Venice Film Festival - Back in Fashion

Written by Kaleem Aftab on Friday, 18 September 2009 10:35

This year, the head honcho of the Biennale, Marco Muller, came up with a brain=wave, he programmed the debut film by former Gucci top man Tom Ford to close the competition.

Ford is the man that transformed Gucci from a leather suitcase label into a high-end fashion house that oozed class, so the glamour quotient was always going to be high, but what was unexpected was that his film, A Single Man, had substance as well as style. Loosely adapted from Christopher Ishwerwood’s 1964 novel of the same name, it stars Colin Firth as a British university professor residing in L.A. in 1962 and still trying to get over the death of his young lover (Mathew Goode). Over the course of 24 hours we see him contemplate suicide, get pursued by a dashing student (Nicholas Hoult) and hanging out with his best pal, socialite Charley Julianne Moore. Young British actors Goode and Hoult do a fine job playing middle-class Americans but it’s Firth who steals the show as the thoughtful, unhappy teacher. Ford was expected to make a stylish movie, with great costumes and production values, but the unexpected bonus was that he also delivered in story telling and character development.

Tom Ford, Julianne Moore and Colin Firth / Getty Images

Todd Solandz showed that he still rules the roost when it comes to dysfunctional American families as Life During Wartime, his follow-up of sorts to Happiness is filled with acute observations and funny moments that also, surprisingly, see the revival of characters from Welcome To The Dollhouse.

Michael Moore brought his romance Capitalism: A Love Story, which follows the same formula as his other documentaries. Moore gets on his high-horse about something, exposes what he sees as the problems and tries to take the argument to the people in charge. Usually they don’t talk to him, but by then it’s too late as he’s already made an ass of them and had the audience in stitches. Taking on Capitalism is a big task given how much people love buying new merchandise and upgrading their lifestyle, but at the end of the day it’s hard to argue with Moore’s view that the world would be a better place if it were not designed simply to service the top 2 per cent.

George Clooney in The Men Who Stare at Goats / Getty Images

The disappointments at Venice were the out-of-competition Hollywood fare. The Men Who Stare at Goats, starring George Clooney as a soldier trained to use psychic powers rather than arms to win wars has its moments, but doesn’t have a plot worthy of the name. The big, big disappointment was Steven Soderbergh’s Informant! in which Matt Damon plays a whistle blower with a few cobwebs in his own closet.

Matt Damon in The Informant / Getty Images

A big surprise was that Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans was pretty funny, and made best use of Nicolas Cage dumb act. It’s not so much a remake of the Abel Ferrara film, more of a complete reinterpretation and much more of a straight genre pic than the Ferrara effort. For my money the Ferrara version remains vastly superior, but Herzog proves that there is no better director in the world at making a movie while at the same time winking at the audience.

Nicolas Cage in Bad Lieutenant / Getty Images

Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes in Bad Lieutenant / Getty Images

Venice of course is famed for its art-house pedigree and in this aspect did not disappoint. Austrian director Jessica Hausner managed to make a film about Lourdes that was a fine balance between faith and scepticism that did not take the easy way out of saying the idea of miracles are baloney. Isabelle Huppert puts in another great performance in White Material, as a coffee farmer determined to protect her crop in Claire Denis’s movie set at the outbreak of a Civil War in an unnamed African country, which was shot in Cameroon.

The Golden Lion for the best film went to Lebanon, the directorial debut from Samuel Maoz. It’s a war story set almost entirely within a tank and although there is much to admire, particularly the opening sequence as the soldiers move into a village, which is unbearable to watch, I did not think it was as well made or perceptive as Ari Folman’s animation Waltz with Bashir, that dealt with similar problems in the same campaign.

Nonetheless, this was one of the better selections at Venice in recent years. There was even a fun new comedy from Fatih Akin, Soul Kitchen, to keep the crowds smiling in between all the serious stuff.

- by Kaleem Aftab

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Comments (1)

|Registered |2009-09-23 15:04:11 Carmen007 - The man who stares at goats

Thanks for saving me ten dollars. I was wondering about this movie - it sounded pretty ridiculous. If I was Clooney I would've been wondering if Ashton was punking me.