It’s a reward “with the appearance of symbolic reparation”summary The Country.
The Venice Film Festival awarded its Golden Lion on Saturday, September 7, to the great Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, 74, for his first American film, “The room next door”on assisted suicide. A regular at the biggest festivals, the author of masterpieces such as “All About My Mother”, “Bad education” or “Pain and Glory”had never before been awarded a supreme prize in competition.
“European festivals have been elusive with Almodóvar and have tended to privilege the work of his actors rather than his own. Perhaps because the singularity and exuberance of his cinema have not always worked in his favor when it comes to creating consensus within juries composed of people with divergent tastes.”estimated The Country.
“The room next door” tells the story of Ingrid (Julianne Moore), a novelist anxious about the end of life, and Martha (Tilda Swinton), her childhood friend, a former war reporter accustomed to defying death. Suffering from cancer, the latter decides to end her life.
“The achievement of this award is even greater when one takes into account the fact” that Almodóvar has “took a series of creative risks unusual for a 74-year-old director”estimated The Newspaper. “First of all, this is the first of his feature films shot entirely in English.”notes the Catalan daily. It is also “probably the most aesthetically sober film of his career, and despite dealing with a subject as prone to generating sentimentality as death”the feature film also makes “the bet on dramatic restraint that the director has been practicing for several films”.
The president of the jury, actress Isabelle Huppert, also praised on Saturday a work addressing “important topics” with “philosophy”, “distance” et “without melodrama”.
The Evening Courier believes for his part that it is a “unexpected victory”. “It was not easy, despite the clear distance that separated ‘The Room Next Door’ from all the other films: because too many times juries full of stars without real cinematographic culture have given rise to risky verdicts, not this year.”
[…] - Courrier international
