Monsters of the Lagoon: Pinochet as a vampire, Emma Stone created in a laboratory, zombies against patriarchy

In the end, perhaps we will only have to devour each other. Drink our blood. To destroy us in the traps of a terrifying collective nightmare. How scary. What a news. Horror transcends the beloved and illustrious film genre, becoming a narrative tool in the hands of famous directors, becoming the perfect language for describing the metaphors of our contemporary. At the Venice Film Festival, which opens on Wednesday, there have never been so many vampires, so many monsters, so many aliens. Discomfort grows, and with it the need to resort to an alternative presentation, stronger and sharper than a simple exposure. To the cinema El Conde Chilean Pablo Larrain, who claims to be the Lion, dictator Augusto Pinochet (Jaime Wadell) soars on his formidable wings in the leaden sky of the desert country. When he is hungry, he devours frozen hearts, when he falls in love, he bites his prey and turns them into his own kind, when he risks losing the vast wealth stolen from his people, he is ready for anything, even to kill his closest ones: , the director told Variety, “is based on an old idea based on the most dangerous of all concepts, namely that a character like Pinochet can be eternal.” At a time like this, Larren continues, “when history seems to be repeating itself,” an attractive hypothesis concerns “the idea that evil can be fed to exist for years.” On the other hand, the director notes, “it seems that the extreme right, that part of our political spectrum that often flirts with racism, is always there to remind us that they can return at any moment.”

In a time of overwhelming violence and daily feminicides, Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, also competing with Poor things, decides to describe the path of female emancipation, putting the main character Bella Baxter, played by Emma Stone, who is a kind of Frankenstein experiment. Free, adventurous, thirsty for life, Bella is a newcomer capable of anything: “In this story,” the actress explained in an interview with Vogue, “I love the fact that the main character is a kind of new woman, ready to face reality for the first time to understand sexuality, power, money, freedom of choice and, above all, the ability to live life according to your own rules, contrary to the imposed by society. This is a world that I found terribly exciting and that I immediately wanted to explore.”

A year ago at the exhibition, Luca Guadagnino described in Bones and all, a cannibalistic allegory of teenage discomfort, this time the turn of a young woman brought back to life by Dr. Godwin Baxter (Wille Dafoe), an eccentric and resourceful scientist who will begin Bella’s odyssey across different continents. Next to her lawyer Duncan Wedderboom (Mark Ruffalo), but between them she is the one who is really not afraid of anything, if only because she was born in a laboratory: “Men are different,” explained the author, a candidate for two Oscars for Most lovely – who are trying to influence Bella’s life in different ways, and this is exactly what makes her grow. In short, Bella uses men, not the other way around: “One of the first things Lanthimos said to me when he talked about my role,” explains Stone, “is that the more Bella learns, the men go crazy. . The fact that you express very specific opinions, wants and needs drives them crazy.

Another exhausted woman appears on the scene. BANDYouDirected by Bertrand Bonello and starring Léa Seydoux. This time in a film “very loosely” based on a short story by Henry James. Beast in the jungleIn the film, set between Paris and Los Angeles, protagonist Gabrielle decides to cleanse her DNA by relying on a company that uses artificial intelligence to make people relive their past existence, freeing them from the burden of emotions now considered a pure threat. . However, when Gabrielle meets Louis (George MacKay), a shadow of a feeling, perhaps an ancient connection, seems to surface, and the story, divided into three time phases: 1910, 2014, 2044, takes on a melo tone. The dilemma is clear: is it better to become monsters, that is, able to give up their nature in order to permanently avert suffering, or is it better to cultivate a heartbeat and suffer the inevitable consequences? On the other hand, as suggested heavenly peals

, a film by Moin Hussain presented at Critics’ Week (made by Turin’s ScriptLab), the line between human and can’t always be blurred. It is up to young Adam to come to terms with these slippery limitations in the film as he reconstructs the image of a father he never knew and who he learns that during his lifetime he always cultivated a certainty that he was not of humanity. It’s all about the effort Adam is forced to make to look at reality from an unexpected perspective, hovering between “reality science fiction and political cinema.” A landscape full of living and non-human, or dead and living, as in Ghoul, the debut of Adrian Bo (in Sic), based on a story by Tolstoy and dedicated to the frightening experience of a young marquis who, six days after his death, returns to the land of zombies, cursed, destined, however, for an important mission: “History,” explains Beatriz Fiorentino in head of the Sic, portends, and if not portends, then the end of patriarchy. Other obsessions resonate in parasites Sebastian Vanicek, where an invasion of poisonous spiders forces the residents of a suburban apartment building to fight for survival. And here, in the frame of horror associated with natural explosions, a social allegory is hidden. It seems that in order to understand our present, we must arm ourselves with courage and delve into our darkest fears.