Bright moments of September 1 in Venice-80: among our visions, the long-awaited Poor things directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (here is the trailer), in the world premiere (and from January 25, 2024 in Italian cinemas)e Castle From Roman Polanski.
POOR, Yorgos Lanthimos – COMPETITION
Grotesque, ironic, cynical and liberating: Poor things this is a return in the style of Lanthimos, who, having already worked with Emma Stone no one Most lovely (2018), is now choosing an excellent role for the actress, probably in the most passionate and vivid interpretation in her entire career as an interpreter. Lanthimos extols and focuses on her, she is Bella Baxter, the unconventional protagonist/heroine of a film about discovering herself through the experience of the world and the other, through independence and suffering, in a world with purple skies where worried and resentful men decide for her. Set off on an adventurous journey, Bella is “reborn” after a failed suicide, returns to life with her body, but not her mind, and learns everything anew: the pleasure of sex, the despair of human cruelty, the multiplicity of perversion.
Based on the book Alasdair Gray (1992) Poor things he dresses his characters in gothic clothing, but gives them a ferocious and, paradoxically ironic, modernity.
PHOTOPHOBIA, Ivan Ostrokhovsky, Pavol Pekarchik – AUTHOR’S DAYS
View of Slovak directors Ivan Ostrokhovsky AND Pavol Pekarchik very painful and modern: “Photophobia”, presented as part of the Giornate degli Autori selection, was filmed entirely in the underground spaces of the Kharkov metro in Ukraine. What is shown on the surface is presented as fake slides, but filmed in Super8. It looks like a very distant past, but it’s something the community has recently left on the surface for fear of not surviving the turmoil of war.
Deprived of sunlight, families, old people and pets, they live in hiding and are already accustomed to the noise of explosions. Boy Nikita is friends with Vika, his age; together they cross the empty spaces of a far from familiar playground that forces them to limit their childhood, to seek sunlight as a reminder of their ordinary life. To see.
SILVIA PEZZOPANE
AGGRO DR1FT, Corinne Harmony – OUT OF COMPETITION
Most Controversial Director Harmony Korin arrives at the Venetian Lido in the out-of-competition section with his new film Agro Drift1ftwhich includes the name of the famous and no less scandalous American rapper Travis Scott. A feature film shot entirely with infrared technology. Agro Dr1ft is a story about underworld and revenge, with a look at the consequences of belonging to this reality.
Korine wants to experiment with his new feature film, but he doesn’t do it in a way that rejects rather than engages. Agro Dr1ft in fact, as a whole, it is an accumulation of infrared frames, united by a non-existent narrative thread: this makes the final product anonymous and unforgettable. A failed experiment, forgetting its main goal, provocation and novelty, and half of the hall leaving from the middle of the show is a confirmation of this.
PALACE, Roman Polanski – OUT OF COMPETITION
One of the most talked about names and now on everyone’s lips on the Lido, no doubt the name Roman Polanski. The Polish director presents his new feature film in the Out of Competition section. Castle, which revolves around strange events that take place in a hotel on New Year’s Eve 2000 with a group of aristocrats. In the cast Mickey Rourke, Oliver Masucci, Fanny Ardan, Luke Barbareschi, John Cleese, Joaquim de Almeida AND Milan Peschel.
Polanski aims to bring social and cultural criticism of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie to the big screen, giving a bittersweet, but at the same time truthful portrait of this part of society. Provocative and grotesque Castle it is a film that in its simplicity entertains right and wrong without fear of overdoing it, although it loses its essence in the last moments.
REBECCA FULGOSI
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