Finally consecrated, at the age of 74 and after twenty feature films: on Saturday September 7, the jury of the Venice Film Festival, chaired by Isabelle Huppert, decided to award the Golden Lion to Pedro Almodovar for The Room Next Door.
Filmed for the first time in English, and carried by actresses Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, this drama follows the reunion of two friends, one a novelist, the other a war reporter, against a backdrop of illness. In a sad irony, Tilda Swinton’s character has incurable cancer and decides to organize her death by finding the right pill on the dark web.
We find in this film the twilight concerns that the Spanish filmmaker has already deployed, notably in Pain and Glory (2019). On such a serious subject, the duo of actresses succeeds in instilling a tender atmosphere that is never morbid, sometimes even enhanced with a certain humor. However, the film retains this classicism and this polished image that sometimes leaves one at a distance – thus the flashback showing the reporter on the ground in Iraq is quite improbable.
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The Silver Lion, Grand Jury Prize, went to another drama, this time pastoral, Vermilionby the Italian Maura Delpero: during the Second World War, the story follows the daily life of a large family, in a village perched in the Italian mountains, who welcome two deserters with more or less kindness. The camera focuses on the actions of the siblings, especially the sisters, whose desire for independence will not all be fulfilled. Delicate, scrutinizing the sexual emotions of the two eldest, and the guilt that goes with it, Vermilion suffers from the limitations of its own program, those of a film on the subject of emancipation, the motives of which can be guessed from the first shots.
The award for best achievement went to The Brutalistby American actor and director Brady Corbet, a great fresco in two parts (more than three hours) retracing the life of the architect Laszlo Toh: a Jew born in Hungary and survivor of a concentration camp, he tries to rebuild his life in New York. The film follows the ups and downs of this American dream, which will resemble a fairy tale for a while when a rich owner takes him under his wing with his family, entrusting him with a vast construction project. The descent, however, will be bitter. The epic has breath but its aesthetic does not escape grandiloquence, as does the exuberant interpretation of Adrien Brody, which can tire.
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