Italians shine at the Venice Film Festival

Family dysfunction at centre of films by Avati, Comencini and Faenza

For the 62nd edition of the Venice Film Festival, festival director Marco Muller has been boasting about its Hollywood-friendly line-up. But it's the Italians that take centre-stage this year, as they should considering this is the country's most prestigious and oldest event of its kind.
In the competition section of the festival there are no less than six Italian films, including several co-productions. Pupi Avati's La Seconda Notte di Nozze stars Neri Marore, Antonio Albanese and Katia Ricciarelli in a story set during 1945 where a woman, Liliana, and her son, Nino, steal a car and drive towards Puglia where she hopes to hook up with her brother-in-law whom she loved when they were young.
"The strange couple formed by Liliana and Nino, the scatterbrained son, is tied to memories of my adolescence," explains Avati. "My mother was widowed quite young, and she was an attractive woman and her friends, afraid that she would give in to solitude, forced her to meet other men. She accepted to go on some dates, and often she'd bring me along. I remember some funny moments, like one where the guy was a dentist who was obviously gay."
Another film in competition is Cristina Comencini's La Bestia nel Cuore, which stars Giovanna Mezzogiorno as Sabina, a beautiful woman with a great job and man she loves. But lately she's been troubled by constant nightmares, and when she discovers she's pregnant her mind opens up to memories of a strict childhood that have hidden dark secrets. The film is based on Comencini's novel of the same name.
The third all-Italian film in competition is Roberto Faenza's I Giorni dell'abbandono starring Margherita Buy and Luca Zingaretti. Olga, a still young woman, tranquil and satisfied, is all of a sudden abandoned by her husband and falls into a bottomless vortex. The days of abandonment are the endless hours of losses, inflicted and suffered, the times of hard emotions and feelings that devastate her, of the love sickness that suffocates her. In the end everything is revealed and finally the nightmare starts to go away: Olga has not risked going insane for love of her husband, but because she has experienced by herself what the sense of love really is. Now that she knows its cost, she knows how to face it. From the Elena Ferrante novel by the same name.
An Italian co-production with France is Patrice Chereau's Gabrielle, starring Isabelle Huppert and Pascal Greggory. Gabrielle and Jean have been married for 10 years. He is a writer who loves to live in a universe he constantly controls, made up of rules and timetables set up beforehand. One day upon returning home, he discovers that Gabrielle is gone. In a letter left on the table, she tells him that she has run off with his editor. Suddenly Jean realizes that in the 10 years of marriage, there had never been any real love between them.
A co-production with the U.S.A. is Abel Ferrara's Mary, starring Juliette Binoche and Matthew Modine. Tony Childress, an infamous, egotistical and obsessive actor/director is playing the lead role of Jesus in his controversial new film This is my Blood. When the shoot wraps, Marie Palesi, his lead actress, is left alone in Jerusalem, drained, empty. Into the void within her is poured the spirit of Mary Magdalene, and Marie embarks on a profound journey towards enlightenment. Meanwhile, in New York City, TV journalist Ted Younger begins his own quest for spiritual truth through his documentary about the life of Christ. When the premiere of Tony's film becomes the target of bomb threats by the vengeful religious Right, the lives and paths of these three characters come dramatically together.
"The idea for the film is at least four years old," Ferrara responds when asked if he was inspired by Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. "So there are no ties between this and the success of Gibson's film. However, that success helped us out in terms of finding financing."
As to his affinity with Italian cinema, " I was born in the Bronx where there were more Italians than in Trastevere. It's there that I discovered the Italian cinema culture. So of course I'm heavily influenced by people such as De Sica, Rossellini, Antonioni and Bertolucci."
The final Italian co-production, with Poland and Russia, is Krzysztof Zanussi's Persona non grata. Since the death of Helen, his life-long companion, Wiktor who presides over the Polish Embassy in Uruguay, feels restricted by the rigid regulations. Wiktor is involved in underhanded diplomatic dealings with the Russians, in the trading of arms and International organizations, but he no longer has faith in anything. He is all alone. He believes all his friends are untrustworthy, and that Helen had also been unfaithful to him. When he finally discovers that all of his suspicions are unfounded, he surrenders to his own emotions of truth and moral principles, feelings he believed to have lost, since leaving his town after Solidarnosc. Having taken off the veils of the powerful Ambassador, Wiktor once more leads the life of a simple man.
The highly anticipated All the Invisible Children is featured out of competition and contains seven shorts from some of cinema's most influential filmmakers. Produced by Italian actress Maria Grazia Cucinotta, the movie centres on children around world, and features works by Spike Lee, Emir Kusturica, Katia Lund, Ridley and Jordan Scott, Stefano Veneruso and John Woo.
The Venice festival is also holding a special programme titled The Secret History of Italian Cinema, featuring movies that have concentrated on the life of famous Venetian playboy Giacomo Casanova. The movies in question are Riccardo Freda's Il cavaliere misterioso (1948); Steno's restored version of his 1955 movie Le avventure di Giacomo Casanova; Luigi Comencini's Infanzia, vocazioni, prime esperienze di Giacomo Casanova, veneziano (1969); and Federico Fellini's restored version of his 1976 film starring Donald Sutherland, Il Casanova di Federico Fellini.
This year's festival is presenting a Homage to Fulvio Lucisano, one of Italy's most prolific and influential producers. Featuring restored versions of all the prints, the films included in the homage are Mario Bova's Terrore nello spazio (1965) and Le spie vengono dal semifreddo (1966); Massimo Dallamano's Cosa avete fatto a Solange? (1972) and Il medaglione insanguinato (1975); and Un mondo perfetto, a film anthology by Nino Pagot.
Finally, special screenings will be dedicated to restored versions of Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1975 Saló o le 120 giornate di Sodoma; and Vittorio De Seta's 1961 Banditi a Orgosolo.

The Venice International Film Festival runs from August 31 to September 10.

Publication Date: 2005-08-28
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=5506