Venice International Film Festival should be waking up after a period of relative calm. That’s what we all thought a year ago when, following the declaration of the Hollywood actors’ strike, the festival prepared itself for a year without stars. No Emma Stone. No Michael Fassbender. As it happened, Venice 2024 still felt pretty darned festive. The fizz always rises when the speedboat docks at the Lido. But this year it again comes with celebrity.
So which stars are coming?
Where to begin? George Clooney and Brad Pitt – probably the closest we have to supernovas of the old school – will be on the Lido with John Watts’s comic thriller Wolfs. That is very much out of competition. Daniel Craig, Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Angelina Jolie, Tilda Swinton, Julianne Moore, Jude Law and Nicole Kidman are among those supporting films vying for the Golden Lion. Jenna Ortega, Michael Keaton and – mamma mia! – local legend Monica Bellucci are here for the opening film, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.
What the heck is Joker: Folie à Deux?
Five years ago Todd Phillips’s Joker astonished long-time festival watchers by getting past auteurs such as Roy Andersson, Noah Baumbach, Hirokazu Kore-eda and James Gray to take the Golden Lion. It was therefore inevitable that the sequel would come to the lagoon. The word was that it is a musical, but Phillips has backed away slightly from that. “Most of the music in the movie is really just dialogue,” he said last week. Brendan Gleeson is (now that Saoirse Ronan’s Blitz has gone to London Film Festival) among the few Irish actors on a Venice screen this year.
Will Maria complete the Pablo Larraín ‘lonely lady’ trilogy in style?
You’d have to think so. In 2016 the Chilean director brought Jackie, with Natalie Portman as Jacqueline Kennedy, to this event. Five years later the gondolas delivered Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in the spooky Spencer. Now no less a star than Angelina Jolie turns out as Maria Callas in a study of the opera singer’s later years in 1970s Paris. Callas was born in New York and raised in Greece but spent much of her professional career in Italy. A daring premiere.
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How has it taken so long for Pedro Almodóvar to make a film in English?
You’d have to ask him. There is, of course, no reason he should ever do such a thing. But, at 75, he has turned to that language. The Room Next Door stars Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton. Well, of course it does. Those actors could hardly be better suited to the primary colours of an Almodóvar joint. Swinton is a war reporter who has a fractious relationship with old chum Moore. Astonishingly, the Spaniard has never won at any of the three big European festivals: Cannes, Venice and Berlin.
Is that infamous Jerry Lewis pet project back again?
So it seems. Shot in 1972, Lewis’s The Day the Clown Cried is among the most notoriously unseen films in the medium’s history. Starring the director and the Ingmar Bergman regular Harriet Andersson, the film details the tragic story of a clown in Auschwitz. “This movie is so drastically wrong,” Harry Shearer, among the few to see it, wrote more than 30 years ago. No, it is not about to be fully unveiled. But From Darkness to Light, a documentary on the project, does have “never-before-seen footage”.
What will we make of Daniel Craig as a William S Burroughs stand-in?
The move from Chester to James Bond to Burroughs is not an obvious one, but hopes are high for Craig’s turn as William Lee – a pen name for the beat guru – as he pursues an American sailor in 1940s Mexico City. Luca Guadagnino was supposed to open Venice 2023 with Challengers, but the strike intervened. He does them a favour by returning with a fascinating project. Lesley Manville and Jason Schwartzman are also on board.
What is this ‘most eagerly anticipated film’ I’ve never heard of?
Brady Corbet’s first two features – The Childhood of a Leader and Vox Lux – have, as they say, “divided critics”, but there is still an indecent amount of excitement around the 215-minute The Brutalist. The director has posted worries about transporting the huge cans of 70mm film. Alberto Barbera, Venice programmer, has said it will be the “big surprise” of the festival. Adrien Brody stars opposite Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones in the story of a postwar American architect.
Are there more documentaries worth waiting for?
Sure. We are particularly interested in 2073, a speculation about the state of the world in that year from Asif Kapadia, the director of Amy and Diego Maradona. Kevin Macdonald, the man behind One Day in September, arrives with One to One: John & Yoko, the subject of which should be obvious. Errol Morris, a legend, brings us Separated, about the Trump administration’s policy of separating families at the US border. Alex Ross Perry’s Pavements, an experimental biopic of the band Pavement, sounds unmissable.
Is it vulgar to ask if we can see next year’s Oscar nominees here?
It may or may not be vulgar, but we know everyone else is doing it. So why shouldn’t we? If Almodóvar delivers then The Room Next Door seems a likely best-picture nominee. Jolie will surely be in the running for best actress. Joaquin Phoenix could figure in best director for Joker: Folie à Deux, but the cancellation of Todd Haynes’s untitled latest, after the actor reportedly got “cold feet”, has put some unwanted publicity his way. Mark The Brutalist down as a dark horse.
So what will win the Golden Lion?
It’s the most amusing of games to speculate what Isabelle Huppert’s jury will pick before anyone has seen the films. Neil Young, Vienna-based programmer out of Wearside, has long been running reliable odds on the game. He currently has Queer as favourite, at a shortish 5/1. The Room Next Door is next, at 3/1, and then Maria, at 7/1. But watch out for Nicole Kidman as a chief executive having an affair with a younger intern in Halina Reijn’s Babygirl; 8/1 with Neil, the film could also skirt the Oscar race.
Venice International Film Festival runs from Wednesday August 28th, to Saturday September 7th
