MIMI'S HIGHLIGHTS
63rd VENICE INTERNATIONAL
FILM FESTIVAL (Venice, Italy)
30 August - 9 September 2006
- - Before and During the Festival - -
September 9 - Young
Belgian director Joachim Lafosse wowed critics at the Venice Film Festival with PRIVATE PROPERTY, a dark family
story centered on a woman and her 20-something twin sons.
Isabelle Huppert, one of France's most talented performers vividly portrays
a middle-aged divorcee planning to sell the family home to set up a guesthouse and make a fresh start with her
life. But Jeremie and Yannick Renier, who are brothers in real life but not twins, almost steal the show with their
interpretation of the two sons who, opposed to the house sale, turn against their mother and eventually against
each other.
PRIVATE PROPERTY -- Nue Propriete in French -- is the third film for Lafosse who, at 31, is the youngest director competing for the
top prize in Venice this year.
September 4 - Here comes the early buzz. As one critic stated it, "Critics and crowd are bowing and curtseying" before Stephen
Frears THE QUEEN and Helen Mirren who portrays Queen Elizabeth II in this reconstruction of the crisis within the
British monarchy caused by Princess Diana's death in 1997. This one could win one of the big prizes.
THE BLACK DAHLIA received mixed reviews, while Verhoeven's BLACK BOOK won praises, and Carice van Houten, who plays a Jewish girl who infiltrates
the local headquarters of the Gestapo for the resistance, is a candidate for best actress.
At this point, the two other early front-runners among 21 films in
the main competition are French filmmaker Alain Resnais's PRIVATE FEARS IN PUBLIC PLACES, and Mexican director
Alfonso Cuaron's CHILDREN OF MEN, an apocalyptic vision of London in 2027 that has Islamic radicals, illegal immigrants
and vigilante rebels wreaking havoc in a bleak portrayal of a world gone mad.
Resnais, 84, has directed more than 45 films and won the Golden Lion
for best picture in 1961 (LAST
YEAR AT MARIENBAD). This year's entry examines our desperate quest
for happiness in an intimate film set in a snow-covered Paris.
August 30 - The
Festival, called the Mostra del Cinema in Italian, kicked off with a flourish today. Here comes the pre-Oscar rush. This year's main line-up
will certainly propel one or more of the movies near the top in February. So far, there has been little seen in
the theaters, or at film festivals, that shows much in the way of Oscar potential. That begins to change with Venice,
as "Oscar Season" begins 1 September.
This year, four American studios sent their films to the Venice film competition
prior to domestic release. Brian de Palma's THE BLACK DAHLIA, about two policemen assigned to investigate the brutal
murder of an unknown actress in Hollywood opens the festivities. It is based on an actual murder in 1947, later
fictionalized in a crime novel by James Ellroy. The movie stars Scarlett Johansson, and two-time Oscar winner Hilary
Swank.
A couple of the "big guns" are, HOLLYWOODLAND, about the mysterious
death of Superman TV star George Reeves in 1959, with stars Adrien Brody, Ben Afleck, and Bob Hoskins. Then, there
is BOBBY, written and directed by Emilio Estevez. About the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968, BOBBY features
Sharon Stone, Anthony Hopkins, Demi Moore, Lindsay Lohan, Martin Fishburn, Helen Hunt and many other who are well-known.
Also eagerly awaited by Oscar watchers are the competition films like
Darren Aronofsky's THE FOUNTAIN; Alfonso Cuaron's CHILDREN OF MEN with Clive Owen, Michael Caine, and Julianne
Moore about a plague of infertility that threatens humankind; Director David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE; Jackie Chan's
ROB-B-HOOD; Kenneth Branagh's with THE MAGIC FLUTE (a world premiere); Total Recall and Basic Instinct director
Paul Verhoeven's BLACK BOOK (Zwartboek), about a German Jewish girl in W.W. II; and British Director Stephen Frears, whose THE QUEEN examines
the royal family's reaction to the death in a 1997 car crash of popular Princess Diana.
Out of competition but sure to create a stir in Venice is INFAMOUS in
which Director Douglas McGrath takes on the life of writer Truman Capote, starring Sandra Bullock, Daniel Craig,
Gwyneth Paltrow and Isabella Rossellini.
Heavy hitters all. Real-life crime, the dark sides of Tinseltown and the
Royal Family, a plague, Jews under threat in W.W. II. What an exhilarating time the festival goers will have feeding
off others misfortunes. Praise be for Jackie Chan and Mozart who, hopefully, will liven everything up a bit.
August 25
- The jury will
be chaired by French actress Catherine Deneuve and comprised of Paulo Branco, Cameron Crowe, Chulpan Khamatova,
Park Chan-wook, Michele Placido, and my long-time friend José Juan Bigas Luna of Spain.
August 14 - The out of competition lineup is impressive:
Santiago AMIGORENA -
Quelques jours en Septembre (France, Italy);
Kenneth BRANAGH -
The Magic Flute (UK); FENG Xiaogang -Yeyan (China, Hong Kong);
David FRANKEL -
The Devil Wears Prada (USA); Pavel LOUNGUINE - Ostrov (Russia);
David LYNCH -
Inland Empire (USA);
Goro MIYAZAKI
- Gedo senki (Japan);
Manoel de OLIVEIRA
- Belle toujours (Portugal); and
Oliver STONE
- World Trade Center (USA).
August 1 - Italian actress Isabella Ferrari will host the
opening gala, August 30, and the closing night ceremonies, 9 September. Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia, which
screens in competition, will make its world premiere opening night.
July 28 - Artistic Director Marco Müller (pronounced,
Mueller) announced that, for the first time, all the films
in competition will have their world premieres at the Venice fest will premiere. Müller said it is both a source of
pride and a great risk.
There will be 21 films competing, five are from the U.S. (The
Fountain, Hollywoodland, Children of Men, Bobby, and The Black Dahlia scheduled as the opener); three from Italy
(La Stella Non C'e [The Star's Not There], Nuovomondo [New World], Quei Loro Incontri [Those Encounters of Theirs]);
two each from France (L'Intouchable, Private Fears in Public Places) and Japan (Paprika, Mushi-Shi); and one from
the U.K. (The Queen). There also are entries for the first time from Chad (Daratt) and Thailand (Sang Sattawat).
[More details about the films]
JULY 7 -
Festival organizers announced that David
Lynch, the writer-director best known for BLUE VELVET,
THE ELEPHANT MAN, and MULHOLLAND DRIVE, will receive a lifetime achievement award at the 63rd Venice Film Festival.
It will be a double honor for Lynch, whose mystery film INLAND EMPIRE will have its world premiere -- out of competition
-- at the festival. The film, set near Los Angeles, stars Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons, and Harry Dean Stanton.
May 25 -
Both Oliver Stone's WORLD TRADE CENTER, starring
Nicolas Cage, and Irwin Winkler's HOME OF THE BRAVE were hyped at Cannes as strong candidates for premieres at
the 63rd Venice International Film Festival. Extended trailers for both were show during a promotion for the Venice
festival as the Cannes Festival winds down.
Film selection is still in progress, of course. However, Artistic
Director Marco Müller unveiled plans for a retrospective
of Russian films, and a tribute to Brazilian Cinema Novo director and writer Joaquim Pedro de Andrade. He said
the festival is likely to have a strong European lineup among the 50-plus films screened. Müller is scheduled to visit the Netherlands in July to look at a couple of Dutch
titles: Paul Verhoeven's return to Dutch-language cinema with BLACKBOOK, a World War II drama, and Alex Van Warmerdam's
black comedy OBER (Waiter). [MORE OF ARTICLE]
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