Going Gaga over a stunning big screen debut
THeRe has been the usual cocktail of treats and disappointments at the Venice Film Festival, the 75th edition of which finishes this weekend.
But in the years I have been coming to this venerable jamboree, I can’t recall a tumult of excitement quite like that which greeted Lady Gaga’s arrival on the red carpet.
So it was daring of first- time director Bradley Cooper to cast the pop superstar in his remake of A Star Is Born.
She had never acted in a feature film before, and it might have required a challenging leap of the imagination to believe in her as a rank unknown thrust abruptly into the limelight.
But she absolutely nails the role, manifestly drawing on her own early run-ins with both failure and fame.
Moreover, you can almost see the electrical sparks flying between her and Cooper, as the alcohol-sodden lover whose own musical career is gradually eclipsed by hers.
I was sceptical as to whether Lady Gaga could ever really belong in the lustrous company of Janet Gaynor, Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand, who all played the same part on the silver screen. But she does, unequivocally.
A Star Is Born is one of Venice’s out- of- competition films, but of
those vying for the big prizes, I loved The Sisters Brothers, French director Jacques audiard’s compelling and darkly comic take on Patrick deWitt’s novel.
Joaquin Phoenix and John C. reilly play Charlie and eli, sibling assassins in 1850s Oregon, sent by their sinister paymaster to kill a prospector called Hermann Kermit Warm ( riz ahmed), though not before he has divulged his secret for finding gold.
Jake gyllenhaal also stars, as a detective hired to deliver Warm to the brothers, but it’s reilly who steals the movie from the bigger names around him. He is simply wonderful as kind-hearted eli, in a story that had me hooked from beginning to end.
another pair of brothers, Joel and ethan Coen, brought us The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, also a Western, and also wonderful. It was conceived for netflix as a TV series, which shows, because it is divided into six separate tales.
If you’re the sort of person who values a meaty novel over a really good collection of short stories, then you might object to the format. On the other hand, we get six bursts of Coen creativity for the price of one.
and the film starts gloriously, with Tim Blake nelson as the titular Scruggs, a roving troubadour even quicker on the draw than he is with a lyric. If I had to pick a winner of the festival’s prestigious golden Lion award, it would probably be roma, alfonso Cuaron’s overlong but captivating semi-autobiographical movie about a middle- class family and their loyal maid, set in Mexico City in 1970 and shot in black and white.
But I also loved First Man, the neil armstrong biopic, and The Favourite, set in the bawdy court of Queen anne, both reviewed here last week.
and it was impossible not to admire 22 July, Paul greengrass’s rather workaday but undeniably powerful drama about the 2011 massacre by norwegian right-wing extremist anders Breivik.