Musical masterpiece dazzles film fest
VENICE AFP Saturday- A bewitching musical starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone whipped up a frenzy on the opening day of the Venice film festival last week as it kicked off the race for the Golden Lion.
Damien Chazelle's “La La Land”, a tribute to the Golden Age of American musicals, reunites the stars, who appeared together in the 2011 romcom “Crazy, Stupid, Love” -- but with oodles of singing this time.
The world's top film critics, gathered on the glamorous Lido di Venezia for the 10- day fest, cheered loudly as Chazelle and Stone met the press following the screening of the joyful, quirky film which won hearts from the opening shot.
This world premier of the tale of a struggling jazz pianist and his actress girlfriend in Los Angeles is the first of 20 films in competition at the 73rd edition of the world's oldest film festival.
“Now more than ever we need hope and romance on the big screen,” said the American director, 31, a former jazz musician whose second feature film “Whiplash” (2014) received five Academy Award nominations.
“There's something about musicals, they are movies as a dreamland, expressing a world in which you break into song, in which you can violate the rules of reality,” he said.
The film pays homage to classic musicals, with nods to scenes from “Singing in the Rain” (1952) and “Grease” (1978) as well as old-timers “Bringing Up Baby” (1938) and “Top Hat” (1935).
Stone plays Mia, a wide-eyed romantic who goes from audition to failed audition in her quest to make it big, while Gosling is Sebastian, a jazz pianist with a mission to save the medium, but who struggles to pay his bills.
The pair meet -- in one of L.A's famous traffic jams and then at a bawdy celebrity party -before wooing each other in tap- and ballroom- dancing sequences reminiscent of American icons Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.