WINDOW TO THE OSCARS
Venice fi lm festival kickstarts jousting over Academy Awards
The 74th Venice fi lm festival gets underway Wednesday with Alexander Payne’s sci- fi satire Downsizing in the high- profi le opening slot that is increasingly coveted as a launchpad for the Oscars.
Starring Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig, Sideways director Payne’s latest quirky creation is a tale of a lower middle class couple in the US midwest.
But the downsizing of the title is not a reference to job losses or selling off the family house. Instead the pair are considering signing up for radical new surgery that would allow them to be shrunk to tiny versions of themselves, on the promise of a better life.
Written by Payne, a twotime Oscar winner for his screenplays, and Jim Taylor, the fi lm will be seeking to emulate the success of La La Land, Birdman and Gravity, all Venice openers in recent years which went on to bag a bunch of Academy Awards and other prizes.
Whether it does is likely to depend on how critics react to the fi lm’s intriguing plot, which Variety described as “Honey I Shrunk the Kids with a deeper social message.”
Also being unveiled on the opening day is Nico, a bio- pic focusing on the fi nal years of the Velvet Underground singer and Andy Warhol muse which is being shown in the festival’s “Horizons” section dedicated to cutting- edge productions.
Directed by Susanna Nicchiarelli, with Danish actress Trine Dryholm in the lead role, the story catches up with one of 1970s New York’s iconic fi gures in 1987 and 1988, the last two years of her life.
It fi nds her battling a heroin habit but also fi nding fulfi lment through her music and her relationship with her son.
Redford and Fonda
Downsizing is one of 21 fi lms competing for Venice’s top prize, the Golden Lion, which will be handed out on September 9, along with a string of other awards including the fi rst for fi lms in a new competition for virtual reality productions.
As usual the international fi lm line- up at Venice ranges from big- budget Hollywood productions, like George Clooney’s sixth directorial outing Suburbicon, to new works by indie favorites Andrew Haigh and Warwick Thornton, via documentaries such as Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s epic look at the global refugee crisis Human Flow.
British director Haigh will be presenting Lean on Pete, his fi rst fi lm since the acclaimed 45 Years, while Thornton arrives in Venice next week to promote Sweet Country, a Western set in 1920s Australia that deals with the treatment of the country’s indigenous peoples.
In total, 71 new full- length fi lms will be shown over the next 10 days, along with 16 short fi lms and two TV series.
Along with Clooney, the major stars due on the red carpet include Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, here to pick up lifetime achievement awards while plugging their new fi lm Our Souls at Night, a Netfl ix drama about an unconventional romance between two elderly neighbors.
The theme of love after a certain age is also addressed in Leisure Seeker, in which Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland star as an independent, free- spirited couple coming to terms with Alzheimer’s.
Bloodied heart
Spanish superstar duo Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz team up again for a new drama about Pablo Escobar, Loving Pablo, in which Bardem plays the Colombian drug baron and Cruz his longterm mistress.
Bardem is also to be seen playing opposite Jennifer Lawrence in mother!, a new fi lm by Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky, that is one of several thrillers vying for honours.
Promoted by a Mother’s Day- release of a poster showing Lawrence holding her own bloodied heart, the fi lm tells the tale of a couple thrown into turmoil by uninvited guests.
Another spine- chiller features Ethan Hawke in Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, which turns around a dark secret harbored by members of a church who are tormented by the deaths of loved ones.
Also expected to make waves, with an out- of- competition world premiere, is Victoria & Abdul, Stephen Frears’ treatment of the true story of the elderly Queen Victoria’s later- life friendship with an Indian clerk.
British director Frears is to be honored on Sunday for his innovative contribution to cinema, ahead of the screening of his new work, in which Judi Dench stars as Victoria, opposite Bollywood actor Ali Fazal.