On settembre - 3 - 2011
September 3rd, Lido of Venice.
The 68th edition of the Venice Festival today’s gifted critics and public of rare pearls of contemporary cinematography.
From Yorgos Lanthimos’ greek movie, in competition, “Alps”, where a group of 4 persons combine each other into a little associations, with rules and things to declare, called Alps, where everyone is involved to substitute himself with the personality of dead men and women, with their survivals, changing way of life and habits, and so escaping from their own lives. Something similar to Pirandello’s art, where everyone is an actor, in life and dead.
Great ideas at the bases of Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud’s “Chicken with Plums”, set at the end of the ‘50s: a story of the most celebrated violin player, with his beloved instrument broken. He take off playing because life without music seems intolerable, and staying in bed for days, he takes a trip into his own childhood and futures, understanding his poignant secrets and the profundity of his decision to give up life for music and love.
The most lighting movie of this Saturday has obviously been Mr. Steven Soderbergh’s one, “Contagion”, a contemporary disaster movie, well done and full of pathos, where a pandemic virus takes place in the whole World, from Hong Kong to the USA, of course starring lots of today’s stars, from Matt Damon to Gwyneth Paltrow, Laurence Fishbourne, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard and Jude Law.
Steven Soderbergh: “It’s a dramatic movie, very realistic too. Can you think of a world where the paranoid idea of being contaminated is everywhere? I’m here in Venice since yesterday and I’ve took hands of lots of people in the last 24 hours: how would I manage with this in that case? I’ve been inspired, with my scripeteriter Scott Burns, from some movies of the past, first of all Alan Pakula’s “All The President’s Men”, setting the movie in some places of the World, from Hong Kong. I’ve chosen the China because there’s a market where you can buy live animals and this is where the Sars took place. The most interesting thing in the movie is that no one is the first actor, but the one which is, the virus itself, is everywhere but invisible. There are no metaphors, and my protagonists acts in their own lives like everyone would do in reality, making mistakes and being terrorized, only to survive.
Jude’s character is the one who gives some kind of counterpart of the worldwide view, and Laurence’s one is someone who’s involved to support people and make them conscious of the danger but not too much, not to terrify everyone to the excess.
It’s a very fast movie, not too due to introspection, because in a situation like that everyone of us would not think too much but do.
Now I’m working on two movies for the future, and one of them will be on men-strippers. Then I’ll take an year off of working. Hoping to creating something new, and painting…”
by Ilaria Rebecchi
