt and ritualistic practices of faith healing that claim to solicit divine intervention in initiating spiritual and literal healing, I must say that it was actually quite easy for me to give myself over to the world that writer/director Mahaffy and his creative team, build, in "Free in Deed." Instead of an expected judging of these characters and their predicaments, I empathized "freely." The necessary care that Mr. Mahaffy, the cast and crew have taken with the material, the physical production, and the rhythm of the narrative, is palpable and valued.

Announced last night, "Freed in Deed" won the Orizzonti Award for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival, where it made its world premiere.

The film is available to be watched online for anyone with a broadband Internet connection, via a screening portal made available by the festival. It'll cost you of course, but only about $4.50 for those in the USA. There are said to be only 400 "virtual tickets" available per film. This one will be available to watch online through the 16th of this month. Click here to register and purchase tickets.

Venice Review: Jake Mahaffy's Distressing, Desperate True Story 'Free In Deed' With David Harewood

Jessica Kiang — Sat, 12 Sep 2015 15:10:00 GMT

"God only gives us as much suffering as we can bear," is just one of the very untrue, but deeply held beliefs that characterize Jake Mahaffy's evocation of a borderline unbearable true-life tragedy, "Free In Deed." A bracing, bruising corrective to the "faith-based filmmaking" movement, the New Zealand-born director's third film, set in and shot on location in Tennessee, tells the tortured real-life story of a 2003 faith healing attempt that led to the death of a child. While the conclusion by the ending — that no merciful God could possibly be responsible for such cruelty, so He's either unjust, indifferent, or non-existent — feels undeniably clear, the film is refreshingly free of the kind of judgments that a wholehearted atheist might make of those who believe. Instead, faith is portrayed as an understandable last place of refuge for those who have been abandoned by the mechanisms of human society, a literal hail mary move for men and women with no other options left.

It's fitting then that the majority of the proceedings do not take place in vaulted cathedrals, but in makeshift, strip-lit storefront churches, cheap motels, and impersonal hospitals where low-priority cases, such as poor, black, single mothers whose autistic children have cut themselves, get the bare minimum of attention before being dismissed. The mother in question is Melva ("Middle of Nowhere"'s Edwina Findlay) and her afflicted, violent, uncommunicative son is Benny (RaJay Chandler, in an astonishing juvenile performance). Melva is approaching the end of her tether trying to care for the self-harming, volatile Benny and his little sister Etta, at the same time that tortured soul Abraham (David Harewood), who attends her church, starts to believe that he may have divinely inspired healing powers.

READ MORE: The 12 Most Anticipated Films Of The Venice Film Festival

It's never made exactly clear why it is that "Brother Abraham" has the kind of spiritual torment that leads him to petition for salvation so repeatedly — in a darkly absurd moment, one of his preachers requests that he stops asking to be saved so often, because once you're saved, you're saved and to continually want to be reborn in Christ is "embarrassing." But Harewood's excellent performance reads volumes of history, barely hinted at in his confessions to the congregation of having hurt people in the past, into Abraham's unending search for solemn religious ecstasy. Meanwhile, Melva's reasons for embracing the same sparsely attended yet raucous services may be more pragmatic — the support she finds there is in direct contrast to the indifference she gets elsewhere, plus she feels a growing attraction to Abraham — but they are no less human and relatable for that. Findlay's extraordinary embodiment of Melva as a thoroughly good woman and a loving mother in the face of utterly impossible circumstances (her helplessness when Benny won't stop pounding his head against the wall or when he refuses to take his pills is genuinely heartbreaking) means we completely understand her actions, even if they run counter to everything we might believe. She is a woman who so deserves kindness that we cannot judge her for accepting it from dubious sources.

This is an ugly world. The motel Abraham lives in is partly derelict at the back, the dirty pool filled with rubble and broken furniture. Yet it's shot with a meticulous and almost lyrical eye by DP Ava Berkofsky, never more so than when evoking the fervor of religious euphoria that occurs during the loud, often strident services. Mahaffy populates the cast around his three exemplary principals with non-professional locals, lending an air of extreme authenticity. And it is genuinely painful to watch at times especially during the deeply upsetting ersatz "exorcisms" performed on the thrashing, screaming child. The physicality of these moments, which the gentle phrase "laying on of hands" scarcely describe, is brutal, almost medieval — evoking practices lifted straight from the days of witchcraft and superstition and plunked down wholesale into the modern, supposedly civilized world.

"Free In Deed" is a difficult film to stomach as a non-believer, and would presumably be even more so for those of a religious bent. But its deepest condemnation is reserved not for the faithful, but for a society that can foster the conditions for this story to occur. From the official who shuts down a makeshift soup kitchen because it doesn't have a permit from the health authority, to the child services officer who calls on Melva because a complaint has been issued against Benny for being "inappropriately dressed" and "shouting," to the doctors, nurses and teachers who are themselves too harried and busy to give Benny the attention he needs — every interaction with an authority figure here serves to make us understand Melva and Abraham's misguided actions all the better. The supreme irony being, of course, that it is only when tragedy strikes that officialdom shows any interest: that's when law enforcement gets involved and the full might of the judicial system is suddenly brought to bear on these marginalized, struggling people.

This small, slow-paced film, deeply upsetting and narrow in scope, is a hard watch. In refusing to offer any easy answers, and in running precisely counter to the sickly angels-among-us narratives of the current, growing faith-based filmmaking movement, it's an even harder sell. But Mahaffy's uncompromising approach, and the quality of its performances, make it a rare and valuable testament: to the terrible danger of believing in miracles, and to the cruelty of a world that might make such belief necessary. [B+/A-]

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Watch Online: David Harewood, Edwina Findley and a Miraculous Healing of an Autistic Child, in 'Free In Deed'

Tambay A. Obenson — Fri, 11 Sep 2015 21:06:10 GMT

The fourth edition of Sala Web, the “virtual festival” at the Venice Film Festival, which kicked last week (September 2-12), includes the David Harewood and Edwina Findley indie drama titled "Free In Deed," from writer/director Jake Mahaffy, which is based on a true story, and which is apparently making its world premiere there.

In the film, Harewood plays a man who brings a small congregation together in order to perform the miraculous healing of an 8-year-old autistic child.

Findley plays the boy’s mother.

Words for the director on the project, which tells us more about the story the film tells: "How can a man crush a child to death, while believing the entire time that he is helping him? This was the most infuriating question, according to news stories that appeared over 12 years ago about an actual faith healing gone wrong. And that’s the question that started this project... 12 long years ago. “Laying hands” on people to deliver them from any manner of affliction is a common religious practice. If they struggle or the afflicting spirits fight back, they may need to be restrained. 'Free in Deed' is an ecstatic tragedy about a man with good intentions, compelled to demonstrate God’s divine love, while being completely unable to connect in any humane way with the people living around him."

The film was shot in Memphis, TN, with Mike S. Ryan’s Greyshack Films, and Brent Stiefel’s Votiv producing, along with Michael Bowes.

Anyone with a broadband connection can screen the film online, via the Venice festival. It'll cost you of course, but only about $4.50 for those in the USA. The streaming site seems to be available to just about anyone anywhere. Click here to register and purchase tickets. There are said to be only 400 "virtual tickets" available per film, so if you're at all interested in seeing this (and it may be your only chance to see it, unless it screens at a festival or theater in your neck of the woods), you'd better get your tickets now. This specific film becomes available TODAY, the 11th of September, and will be available to watch online through the 16th, so you've a few days.

I actually hope more international film festivals do this, so that those who can't attend (which is the majority of us) but who would like to see some of the films, have the opportunity to do so.

Thanks to Venice, a trailer exists, and is embedded below:

Venice Review: Lorenzo Vigas' Assured, Austere Debut 'From Afar' ('Desde Alla') With Alfredo Castro

Jessica Kiang — Fri, 11 Sep 2015 19:10:00 GMT

A tightly clenched fist of a film, there's no doubt that "From Afar" heralds the arrival a new talent in debut Venezuelan writer/director Lorenzo Vigas. But the term usually applied to such breakouts is "exciting" and that might be a bridge too far in describing this rigorously controlled, glacially paced, wilfully enigmatic film, which literalizes its title by unfolding at arms length with a detachment that can almost seem like alienation.

As if aware that the peculiar actions and reactions of his cloudily motivated, ambivalent characters might seem erratic or unaccountable if played out at normal speed, Vigas opts for an unusual rhythm, in which indeterminate swathes of time can elapse between scenes, but the scenes individually play out in minute, unblinking detail, often wordlessly. Dialogue throughout is so sparing that it's a bit of a shock when anyone speaks, and it inevitably happens only after long periods of silence freighted with far more meaning than the words. The deliberate approach and the mastery of its not-quite-explicable atmosphere of disconnect and fatalism suggest that Vigas has arrived as a director of note fully formed, but at the same time it's hard to prise out the kernel of truth that the story undoubtedly contains. And Vigas' grip is so tight that even if you do get to the heart of his meaning, there's a chance it will have had the life squeezed out of it.

In an economical, largely dialogue-free opening sequence, we meet Armando (the great Pablo Larrain regular Alfredo Castro), or rather we meet the back of his head as we trail him through busy Caracas streets and notice him noticing a limber young man in a loose singlet at a stop sign. He stands behind him, just a little too close, sits in beside him on the bus they board, and discreetly riffles a wad of notes with a practiced snap. Next moment we are in Armando's house, the young man has obeyed his command to stand facing the wall with his ass exposed, and Armando sits in a chair masturbating. They do not touch, the guy endures the humiliation with a stoic, dissociative expression that Armando cannot see, and when he's done, the young man takes the money and leaves. Scarcely a word has been exchanged: this is not interaction but transaction, and it is now complete.

Armando seems to earn a comfortable living as a denture technician. He has a sister and a estranged relationship with his father, who threatens at the edges of his life again after a long absence, due to a childhood experience. Other than that, and possibly because of those paternal issues, he seems utterly alone bar the occasional non-tactile sexual encounter, but the next one of those we see, when he picks up cocky, macho auto worker Elder (impressive newcomer Luis Silva), goes awry when Elder refuses his "maricon" ("faggot") advances, beats him up, and steals his money. Here the first of many puzzling, contradictory behaviors occurs as despite the viciousness of their encounter, Armando seeks the violent, verbally abusive Elder out again, and a relationship of see-sawing dependency and attraction evolves between them.

You might well assume from this initial incident that Armando has masochist tendencies, or that perhaps, while he seems serenely immune to the world at large, he has internalized the South American macho culture and has a streak of self-hating homophobia that leads him to want to self-destruct. But the relationship between Armando and Elder, who not at all coincidentally also suffered at the hands of his now-dead father, mutates into something much odder than that. Partly paternal, partly predatory, and only briefly physical, it's an eternal riddle of who-wants-who and in-what-way that seems almost perversely predicated on one or other of them behaving in a diametrically opposed manner to that which we might expect.

Beautifully photographed (by another Larrain collaborator in DP Sergio Armstrong) in composed interiors and long tracking, usually following shots, the sense of calm remove is enhanced by a total absence of score. Again, Vigas' confidence in trusting his audience to form an emotional connection to the narrative (based on a story idea from Guillermo Arriaga) without such signposting is admirable, but the film expects and needs your patience and close attention. It mostly earns both, a lot down to a magnificently subtle, internalized performance from Castro, which plays off Silva's more jittery, externalized turn to quiet perfection. In fact it's probably the sureness of these two actors more than anything that convinces us that there really is some psychological realism to their awkward waltz of need, desire, and disgust, because otherwise, under Vigas' deft baton, they seem to be dancing to music we cannot hear. [B]

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Venice Review: Julie Delpy's Funny, Flawed 'Lolo' With Julie Delpy, Dany Boon, Vincente Lacoste & Karin Viard

Jessica Kiang — Fri, 11 Sep 2015 13:25:00 GMT

If not quite a hate-letter to the idea of motherhood, then certainly a strongly-worded memo of complaint, Julie Delpy's sixth directorial feature "Lolo" features long stretches of perhaps her most accomplished and enjoyable character-comedy yet. But as often with filmmakers for whom a certain register comes almost too easily, Delpy seems impatient with herself and her facility for spiky, verbal sparring and pithy self-deprecating put-downs. As though anxious to push beyond that, "Lolo," (co-written with Eugenie Grandval) which starts off bright, breezy, and deceptively progressive––especially in its portrayal of a fabulously foulmouthed and dirty-minded central female friendship––moves into more densely plotted and dark-hearted territory in its latter stages. The ambition is admirable, but in execution it means the witty, sophisticate comedy gives way to farce and contrivance, and an unwelcome sourness creeps into the fizz that the winning performances cannot quite mask.

After a lovingly 60s-pastichey animated opening credits sequence, set to the jaunty strains of "Music to Watch Girls By" we're introduced to Parisienne Violette (Delpy) and her friend Ariane (Karin Viard), who are on a spa holiday in Biarritz. Despite displaying that precise urbanite disdain for the sticks that many big-city professionals have for anywhere outside the capital, Violette, at Ariane's urging, "gets her chimney swept" by a gauche but charming local IT-engineer Jean-Rene (Dany Boon) and surprises herself by falling for him hard. (It doesn't hurt that as we learn later, he sweeps chimneys with a very big brush. Or maybe it does.) Thankfully, he happens to be moving to Paris in few weeks to start a new job, and so he and Violette resume their relationship, if anything hotter and heavier, as soon as he arrives. The scene could easily be set for a fish-out-of-water/odd couple relationship comedy, spiced up with elements, such as mid-40s romance and the tribulations of being new in town, that Delpy has already had success with elsewhere -- in "Before Midnight," which she also co-wrote, and in her directorial features "2 Days in New York" and "2 Days in Paris." And Delpy and Boon make an appealingly mismatched pair, even if they haven't got half the chemistry of Delpy and Viard.

But we haven't even got to Violette's son Lolo yet (played by Vincente Lacoste, whom Delpy directed before in her underseen 2011 title "Skylab,") and We Need To Talk About Lolo. A louche, cocky 19 year-old, and the unblemished apple of his fashionista mother's eye ("This is Lolo. He is the future of humanity" is how Violette introduces him and while not exactly serious, she does not appear to be exactly joking either), artist Lolo radiates self-assurance and effortless cool, and revels in the unusually boundary-free relationship with his mother. He is also a sociopath.

This much is revealed to us fairly early on when we learn that he has spent most of his young adult years serially sabotaging every romantic opportunity his mother has ever had, the better to keep her to himself. Of course, Jean-Rene becomes his next target, for reasons that at first seem to be as much predicated on selfishness (wanting to be able to stay living with Violette, needing to use her contacts to boost his career) as pathology. But when the naive, sincere, and genuinely loving Jean-Rene proves unusually difficult to dislodge, Lolo's stratagems graduate from hijinks with itching powder and spiked drinks to the potentially life-ruining, and a lot of the fun drains away in the process. Instead of quick-fire gags we get manic antics and sitcom-esque setups that could, and would in real life, be cleared up in a second. But perhaps the biggest problem is that Lolo, despite Lacoste's strong turn in which he hides a watchful manipulativeness behind a perfect cupid's-bow pout and an air of easy charm, is not simply misguided, he's actually utterly hateful. He thrives on power plays designed to make his loving mother feel worthless, and is so adept at fooling her that we start to despise her a little bit too, for not seeing through him, and for having raised such a monster. That may be true to the way sociopaths operate, but it sticks in the craw of the film's comedy.

Julie Delpy is often compared to Woody Allen and "Lolo" with its neurotic lead, urban setting, tentative romance and cultured verbal humor, certainly reinforces that parallel. But, also like Allen, it is humor and character-based drama, not plot that is Delpys strong point, and as soon as she moves out of that zone, "Lolo" loses focus. It's easy to value too lightly what comes too naturally, but Delpy's facility for creating chatty, funny, memorable characters––especially women––is rare, precious, and fully on view here. In fact, a full movie of her and her best friend swapping filthy jabs and being mean about their children would be an absolute joy. "Lolo" has many charms––the performances, the polished shooting style (from DP Thierry Arbogast), the resolutely un-PC vibe––but it seems highly possible that if someday Delpy embraces her real strengths as a writer/director and gives us 90 minutes of "Violette et Ariane," she might just make her "Annie Hall." [B-]

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Venice Review: 'Go With Me' With Anthony Hopkins, Julia Stiles, Alexander Ludwig & Ray Liotta

Jessica Kiang — Fri, 11 Sep 2015 11:41:16 GMT

When the abiding image from your film, one that is favored at lingering length, is of a slack-jawed Anthony Hopkins staring gormlessly into the middle distance through a window, you've got problems. Then again, such a moment in Daniel Alfredson's "Go With Me" is a near-perfect summation of the film as a whole: dully shot, performed as though underwater, and almost entirely pointless. A would-be gritty tale that sets a minimal plot barely ticking over in the forests and mountains of British Columbia, it clearly has designs on being a sort of woodsy, foggy modern-day Western in which terse characters with tragic backstories live out hardscrabble lives, adhering to personal codes and doing What They Gotta Do. But if there's a trick to making such stories lithe and resonant rather than episodic and mechanical, it's one "Go With Me" has missed. Instead, we get a thriller so turgid that its setting in logging country starts to feel like heavy irony: Lord, does it lumber.

Based on the spartan and quite lovely book by Castle Freeman Jr, the film does a splendid job of entirely demystifying the novella's fable-like structure and tone, with screenwriters Joe Gangemi and Gregory Jacobs offering a literal rendition of a story that, for those who have read it, really lives and breathes in the spaces between its short, declarative sentences. It's a paradox that in such an ostensibly faithful translation to the screen, such a lot can be lost. But Alfredson, whose previous work includes the two Swedish 'Dragon Tattoo' sequels and the English-language "Kidnapping Mr Heineken" (so, to be fair, we'd been given due warning) doesn't offer an interpretation of the material so much as a first-take visualization of it, and an uninspired one at that. So we get all the plot beats of the novel, and none of the texture.

This is a problem because the plot is thin: Lillian (Julia Stiles), returning to her isolated, economically depressed logging-industry hometown following the death of her mother, is first assaulted and then stalked/menaced by local bad seed Blackway (Ray Liotta, playing "deranged" in a stunning coup of against-type casting). But when she goes to the Sheriff about it, he only suggests that she leave town, something Lillian, who Stiles invests with rare-but-gratifying flashes of truculent stubbornness, refuses to do. When there's no convincing her, the Sheriff suggests she go ask Whizzer (Hal Holbrook) the aging, wheelchair bound owner of the local sawmill who might be able to find someone willing to stand up to ex-Deputy Blackway, whose meanness is a local legend, and whose very name seems to infect the local townsfolk with fear. At the mill, Whizzer refuses to help, but Lester (Anthony Hopkins), an old-timer employee of his, steps up and volunteers his stuttering young sidekick Nate (Alexand-d-d-der Ludwig) to boot. The unlikely threesome then go about tracking Blackway down, shaking down his associates, staking out his regular haunts and visiting his nefarious enterprises (notably a motel/meth lab/brothel). Showdown's a-coming.

There are several missteps that sabotage any chance for a build up of tension on the way to the finale. You can imagine a version in which Liotta's appearance is saved for a cameo at the very end, and in which it's the stories about Blackway, the mythic status accorded him by the cowed townspeople, especially the Greek Chorus of chattering old codgers at the mill, that makes him such a larger-than-life villain. But Liotta shows up even in the prologue here, so there's that surprise gone, and well, it's Ray Liotta as a villain, which is such a known cinematic quantity that it is almost banal by now. Similarly, having little faith that we're going to have any emotional engagement with what's on screen, Alfredson over-relies on Klaus Wahl and Anders Niska's overwrought, ever-present score (if the film is one-note, perhaps it's because the grandiose music employs so many notes that there's only one left.)

And to this list of woes we can add possibly Anthony Hopkins's least engaged performance ever––doubly strange because his producer's credit suggests he might have actually had a dog in this race. Although onscreen for a lot of the time, he just feels absent, which isn't good, and isn't even fun-bad like the hammy Hopkins we've seen in stuff like "Fracture" or "The Rite." Here he doesn't so much disappear into his role as simply disappear, even when we're looking right at him.

We're all familiar with the concept of the "unfilmable novel"––mostly because it's a challenge that has been met quite frequently, with the likes of "Inherent Vice" and "Lord of the Rings"––but "Go With Me," the book, feels like the polar opposite. You can read it in roughly the same length of time that a feature film runs for, and it's so elegantly written that it unspools in your head like a movie anyway. So it is a most filmable novel, but just because you're able to do something doesn't mean you should, which is the main lesson we can take from this murkily prosaic adaptation. This should be a crackling, wood-smokey campfire story of good folks taking on bad folks armed with nothing but courage and a homespun sense of justice, but in Alfredson's "Go With Me," the fire's out, the embers are cold, and everyone, especially Hopkins, appears to have already left. [C-]

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Venice Review: Atom Egoyan's 'Remember' With Christopher Plummer, Bruno Ganz, Dean Norris And Martin Landau

Jessica Kiang — Thu, 10 Sep 2015 14:40:00 GMT

If there's a reason, aside from the obvious physical ones, that we haven't had too many oldster revenge thrillers, perhaps it's that revenge as a concept seems one that age, experience and accruing wisdom might reconsider. After all, living well is the best revenge, if not exactly the most cinematic. But the irresistible premise of Atom Egoyan's "Remember," in which Christopher Plummer plays Zev, a German Jew pushing 90, who embarks on a hunt for the Auschwitz Block Commander responsible for the murder of his family during the Holocaust, justifies the shelving of this concern with what should be a compelling and moving further twist: Zev is not only frail in body, he is frail in mind and memory. So whatever it was that kept him from taking action before now is no longer an issue: his senile dementia has caused him to forget it. The pathos of this situation is clear, the stakes, which obviously involve genocide, justice and actual Nazis, are sky high and Plummer is completely extraordinary. So why on earth isn't "Remember" a better film?

Maybe it's because it's really two films, one of which is the evocative story of Zev's dissolving mind, degenerating body and despairing heart and within which you can file every wordless moment of Plummer's, every gesture and every utterly human, relatable reaction. During each of his close ups, and whenever he's alone on screen, at the piano or waiting on a porch or talking to a stranger's child or struggling into confused wakefulness, this is the film we're watching, and it's little short of amazing. In these moments it's a sort of "Mr Holmes"-esque evocation of the pitilessness of time, the frustration at one's own failing faculties and the deep horror that is waking up each day to live through grief all over again. In Zev's case that grief is twofold — he has suffered the recent loss of his beloved wife, but also needs to be reminded what the tattooed number on his arm means. In fact the loss of memory of a survivor of the Holocaust, with its invocation to "Never Forget" is so resonant and provocative, and so filled with paradoxes and tragic ironies, that it most certainly deserves its own film.

But there's hardly room for that film in "Remember" which is much more concerned with being a standard, and fairly schlocky revenge thriller. Its storyline defined by contrivances and contortions and genre-mandated twists that rob it of any potential depth, screenwriter Benjamin August also seems concerned to make sure that even the dimmest bulb in the audience fully understands each successive kink by including constant, on-the-nose, often repetitive lines of dialogue. And so all the things that Plummer has probably already communicated with just the tiniest change of expression get verbalized after the fact, which is frustrating for the halfway engaged viewer who has to keep stopping to let the film catch up. The separation of these two warring impulses in "Remember' amount to a segregation of plot and theme, with the former carried by the fairly pedestrian script and the latter living entirely in Christopher Plummer's performance. It's a little like watching a champion jockey saddle up a mule.

Zev is a 90 year-old, dementia-afflicted Jewish man living in a hospice for the elderly, sitting shiva for his recently deceased wife Ruth. His son, daughter and grandchildren are with him too, but it is a fellow hospice resident, the wheelchair-bound Max (Martin Landau) to whom he seems closest. In fact Max does the remembering that Zev cannot, and supplies him with all the information he needs in a crucial letter, which also outlines a final mission that Zev had apparently promised to take on once Ruth was gone. Zev is to track down the man who murdered both his and Max's families in Auschwitz, who has evaded justice all these years and is living under an assumed identity, and kill him. Unquestioningly following the instructions in the crucial letter, which he has to remind himself to read "Memento"-style, Zev's steals away in the dead of night and embarks on a sort of road trip — after stopping off to buy a gun — that sees him meet and interrogate four men (Bruno Ganz, Heinz Lieven, Dean Norris, Jurgen Prochnow) in his quest to locate the architect of his family's murder.

There are some insightful, fleet touches to Egoyan's film that point to a more successful synthesis of genre and character than is overall achieved. The way gun salesmen, border control officials and the grown up family members of the men he visits all assume that Zev is benign, simply because he is old. The way Zev plays two pieces of music in the course of the movie: one of them by the Jewish Mendelssohn, one by Hitler's favorite composer, Wagner (a thought Mychael Danna's omnipresent score reflects throughout, often employing warring melodies played on separate instruments to suggest inner conflict). And there are times like when he first sits at the piano and wonders if he can still play, that it feels like the film is suggesting that the whole mechanism of vengeance, for a crime Zev cannot even remember, is playing out almost like a muscle memory; revenge as an involuntary reflex. But then the next daft thing happens, or the next overwrought point gets hammered home (like the wildly unnecessary coda at the end) and you realize you're probably overthinking it.

It's hard to know what to make of Egoyan these days, especially after the nadir represented by the terminally silly "Captives." "Remember" is a marked improvement on that title, but that is pretty much the definition of faint praise. What's so frustrating this time out is that it's such a waste — of an intriguing, layered premise for one thing, but most especially of Christopher Plummer's late-career brilliance. Having such a strong element in the mix and then turning in this fairly ordinary B-movie feels like the result of special effort that's tantamount to an act of reverse alchemy: taking the gold of an insightful, genuine central performance and working furiously to spin it back into straw. [C+]

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