In This Edition: Ferrari, Maestro, Poor Things, Gina Lollabrigida, and a few other hot moments on the Lagoon.
The 80th edition of the Venice Film Festival, the world’s oldest celebration of cinema, was supposed to be demure—quiet even—with the Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild strikes blocking screenwriters and movie stars from the usual flashy promotional tours there: walking the red carpet, attending press conferences, granting interviews, signing autographs. Indeed, when MGM/Amazon pulled the opening night movie, Challengers, a super-sexy tennis movie directed by my friend Luca Guadagnino, because its leading lady, Zendaya, wouldn’t be allowed to light up the Lido with her star power—it’s now slated for April—cinephiles wondered who else might cancel.
No one, as it happens.
Even Luca, who I ran into in the lobby of the Sala Grande theater before the opening gala for the replacement film, Commandante, Edoardo De Angelis' submarine feature about the legendary Italian Captain Salvatore Todaro.
“I thought it was right to attend,” Luca told me. “Chic.”
Yes, very chic. (As was the Cartier leopard brooch on his lapel.)
Instead, there were directors, tech folks, such as set and costume designers—who usually don’t get the sashay before the paparazzi—and a lot terrific Big Films. The kind that make you want to go to the theater again.
Like Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, a wildly eccentric Victorian coming-of-age tale, based on Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel and starring a brilliant Emma Stone, which won the festival’s top award, the Golden Lion, tonight.
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