Venice Film Festival - The Verdict

You might ask yourself how they could do it. And why. They had been fed the best Official Competition selection in years, they had admired the greatest actors and actresses... and in the end, they let Herzog, Ford, Jayasundara, Hausner and Denis go home empty-handed.

We are talking about the Jury of the Venice Film Festival, of course. At the beginning of this Festival we tried to forecast each member's preferences, but evidently such a motley crew had to find a balance between their different tastes, experiences, cultural levels. As a result, they have wasted an enormous quantity of cinematic talent. 

Actually the Golden Lion winner, Lebanon, is a very powerful and accomplished work. All shot from the inside of an  Israeli tank, the film follows four young soldiers during the first day of the Lebanon war. Claustrophobia and anxiety creep out of the screen, for the first time a soldier states that Israel had used phosphorus bombs in that war. These two reasons make it a praiseworthy film, but maybe not worth a Golden Lion. 

What is really incomprehensible is the Silver Lion awarded to Women Without Men by Iranian artist Shirin Neshat and the Special Prize of the Jury to Soul Kitchen by Turkish-German Fatih Akin: two easy and slightly hypocritical works that bank on the ethnic origins of the directors. 

Good news is the Coppa Volpi for the Best Actor awarded to Colin Firth, who illuminated the wonderful drama A Single Man by Tom Ford with his sorrowful grace. As for the other Coppa Volpi for the Best Actress given to Ksenia Rappoport, the protagonist of La Doppia Ora by Giuseppe Capotondi, it could be fine if we hadn't seen Sylvie Testud in Lourdes by Jessica Hausner or Julianne Moore in A Single Man. They are great actresses. 

The Osella prize for the Best Scenography went to Mr. Nobody by Jaco Van Dormael, a masterwork butchered by production cuts, whereas the Osella for the Best Script went to Todd Solondz for Life During Wartime, a cynical sequel to Happiness. Thank God.