Where Beauty Floats and Time Stands Still
There are cities you visit, and there are cities that quietly enter and stay in your system.
The Venice Film Festival, which begins rolling on 27 August, is the oldest in the world, even predating the one at Cannes. While the Italian 11-day annual event had its inaugural run in 1932, first as a propaganda platform for the Fascists, the festival on the French Riviera came 14 years later in 1946. It is, of course, another story that Cannes was all set to open its first edition in 1939, but Hitler’s invasion of Poland just a few days before pushed this festival by many years.
The question that most ask is which is the better of the two. There was a time when Cannes was considered the queen of all, but Venice, under the directorship of Alberto Barbera, has inched its way up and is now on par with Cannes in terms of star power and movie selections.
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This year, some of the biggest names in the world of cinema will be at Venice, a city made famous by Shakespeare and his characters, Shylock and Portia, among others. Not just this, but the place is also unique because it is a city built on water!
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Some of Hollywood’s leading ladies and men will sail into the Lido, a quaint island off mainland Venice that hosts the festival. George Clooney, Emma Stone and Julia Roberts will be in attendance with their films that will screen between 27 August and 9 September.
The Festival’s 82nd edition will begin with La Grazia (Grace), helmed by the Italian Oscar-winning Paolo Sorrentino. It is a love story starring Toni Servillo and Anna Ferzetti, and will compete for the top Golden Lion.
The festival’s lineup, announced in Rome a few days ago by Barbera, includes highly anticipated titles like Mexican director Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, with Isaacs as the titular protagonist scientist and Saltburn star Jacob Elordi as the monster, as well as Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine, featuring Dwayne The Rock Johnson as the heavyweight wrestling champ Mark Kerr and Emily Blunt as his wife, Dawn Staples.
There will also be Greek helmer Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia starring Emma Stone and others. The work is a remake of the 2003 Korean sci-fi movie, Save the Green Planet! by Jang Joon-hwan. Also on the list announced by Barbera are Noah Baumbach’s comedy drama, Jay Kelly, with a cast that includes Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern and Greta Gerwig. And we will also have Julian Schnabel’s meta drama about the creative genesis of The Divine Comedy, In the Hand of Dante, with Al Pacino, Gerard Butler, John Malkovich, and Martin Scorsese.
Jim Jarmusch was not at Cannes this year, quite a surprise. But he will be in Venice competition for the first time with an anthology work, Father Mother Sister Brother, starring Adam Driver, Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps and the long-time collaborator of the director, Tom Waits.
American veteran Gus Van Sant will also arrive at the Lido with a kidnapping drama, Dead Man’s Wire. Kathryn Bigelow (who made the famous The Hurt Locker) will screen her political thriller, The House of Dynamite, with Idris Elba.
Oscar-clinching European helmer from Hungary, Laszlo Nemes, will offer Orphan (set after the 1956 revolt against Soviet rule). Barbera called it the director’s most memorable film to date because “it is based on his father’s memories”.
From France, we have Francois Ozon’s L’Etranger. This is the third adaptation of Albert Camus’ novel. Earlier, Luchino Visconti’s 1967 work and Zeki Demirkubuz’s 2001 creation were great hits.
American star Jude Law will appear as Vladimir Putin in Olivier Assayas’s The Wizard of the Kremlin, a movie which explores the Russian President’s rise. Italy will showcase Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt – a London-college story starring Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield and Chloë Sevigny.
The writer is a senior movie critic
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