Posts Tagged ‘Venice’

La Grazia (2025) Venice Film Festival 2025

Dir: Paolo Sorrentino | Cast: Toni Servillo, Anna Ferzetti, Orlando Cinque, Milvia Venturiello | Italy Drama 131′

Paolo Sorrentino returns to form with this impressive Venice film festival opener crafted with the same serious style as his sinuous thriller The Consequences of Love (2004).

Once again Sorrentino returns to political and social intrigue as in his previous titles Loro and Il Divo the subject is a (fictitious) respected judge called De Santis who is tasked with signing a bill on the timely topic of euthanasia. He struggles with his demons to make the right, rather than the consensual decision, and crucially tackles a tricky situation involving the legal pardon ‘(la Grazia’) of a prisoner, a traditional move before his term comes to an end.

And who better to play De Santis than Toni Servillo, arguably Italian cinema’s most accomplished contemporary actor who won the Best Actor award at this year and who also starred as Berlusconi and Andreotti in Sorrentino’s previous ‘biopics’. Here he attempts to unite a nostalgic vision of an Italy of the past (when he sings with a group of retired Alpine soldiers) but also one that looks forward to a hopeful future, at a time in the West where true democracy has lost its way mired in controversy and led by lying and unscrupulous leaders.

As in The Great Beauty and Youth this is also a film about a man coming to terms with his past and an he must deal with an unfortunate indiscretion involving the president’s wife. It also explores a deep and relatable friendship that really rings true. The film looks beautiful and there’s music and witty one-liners – in short this is a joy. @MeredithTaylor

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2025 | OPENING FILM 2025 |  ACTOR TONI SERVILLO

82nd Venice Film Festival 2025

 

Venice Film Festival continues its mission to outshine Cannes. And this year’s offering may very well achieve that aim with a glittering array of features from filmmakers at the zenith of the careers, along with a few new faces.

The 82nd Venice International Film Festival takes off on the August 27 to September 6, 2025, at the Venice Lido in Italy. This prestigious festival is one of the oldest in the world, founded in 1932. There was a brief wartime break before it continued to dazzle local audiences and attract visitors from all over. Now it professes to be the catwalk for the Oscars.

Paolo Sorrentino will be there with his festival opener La Grazia carried by the one and only Toni Servillo. The festival will come to a close with Julia Jackman’s 100 Nights of Hero based on Isabel Greenberg’s best-seller and starring Richard E Grant and Felicity Jones.

The Jury, presided by Alexander Payne will decide the winner of this year’s Golden Lion award, and Lifetime Achievements will be presented to Werner Herzog and Kim Novak.

Amongst the main competition there are much-anticipated new features from Olivier Assayas with a political thriller The Wizard of the Kremlin tracing the rise to power of Vladimir Putin (Jude Law) seen through the eyes of a young Russian filmmaker.

Noah Baumbach
 has assembled an eclectic and copious cast for Jay Kelly a showbiz-based comedy drama which he directs and co-writes with Emily Mortimer who also stars alongside George Clooney as the eponymous hero.


A House of Dynamite sees a return to centre stage for Kathryn Bigelow
 with a hard-hitting political drama centred on a White House missile crisis and starring Jason Clarke and Rebecca Ferguson.

Mexican maverick Guillermo del Toro turns his talents to a recreation of 
Frankenstein played by Jacob Elordi with Oscar Isaac as the famous doctor.

Silent Friend is the latest offering from Hungarian auteuse and Golden Bear winner Ildikó Enyedi
. Starring Tony Leung and Lea Seydoux it centres on a storied and lonely old tree standing in a botanical garden.

After her success script-wise with The Brutalist Norwegian filmmaker and actor Mona Fastvold presents The Testament of Ann Lee, co-written by Brady Corbet it follows the real life story of cultish founder leader of the Shaker Movement played by Amanda Seyfried.

Six years after his zombie outing The Dead Don’t Die Jim Jarmusch explores family conflict in Father Mother Sister Brother starring Cate Blanchett, Adam Driver, Charlotte Rampling and Vicky Krieps.

A comedy invasion movie called Bugonia is Yorgos Lanthimos’ follow up to his awkward psychological oddity Poor Things
 that won the 2023 Golden Lion and went on to bag four Oscars amongst others awards.


Hungarian filmmaker László Nemes shocked audiences with his Oscar-winning Venice title Son of Saul in 2015, and then went on to charm them on the Lido with Sunset (2018) another wartime story set in his native Budapest. His latest Venice hopeful Orphan is set in the aftermath to the 1956 Hungarian uprising and ponders the complexities of parenthood and false memory from the perspective of an orphaned boy.

With L’Etranger François Ozon
 tackles the famous novel by French literary hero Albert Camus. The black & white drama explores a crime that took place in 1930s Algeria  by an apathetic young Frenchman played Benjamin Voisin. Denis Lavant stars in the second of his cameo roles in this summer’s festival circuit (the first is at Locarno).

South Korea’s Park Chan-wook finds an ironic solution for unemployment in his dark comedy Eojjeol Suga Eopda (No Other Choice), based on a book by the late Donald E Westlake the murderous premise suggests; ‘if you can’t beat them, eliminate them’

Documentarian Gianfranco Rosi
 won the Golden Bear in 2016 for his maritime meditation on immigration in Lampedusa Fire at Sea His latest, a black&white visionary documentary, three years in the making, explores everything under the clouds and each random encounter around the Bay of Naples which teems with all sorts of life in the shadow of Vesuvius.

ONES TO LOOK OUT FOR

After the Hunt – a Julia Roberts’ starring drama from Luca Guadagnino

The Hand of Dante – Julian Schnabel New York set story about the discovery of a manuscript purportedly written by the great Italian poet

The Last Viking – Anders Thomas Jensen casts Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas as bankrollers in a comedy caper

Dean Man’s Wire – Al Pacino stars in this crime drama from Gus Van Sant

Marc by Sofia – a documentary on Marc Jacobs by Sofia Coppola

Ghost Elephants – Werner Herzog follows a tiny herd of elephant in Angola

Nuestra Terra – Lucrecia Martel‘s doc longtime in the making documentary about an indigenous tribe in Argentina headed by Javier Chocobar.

Kim Novak’s Vertigo – Alexandre Philippe‘s doc about Novak with a focus on Vertigo

Cover-Up – Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus

Broken English Jane Pollard, Iain Forsyth look at the life of Marianne Faithfull

Director’s Diary – a five-hour exploration from the Golden Lion winning Russian director Alexander Sokurov 

Hui Jia (Back Home) Stray Dogs director Tsai Ming-liang is one of the leading figures in New Cinema in Taiwan. The winner of many international awards, he was awarded the Golden Lion in Venice in 1994 for Vive L’Amour. This Year hé presents his latest, a documentary

VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2025 | 27 August – 7 September

 

Last Night in Soho (2021)

Dir|Wri : Edgar Wright | Cast: Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Wood, Diana Rigg, Terence Stamp, Rita Tushingham, Synnøve Karlsen, Michael Ajao | Fantasy thriller, 116;

Only residents know the misery of living in the toilet that is today’s Soho with its sordid street eateries all night disco taxis. To the outside world louche glamour has always been the watchword for this niche quartier and this edginess is revisited in Edgar Wright’s first horror pic, a warped psychological thriller inspired by the psychotronic cinema of the 1960s and ’70s.

Last Night in Soho has vintage star power in the shape of British screen veteran Rita Tushingham, playing the protagonist’s doting grandmother, Peggy, who fondly remembers her own glory days in around Carnaby Street. Joining her is Terence Stamp and Diana Rigg, in her swansong, in a party that is refreshed for a new generation with a time travel twist and a vampire subplot that rather outstays its welcome.

Wright, best known for his zombie cult classic Shaun of the Dead, brings the dizzying dynamism and style of Baby Driver to a feature that carries us forward like a perilous ride at a fun-fare with its neon shot aesthetic and retro score of classic hits from Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw and Petula Clark but the music is drowned out by the extended horror element that overwhelms character and storyline in the final stretch.

It all starts in Cornwall where Thomasin McKenzie is ambitious dancer Eloise Cooper. Raised as an orphan by her grandmother Peggy – her mother committed suicide – Eloise dreams of Twiggy and Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Awarded a much coveted place at the London College of Fashion, Eloise then heads to the capital as Peggy’s warnings about the seamier side of London fall on deaf ears.

Bitchy flatmate Jocasta (Synnøve Karlsen) proves too much for the delicate Cornish rose to handle so she moves on with down-to-earth Ms. Collins (Rigg) who keeps her on the straight and narrow, for a time. But the young girl’s dreams turn to nightmares in a tonal shift that grows sinister in the garish strobe of the lighted signage outside her bedroom. Now in a nocturnal time warp Eloise meets Anya Taylor-Wood’s blonde, back-combed singer Sandie dancing to an electro disco vibes from Steven Prince. Dreams of fame and success taunt the young Cornish creative, blind-siding her to the lascivious intentions of her seedy agent Jack (Smith) who’s all over her like a cheap suit – and wearing one too. 

There is a distinct feel of Peter Strickland’s In Fabric to the tone and styling here as Eloise’s life swings form the past to the present, her fashion career gliding sinuously through a series of twists and turns as she descends into the dark demimonde where Eloise’s forays intensify in a vivid vibe of danger.

She meets Terrence Stamp’s suave silver fox and Michael Ajao’s sweet romantic dreamer to the retro vibes of Petula Clark who trills: “forget all your troubles, forget all your cares, so go downtown.” Wright presents Soho as synonymous with glamour and vice in a musical fantasy exploring the darker face of fame and fortune. Shame there wasn’t more of the music and less of the gore. MT

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2021 IN UK CINEMAS FROM 29 OCTOBER

 

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