Seen @Venice 71

Seen @Venezia71 – Eva Robin’s, Roberto Spada, Carla Alvera and Randy Ingerman

Venice 71: Film Festival – Berlluscone. Una Storia Siciliana – Franco Maresco

Venice 71: Film Festival – Berlluscone. Una Storia Siciliana – Franco Maresco. Directed by Franco Maresco and staring Ciccio Mira, Salvatore De Castro, Vittorio Ricciardi, Tatti Sanguineti, Salvatore Ficarra and Valentino Picone, the film critic Tatti Sanguineti arrives in Palermo to find out what has happened to Franco Maresco’s unfinished movie: Belluscone. Una storia siciliana. A film that was supposed to tell the story of the unique relationship between Berlusconi and Sicily through the misadventures of the Palermitan impresario of Neapolitan “neomelodic” singers and organizer of street festivals, Ciccio Mira, an undaunted supporter of Berlusconi, nostalgic for the old days’ Mafia— and two artists in his stable, Erik and Vittorio Ricciardi, who perform in the squares of Palermo a song entitled “Vorrei conoscere Berlusconi” (“I Want to Meet Berlusconi”). The film focuses on three failures: the political and human one of a Berlusconi now on the wane; that of the unfortunate and “slapdash” Ciccio Mira, rooted in an old but tenacious culture; and finally, the artistic one of the director, who chooses to disappear after realizing that tilting at political windmills is pointless, in a country that has long identified with Berlusconian “culture” and probably continues to do so.

 

Berlluscone. Una Storia Siciliana – Tatti Sanguineti and Franco Maresco

 

Berlluscone. Una Storia Siciliana – Andrea Occhipinti

Venice 71: Film Festival – The Cut – Fatih Akin

 Photograph courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

Venice 71: Film Festival – The Cut – Fatih Akin. Fatih Akin’s The Cut stars Tahar Rahim, Akin Gazi, Simon Abkarian and George Georgiou. Armenian man, Nazareth Manoogian, after surviving the genocide learns that his twin daughters may be alive, and goes on a quest to find them. This takes him from his village Mardin to Mesopotamian deserts, Havana and finally North Dakota. “The Cut is an epic film, a drama, an adventure movie and a western all rolled into one. The film may be set a hundred years ago, but it could not be more topical: it tells a tale of war and displacement, as well as portraying the power of love and hope, which enables us to achieve the unimaginable. The Cut is the conclusion of the Love, Death and the Devil trilogy. It explores the theme of “the devil,” examining evil and the harm we are capable of inflicting on others—both unwittingly and deliberately—showing the fine line that often separates good from evil. The Cut has become a very personal film. Thematically, it explores my conscience and formally it expresses my passion for the medium of film.” The director Fatih Akin states.

Above. The director Fatih Akin.

 Photograph courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

The Cut

Venice 71: Film Festival – Hungry Hearts - Saverio Costanzo

 

Photograph courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

Venice 71: Film Festival – Hungry Hearts - Saverio Costanzo. Costanzo’s Hungry Hearts stars Adam Driver, Alba Rohrwacher and Roberta Maxwell.  Jude is an American, Mina an Italian. They meet by chance in New York City. After a whirlwind romance, they get married and she becomes pregnant. A brand new life begins for both of them. Since the early months of pregnancy Mina is convinced that her child will be special; it is her mother instinct that tells her so. This child must be protected from all the pollution of the outside world and, to respect his nature, his purity must also be preserved. For the sake of his love for Mina, Jude plays along with her, until he reaches the point where he has to face a terrible truth: his son is not growing, and his life is in danger. Jude must act quickly. A covert battle of suspicions and resentments begins between Jude and Mina, leading to a desperate search for a solution in which everyone’s motive gets blurred.

Above. Alba Rohrwacher and Adam Driver in Hungry Hearts.

Hungry Hearts - Alba Rohrwacher

Venice 71: Film Festival – Manglehorn - David Gordon Green

 Photograph courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

Venice 71: Film Festival – Manglehorn - David Gordon Green. David Gordon Green’s Manglehorn stars the great Al Pacino.  Reclusive small town locksmith Angelo Manglehorn has never quite recovered from losing the love of his life, Clara. Fixated on her memory, he feels closer to his beloved cat than the people around him and prefers to find comfort in his work and daily routine. Still, he forges on with his tenuous human connections, maintaining intermittent contact with his son, taking misplaced pride in a former protégé gone astray, and establishing a cautious friendship with a kindhearted woman from the local bank. As this solitary man approaches the possibility of new love, he finds himself at a crossroads between remaining consumed by the past and embracing the present. Manglehorn is a movingly humanistic portrait of a man rendered with unsentimental simplicity and idiosyncratic humor.

 

Manglehorn Press Conference - David Gordon Green and Al Pacino

Manglehorn Press Conference - Al Pacino

Venice 71: Film Festival – 3 Coeurs (3 Hearts) – Benoit Jacquot

 

Photograph courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

Venice 71: Film Festival – 3 Coeurs (3 Hearts) – Benoit Jacquot.  3 Coeurs directed by Benoit Jacquot stars Benoit Poelvoorde, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Chiara Mastroianni and Catherine Deneuve. One night in a French provincial city, Marc meets Sylvie after missing his train back to Paris. They wander through the streets until morning, talking about everything except themselves, in rare, almost choreographed, harmony. Marc takes the first train back, and sets a date with Sylvie in Paris, a few days later. They know nothing about each other, but this is much more than a game. Sylvie keeps the date. Misfortune befalls Marc, and he cannot. He searches for her and ends up finding someone else: Sophie. He does not know that she is Sylvie’s sister. Marc and Sylvie meet again. Their unparalleled harmony still exists... but it is too late...

Above. Charlotte Gainsbourg and Benoit Poelvoorde in 3 Coeurs.

 

  photograph ASAC - courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

3 Coeurs – director Benoit Jacquot

  photograph ASAC - courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

3 Coeurs – Chiara Mastrioanni and Catherine Deneuve

Venice 71: Film Festival - Ich Seh Ich Seh (Goodnight Mommy) - Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala

Venice 71: Film Festival - Ich Seh Ich Seh (Goodnight Mommy) - Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala.  Ich Seh Ich Seh (Goodnight Mommy) directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, stars Susanne Wuest, Elias Schwarz and Lukas Schwarz. In the heat of the summer. An isolated house in the countryside between woods and cornfields. Ten-year-old twins wait for their mother. When she comes back, her head wrapped in bandages after plastic surgery, nothing is as it was before. Stern and distant now, she shuts the family off from the outside world. Starting to doubt that this woman is actually their mother, the boys are determined to find the truth by any means.

Venice 71: Film Festival - Anime Nere (Black Souls) - Francesco Munzi

 Photograph courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

Venice 71: Film Festival - Anime Nere (Black Souls) - Francesco Munzi.  The story of Anime Nere, directed by Francesco Munzi is of a Calabrian criminal family unfolds like a western set in our own day, where the laws of blood and the vendetta take precedence over everything. A tale that begins in the Netherlands and passes through Milan on its way to Calabria, amid the peaks of the Aspromonte, where everything begins and ends. Anime Nere is the story of three brothers, the sons of a shepherd, close to the ’Ndrangheta, and of their divided soul. Luigi, the youngest, is an international drug dealer. Rocco, Milanese by adoption and a member of the middle class, runs a business funded by his brother’s ill-gotten gains. Luciano, the oldest, cherishes the pathological illusion of a preindustrial Calabria, conducting a gloomy and solitary dialogue with the deads. Leo, his twenty-year-old son, represents the lost generation, without an identity. All he has inherited from his forebears is hatred. As a result of a trivial quarrel he carries out an act of intimidation against a bar under the protection of the rival clan. Anywhere else it would have been no more than a prank. Not in Calabria. It’s the spark that sets off a blaze. Luciano finds himself in the same predicament as at the time his father was killed many years earlier. In a dimension suspended between the archaic and the modern the characters are drawn into the archetypes of tragedy. Staring; Marco Leonardi, Peppino Mazzotta, Fabrizio Ferracane, Anna Ferruzzo and Barbora Bobulova.

Above. Director Francesco Munzi.

 

 Photograph by Marco Leonardi courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

Anime Nere

Venice 71: Film Festival – She’s Funny That Way – Peter Bogdanovich

  Photograph courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

Venice 71: Film Festival – She’s Funny That Way – Peter Bogdanovich. She’s Funny That Way directed by Peter Bogdanovich, stars Owen Wilson, Imogen Poots, Jennifer Aniston, Rhys Ifans, and Kathryn Hahn.  Young Hollywood starlet Isabella Patterson recalls how the actions of a charming Broadway director, Arnold Albertson, changed her life forever. As told to a reporter in a not-so-reliable recollection of events, the Brooklyn-born former escort reminisces about how a rendezvous with the director turned into a larger-than-expected sum of money and an offer she couldn’t refuse. Like a cockeyed fairy tale, a chain of events affecting the lives of everyone involved, including Arnold’s wife Delta, leading man Seth Gilbert, playwright Joshua Fleet and even Isabella’s therapist Jane ensues.

Above. Imogen Poots and Owen Wilson.

Photograph courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

Jennifer Aniston and Peter Bodgdanovich

Photograph ASAC - courtesy La Biennale di Veneiza 

Red Carpet - She’s Funny That Way – Owen Wilson

Venice 71: Film Festival Miu Miu Women’s Tales #7 - #8.

 Venice 71: Film Festival Miu Miu Women’s Tales #7 - #8.

#7 - Spark and Light – Kim So Yong. Spark and Light is directed by So Yong Kim. It’s the seventh commission from Miu Miu Women’s Tales, the acclaimed short-film series by women who critically celebrate femininity in the 21st century.  “Mom’s stable, asleep. Drive safe! Xoxo Dad.” Soon after Elizabeth receives this text message, her mother isn’t the only one lost in sleep. Elizabeth’s car has broken down. It’s freezing cold, no sign of life nearby. She just has to wait, patiently. The recovery guys will be here soon, Elizabeth. Till then, she warms her young hands on the vents, drifts into a strange slumber, followed by an even more surreal awakening. Icelandic landscapes merge with Elizabeth’s memories. Fears are magically transformed into comforting and fantastical fabrics. Father, upstairs, alone.  This latest addition to Women’s Tales is redolent of So Yong Kim’s previous features—such as For Ellen, Treeless Mountain and Inbetween Days, which won a Special Jury Prize at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. “I’ve always been obsessed with family dynamics,” says the Korean born American writer and director, “I’m always trying to develop my understanding of that.”In the new film, we see this take the shape of a mother divided in two: one unconscious on a hospital bed; the other vibrantly alive surrounded by love. Riley Keough’s acute performance as Elizabeth paired with the poetic isolation of Iceland effectively multiplies the size of this dream-like story. It adds new intellectual and emotional colour to the Miu Miu Women’s Tales series: that twilight space between childhood, adulthood and mortality."

Above. Attending the Miu Miu Women’s Tales screening; Dakota Fanning, Kirsten Dunst, Kate Mara, Felicity Jones, Lena Dunham and Nicoletta Romanoff.

 

Dakota Fanning with Lena Dunham

 

Kirsten Dunst

#8 - Somebody – Miranda July. “Test my soil. Deeper.”  Have you ever found it impossible to say something, face to face, to someone you know, someone you love? The words just won’t come out? A new messaging service, SOMEBODY, by Miranda July could help. It’s the star of her film for Miu Miu Womens’ Tales, the eighth commission in the acclaimed short-film series by women directors who critically celebrate femininity in the 21st century.  Jessica wants to tell Caleb she can’t be his girlfriend anymore. She opens up SOMEBODY, types in the heartbreaking message, and selects Paul from a list. Paul is in the park. Paul’s phone dings. He eyes Caleb having a picnic. Paul delivers the bad news—as Jessica. Eyes bawling. Arms flapping. Caleb is, devastated.  The SOMEBODY app then totally saves Yolanda and Blanca’s friendship, makes Jeffy’s marriage proposal to lonely Victoria, and initiates a curious ménage-a-trois between two prison workers and a parched potted plant named Anthony.  This latest addition to Womens’ Tales showcases Miranda July’s unique ability to capture the strange tenderness of contemporary relationships. SOMEBODY takes our endless hunger for communication, technology, avatars and outsourcing, and blends it into what seems to be a surreal near-future — but it’s not. It’s right now. In close collaboration with Miu Miu, July worked with a team of developers to create this radical and complex app; when the movie ends we’re invited to visit somebody app.com to send or deliver our first message.

Above. Director Miranda July.

 

Kate Mara

 

 Felicity Jones

Alba Rohrwacher