Even more from the 67th Venice International Film Festival
Lots more to talk about as the Venice film festival continues. Pablo Lorrain’s Post Mortem has played in competition for the Golden Lion. Much like Lorrain’s astounding previous film Tony Manero, Post Mortem is set in 70s Chile during the Pinochet military coup. Like that previous film, it stars Alfredo Castro as a detached, sociopathic obsessive, again functioning as a metaphor for absolutism in the facist regime. But whereas Tony Manero’s social satire had a delicious edge of black comedy, Post Mortem is harder to laugh at. Set in a morgue, the film depicts the huge loss of life in the wake of the first few days of the military action. Soon the morgue is full of bodies, of ordinary people, young and old. Another contemporary Latin American classic from a really exciting young film-maker.
I had said, last time around, that I would be seeing John Turturo’s documentary about the world of Neopolitan music, Passione (not to be confused with the in competition La passione), as well as Martin Scorsese’s documentary about the films of Elia Kazan, A Letter to Elia. However, I was thwarted in both attempts. For the former, I arrived at the screen without my press pass (which remained at the hotel) and couldn’t get in – which is a shame, as Brighton’s Duke of York’s Picturehouse manager, Jon Barrenechea, did go and he said it was excellent (incidentally, you can hear him talk about it on the latest Splendor Podcast). A Letter to Elia was shown very few times and in very small screens, so I was unable to catch it, despite spending an hour in the queue, because there was not enough room in the screen.
But I did manage to get into one of the festival’s most talked about out of competition films, Casey Affleck’s documentary on the acting retirement (and unlikely hip hop career) of Jaoquin Phoenix, I’m Still Here. Easily the best time I’ve had in a film here, it is really funny. Affleck was on the receiving end of a massive standing ovation after it screened, and he deserved it. It is still hard to tell whether it is a hoax or a straight-up documentary (though I, like many, suspect the former), with the director maintaing its authenticity at his press conference this morning. Whatever it is, it is worth seeing and a great look inside a world of fame and celebrity. Phoenix is either very disturbed or an absolute genius.
Jerzy Skolimowski debuted his latest film: a man-on-the-run thriller starring Vincent Gallo, Essential Killing. It’s a busy festival for Gallo, with his own film also in competition here (Promises Written in Water) and a short film, The Agent, screening in the Orizzonti section. In this film he plays an Afghan named Mohammed as he bids to escape the American soldiers who are trying to capture him. After a brief and jarring opening section set in the Afghan desert in which Mohammed is captured after blowing up some American contractors, the film relocates to an non-specific Eastern European snowy wilderness (shot in Norway and Poland), where he escapes ends up on the run again. The film is really about the need to survive: a need which, like the title suggests, leads Mohammed to kill. Ironically, it is his basic human impulse to survive that brings him futher and further away from his humanity. A tense, thrilling and beautifully shot film, which I expect to do pretty well in independent cinemas when it hits the UK. Probably aided by some media controversy.
The number of Chinese films I have seen at the festival has increased further. I’ve seen two more (taking the total to five) and both are in competition. First up, Tsui Hark’s Di Renjie zhi Tongtian diguo (Detective Dee and the Mystery of Phantom Flame) is yet another martial arts epic blockbuster. With action scenes choreographed by the legendary Sammo Hung (an actor and director in his own right), Hark’s fantasy detective tale is a colourful and entertaining escapist adventure. The twist on the usual wire fu mayhem is the detective element, with the hero giving Angela Lansbury a run for her money in what is basically a whodunit story. I enjoyed the out of competition, Legend of the Fist, quite a bit more, but Di Renjie is worth a watch for fans of the genre.
The other Chinese movie of the last few days was tonally completely different to all the others so far. Wang Bing’s The Ditch premiered this morning as this year’s “Film Sorpresa” – literally a surprise film not listed in the programme. Bing’s previous features have all been documentaries, but The Ditch marks his first foray in fiction film making. The film is set during the 1960s, as the Maoist regime send thousands of “rightists” to be re-educated in manual labour camps. It follows a small group of these prisoners, who live in a makeshift ditch, as they live and work in the Gobi Desert. Basic rations are scarce, the nights are freezing and the work is back-breakingly hard. Death is a daily occurrence. A tough watch, The Ditch is grim and authentic feeling, with a documentary aethetic complimented by naturalistic acting and sound design.
I keep banging on about the great number of Chinese made films this year (and there are many more than five here across all categories) because it stands in stark opposition to the pool of British movies on show here. As far as I can tell from looking through the programme, there are three feature-length British films in the festival. And all three are experimental, art-house pieces: probably more likely to be found projected on a wall at the TATE Modern than in a cinema.
The one I saw was Patrick Keiller’s Robinson in Ruins, a 101 minute long piece, which is solely comprised of Vanessa Redgrave reading a monlogue about the banking crisis and the breakdown of modern society over a series of still images of the British urban landscape (red post boxes, road signs, a branch of Lidl). It is exactly as much fun as that sounds. Perhaps it would have been more at home in the nearby architecture festival, but I didn’t need to see it in a cinema. Anyway, I digress: my point is that aside from these small, art films entered into the Orizzonti category (Venice’s wing for oddities like this), there is nothing here to justify the Union Jack that is currently flying, aside many other national flags, above the Sala Grande.
