The Greek Iorgos Lanthimos had already put the criticism in his pocket after last week's screening of Pobres criaturas, a gothic fable of women's liberation with which last night he ended up winning the Golden Lion of the 80th edition of the Venice Festival. The film, with a script by Tony McNamara, draws from the novel of the same name by the Scottish writer Alisdair Gray, and takes us to a London of the 19th century in which an unorthodox scientist with a face full of scars (Willem Dafoe) revives a young woman who tries to commit suicide. Bella Baxter, played by an unstoppable and uninhibited Emma Stone, becomes a kind of Frankenstein with no visible scars and long black hair who will gradually rebel against her seclusion in the surgeon's house, where they live other hybrid creatures, eager for new experiences and with a great sexual appetite.
"Until now the industry has not been ready to receive a film like this," Lanthimos pointed out about a story loaded with explicit sex scenes. And he praised the dedicated performance of Stone, who could not go to the Mostra due to the Hollywood actors' strike. A strike that has marked this very special edition, with practically no stars on the red carpet, but which has counterattacked with ten days of powerful cinema that has displayed a wide range of awards.
The Japanese Ryûsuke Hamaguchi continues his unstoppable career after winning the Oscar for best international film with Drive my car, and yesterday he took home the grand jury prize for Evil does not exist, a song to nature as mysterious as it is disconcerting that also pointed to the Golden Lion.
The Italian Matteo Garrone was recognized with the Silver Lion for best director for Io capitano, the journey of two young people, Seydou and Moussa, who leave Dakar to embark on the journey to Europe. The film portrays a contemporary odyssey through the perils of the desert, the horrors of detention centers in Libya and the perils of the sea. Filmed in Senegal and Morocco, the director sent an emotional message of support to the latter country after the terrible earthquake that has caused numerous victims. A drama, that of immigration, which Agnieszka Holland also tackles with shocking rawness in black and white in The green border, winner of the special jury prize for her denunciation of the humiliating treatment of asylum seekers at the border between Poland and Belarus. "It was a very difficult film to make. People are still hiding in those forests", lamented the veteran Polish filmmaker, who dedicated the award to "the activists who do the impossible to help all these people".
The Chilean Pablo Larraín took to the stage in the big room of the Palazzo del Cinema to collect the prize for the best screenplay for The Count, co-written with Guillermo Calderón. The film is a black and white satire on the Chilean dictatorship with an Augusto Pinochet in the skin of a vampire over 250 years old. "The figure of Pinochet is more alive than ever. He died free and a millionaire and never paid for his crimes. This impunity made him eternal", recalled Larraín to the press, who ended his words with a resounding: "No to impunity!".
The Volpi Cup for best actor went to an emotional Peter Sarsgaard for his role as a man who knows he will soon be lost to dementia in Michel Franco's Memory. The performer from the United States starred in one of the most forceful and emotional speeches of the gala, charging against the use of AI in the industry and urging the need for a more human connection in all areas. And with performances as stellar as that of her co-star Jessica Chastain or that of the aforementioned Emma Stone, it was surprising to hear Cailee Spaeny's name as the winner of the Volpi Cup for best actress. The 25-year-old plays a naïve 14-year-old Priscilla Presley in Priscilla, Sofia Coppola's disappointing film about the then-teenager's complex relationship with Elvis Presley. "It's the most magical and unexpected experience of my life," he said, still unable to believe his luck. Horizons, the second most important section of the Mostra, dedicated to the new avant-gardes and expressive currents, awarded as the best film Explanation for everything, by the Hungarian Gábor Reisz. And at the Author's Day, in which the Basque Víctor Iriarte competed with his first fiction feature Sobre todo de noche, the Canadian Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person prevailed, a coming-of-age black comedy and horror about a young vampire who needs to feel a personal connection with her prey.
