Max Borg
The running inside joke among attendees of the 2024 Venice Film Festival was that it felt like the event had lasted a whole month, mainly because of the absolutely brutal heat (the torrential rain that struck the Lido on the second Thursday was greeted with some enthusiasm as a result). And one could definitely be tempted to trot out the age-old “hostage situation” moniker for some screenings, particularly the four (!) TV series that were screened in full (three of them in the Sala Casinò, one of the natural enemies of the accredited visitor’s butt cheeks).
Adding to a certain feeling of agony was the amusing decision to bookend the 81st edition with films that, to differing degrees, deal with death and the afterlife. The opening slot went, of course, to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, a harmless piece of fun that ignited proceedings with a healthy mixture of energy and macabre wit. And given the presence of a flashback that draws on Tim Burton’s affection for the works of Mario Bava, it was fitting that, ten days later, the closing movie should be Pupi Avati’s The Backyard, the latest example of the director’s self-described “Padanian horror”. Alas, the result was less thrilling than usual, not least because of the poor ADR applied to most of the performances.
Netflix, with whom Venice has had a fruitful relationship since 2015, was notably absent this year (save for a brief mention as a minority production company on the Italian comedy drama Diva Futura, about the local porn industry in the ‘80s and ‘90s). Apple gamely stepped in with one of the prime out-of-competition offerings, Wolfs. Jon Watts, currently enjoying an extended break from directing superhero movies, is still not quite back in his element (the script could have used a few more revisions), but it’s worth a look for George Clooney and Brad Pitt gamely sending up their screen personas and cheekily admitting they’ve aged. Curiously, despite the recent announcement of the film’s shortened theatrical window (it will be available to stream on Apple TV+ a mere week after its debut in cinemas), no one bothered booing the company logo at the beginning, which is customary when Netflix has a movie at the festival.
Another star making a return to the Lido was Joaquin Phoenix, reprising his Oscar-winning role as Arthur Fleck in Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux. The highly anticipated sequel proved even more divisive than its predecessor, in part because Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn was underused (then again, not a surprise: she’s the female lead in a Todd Phillips movie). Personally, I was quite enthralled, and impressed at the sight of Phillips using the first film’s box office success to get the funds for a follow-up that takes several big swings, including openly alienating the incel crowd it supposedly caters to.
Completing the Warner Bros. trifecta, after Beetlejuice and Joker, was Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2. A late addition to the lineup, it screened only once to the public, in one of the smaller venues, but the audience’s participation was no less enthusiastic: no longer held back by the need to set everything up, Costner allows the story to breathe properly and realizes which characters are more interesting to follow (in a major show of modesty, the man himself is only in the movie for about 15 minutes, out of 190). If and when it opens in theaters, it should be able to improve the saga’s commercial prospects.
Away from the main festival area, the Sala Corinto (first used in 2022) hosted most of the Venezia Classici screenings, i.e. restored classics and documentaries about cinema. The latter tend to be fairly conventional, but the occasional gem has been known to pop up. Such was the case with Chain Reactions, which ended up winning the section’s Best Documentary prize. Commissioned by Kim Henkel, the co-writer of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, to celebrate that film’s 50th anniversary, the movie is the latest example of Swiss-born director Alexandre O. Philippe’s knack for crafting a compelling mixture of archive footage, original visuals and fun interviews (including, in this case, Patton Oswalt and Stephen King). It’s also a powerful reminder of just how disturbing Tobe Hooper’s work was: at the screening I attended, a few people who had presumably never seen the original walked out when the more gruesome clips popped up on the screen.
On the Italian front, true stories were all the rage, the most interesting of the bunch being Familia. The second feature by Francesco Costabile, it won the Best Actor award for the Orizzonti section, a richly deserved prize for Francesco Gheghi’s performance as a teenage boy coming to grips with the harsh reality of his father being an unrepentant domestic abuser. On a more serene note, Francesca Comencini’s Il tempo che ci vuole was a warm tribute to her late father, the great filmmaker Luigi Comencini (the early stretch of the film includes the making of his classic adaptation of Pinocchio), a touching blend of autobiography and fairy tale.
There was a general mood of thematic heaviness, even when the films themselves could be quite entertaining. A good example of this was Fabrice Du Welz’s Maldoror, basically a Belgian Zodiac, minus the factual accuracy: as explicitly stated in the opening credits, this relentless serial killer thriller, a story told from the viewpoint of a fictional police officer, is only loosely based on the case of child molester Marc Dutroux, who shocked the country with his actions in the 1990s. Italian filmmakers Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza also played fast and loose with the facts in their verbose, literate gangster movie Sicilian Letters, which opens with the disclaimer “Reality is a point of departure, not the destination.”
Was there any room for levity? Yes, mainly in the shape of Takeshi Kitano’s hilarious Broken Rage. A pastiche of his motifs and style, the film tells the same story twice: the first half is a more conventional yakuza movie, while the second puts a comedic spin on the same premise. In essence, Kitano, the director, is reconciling his more soulful side with the silliness of his acting persona, Beat Takeshi, whose first break was on the comedy circuit. In an industry where even the best films can sometimes feel bloated, this was a refreshingly brief affair at 62 minutes, which made it even funnier when one of the gags revolved around the notion of padding the duration. This was the true winner of the festival, figuratively at least, not to mention the source of the event’s funniest moment: at the official premiere, Kitano was genuinely surprised and bemused when the announcer introduced him by both of his names, as though the actor and the filmmaker were separate people.
