Women directors take rightful place at Venice film fest

With women directing 21 of the 52 films being shown at this year’s Venice film festival, organisers said the time for international recognition of women’s contribution to cinema has finally come. “I think it’s a sign of the times,” festival director Alberto Barbera said.

The festival opened with The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mira Nair and four of the 18 films vying for the Golden Lion award are directed by women — in contrast to the Cannes festival where there were no women in the running.

At a conference on the theme in Venice, Nair said she had always believed in female potential and never saw being a woman as an obstacle to her work. “I am beyond gender, inspired by art,” Nair said, although she pointed out that women could access unknown realities from which men are excluded.

While actresses are often the stars of the red carpets in Hollywood or Cannes, women directors are still relatively rare at international festivals. Cannes festival president Gilles Jacob said earlier it was “shameful” that only one woman — Jane Campion (The Piano Lesson) — has won the Palme d’Or.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist tackles Sept. 11 attacks

The Venice film festival kicked off an art house dominated line-up on Aug. 29 with a thriller by Mira Nair about a Pakistani man torn between East and West after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Joining Laetita Casta, member of the jury, on the red carpet were Kate Hudson, Naomi Watts and the cast of Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist starring British actor Riz Ahmed as Changez — a soulful Pakistani who rejects fundamentalism in all its forms.

Nair’s clash of civilisations tale is set in New York and Lahore before and after Sept. 11 and drew gasps from the audience as it portrayed the discrimination suffered in America by Changez following the attacks.

The character rises the Wall Street but is increasingly alienated by the United States and returns to Pakistan where he starts teaching at a university driven by militancy where CIA agents are searching for a kidnapped US professor.

The main character British-Pakistani actor Riz Ahmed spoke with pride earlier about his star role in the political thriller The Reluctant Fundamentalist as a way of tackling major issues of our time.

Scientology-inspired The Master casts spell

The film The Master cast a spell on viewers at the festival with Philip Seymour Hoffman playing a charismatic leader loosely based on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Hoffman’s character takes a troubled World War II vet played by a feral Joaquin Phoenix under his wing in this latest work by Oscar-winner Paul Thomas Anderson, director of Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood.

The film starts with Phoenix as Freddie Quell and his rapid descent into alcoholism and mental illness after the end of the war. He is rescued by Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd, who vows to treat him as “my guinea pig and protégé.”

Although there are no explicit references to Scientology in the film, there are strong parallels between that belief system and Dodd’s “The Cause”.

“There’s a lot of similarities to the early days of dianetics,” Anderson said, referring to a set of ideas and practices followed by Scientologists. “The beginning of that movement inspired me,” said Anderson, adding: “I really don’t know a whole hell of a lot about Scientology, particularly now.”

But Anderson said the centrepiece of the film, which is shot with a 70mm camera giving it an epic feel, was the bond between Quell and Dodd. “I think we’re just trying to tell a love story about these guys,” he said.

It is also significant that it is set in the post-war era when there was “a tremendous amount of hope but a lot of bodies in the background,” he said.

Anderson added that he was surprised when Phoenix took part. Phoenix said virtually nothing except for “I don’t know” and “No” at a press conference and walked out at one point before returning and lighting up.

With its portrayal of the repetitive “processing” mental exercises employed by Dodd and his followers in the 1950s, the film itself acquires a hypnotic quality underscored by Dodd’s passionate pseudo-scientific assertions.

Quell and Dodd could not be more different personalities, even though Dodd is also sometimes quick to anger when his movement is called into question.

In one particularly memorable scene they are both taken to a Philadelphia jail where a wild-eyed Quell proceeds to trash his cell and throw himself against the bars as a suited Dodd watches him calmly from the next cell.

But their relationship develops into a powerful bond and Quell becomes a faithful acolyte although he still struggles with his inner demons.

Cult leader or not, Dodd is genuinely concerned by Quell’s fate and wants to help him attain “a state of perfect” instead of being “a silly animal”.

“I think they identify with each other,” Hoffman told reporters.

“They’re coming from different places but I think they were born the same thing. They’re both wild beasts. One of them has just tamed it and he’s trying to teach other people to do that,” he said. “Ultimately he wants to be wild like Freddie is.”

The film, however, ends with a separation between the two as Dodd’s movement gains in magnitude, leaving audiences guessing as to Quell’s future.

Spike Lee’s love letter to Michael Jackson

US director Spike Lee brings together Michael Jackson’s old studio hands and previously unseen behind-the-scenes footage for a documentary that premiered at the Venice film festival. Bad 25 deliberately leaves out the scandals surrounding the late pop legend in favour of an in-depth look at the making of Bad — 25 years after the release of what became one of the best-selling albums of all time.

Home videos shot by Jackson himself or by his closest collaborators during rehearsals will delight fans, revealing the king of pop’s impish sense of humour, unflagging creative energy and meticulous attention to detail.

“For me this is a love letter for Michael Jackson,” Lee said at a press conference in Venice, explaining that the film was made in collaboration with the Michael Jackson estate giving access to new documents and videos.

“This is a very special day. Twenty-five years ago the Bad album was released,” said the director. The lifelong fan also said he was “out of it” for a month after Jackson’s death and played his songs every day for a year.

“It was a chance to appreciate his creative process.” John Branca, the documentary’s executive producer and a longtime producer for Jackson, said: “Bad was a real coming out artistically for Michael. We felt it was important to celebrate Michael’s work on the anniversary.”

Many of the interviews were shot in the studio where Bad was recorded and bring out the still-raw emotions over Jackson’s 2009 shock death from choreographers, sound technicians and musicians who knew him at his best.

The documentary is a treasure trove for nostalgics for big hair and pop beat days, with tributes from singers Justin Bieber, Mariah Carey and Stevie Wonder as well as Lee’s voice heard off camera chuckling during the interviews.

Conversations with Martin Scorsese, who filmed the music video for Bad, and concerts and footage of screaming fans also bring back memories of the anticipation surrounding the release of the album in pre-Internet days.

“We all are blessed with the final work, but it’s rare that you get to see how something is put together. We just see the final product. We don’t see the blood, sweat and tears, all the work that goes into how the masters work.”

Among the novelties is footage taken by Jackson himself, using a handheld camera, of Siedah Garrett singing Man in the Mirror, the song she co-wrote for the star, a cappella save for an off-camera clicking of fingers laying down the beat.

Lawyer John Branca, who administers Jackson’s estate following his death aged 50 in 2009, recalled a meeting Jackson arranged with his arch-rival Prince. “It was not a happy meeting,” he said, adding Prince had brought along a “voodoo box” which Jackson feared meant he was trying to cast a spell on him.

That rivalry was part of a competitive streak in Jackson that drove him to try to top the sensational success of his 1982 album Thriller, still the best-selling album of all time, with Bad five years later.

He even scrawled “100,000,000” on his mirror to remind him of his target. While industry estimates vary widely, Thriller is estimated to have sold between 60-110 million copies worldwide, while Bad went on to sell 30-45 million.

Nothing, it seemed, was too trival. In one sequence, Jackson comically re-enacts exactly how he wants two animated characters who feature in a commercial to behave.

On a more serious level, Lee explores how Jackson’s Afro-American roots were important to him, despite his gradually transforming facial features that made him appear more Caucasian.

Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder fails to impress

Cult US director Terrence Malick’s latest work To the Wonder failed to impress its first viewers at the festival, with more than a few boos amid tepid applause.

The eagerly awaited flick with Ben Affleck, Javier Bardem, Olga Kurylenko and Rachel McAdams is ambitious in scope, exploring many forms of love through beautifully shot imagery and poetic voiceovers by its protagonists.

It starts with a love story between Affleck and Kurylenko that finds its perfect expression in the picturesque cloister garden of Mont Saint Michel in France — the “Wonder” in the film and an idyll that quickly turns sour.

The couple move to Oklahoma in the United States where they meet a priest played by Bardem, who is himself falling out of love with God as he is confronted with the poverty and misery in the underbelly of middle America. This is self-indulgent filmmaking — a charge also levelled against Malick for his last film The Tree of Life starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, which still impressed the jury in Cannes last year and won the Palme d’Or.

In To the Wonder there is little acting in the traditional sense and many of the emotions are portrayed through facial expressions and gestures.

While Kurylenko — the Bond girl in Quantum of Solace — and Bardem mostly manage to pull this difficult performance off, Affleck is unconvincing with his gormless expressions interspersed with occasional scowls and smiles.

While the traditional end-of-love story left viewers unsatisfied, the more moving parts of the film were the exploration of divine love and natural beauty, like the warming light felt by Bardem through a stained glass window.

Ramin Bahrani’s At Any Price depicts rural America

Director Ramin Bahrani’s new film At Any Price functions on two levels: a drama about a family farm’s future set among Iowa’s  lush cornfields or a sweeping commentary about the economic pressures of big agribusiness.

The second read raises very stark questions about how far people will go to protect their way of life, and, by extension, their families.

The movie stars Dennis Quaid as, Henry Whipple, a fourth-generation farmer faced with the dilemma “expand or die” and his second son, Dean, played by Zac Efron, who sees his future behind the wheel of a race car, not a tractor.

“I really wanted to make a film that any audience could enjoy,” Bahrani said in an interview. “You can really get wrapped up in the emotions of the characters and the stories. And if they don’t want to have the conversation about the economics, society, the politics or the food, they don’t have to.”

In the film, Quaid’s Whipple is cheating on both his wife, with former cheerleader Meredith played by Heather Graham, and on the big genetically modified seed company that supplies him by illegally cleaning seeds to resell. The story is driven by the question of whether he comes clean or covers up — but the moral dilemma presented at the end is much darker.

For Efron, the role was a bit of a risk. His character is rooted in his role as town heart-throb, but with an edge and the kind of youthful temper than can alter a life’s course. No one will be surprised to see Efron breaking the heart of his teenage girlfriend, played by Hallie Elizabeth Newton, but it is more menacing that it is in a tryst with his father’s mistress.

Efron, who came from a small town in Northern California, said he could relate to his character’s ambition to move on to bigger things in life. “My race car was theatre. That was my ticket out,” Efron said.

The movie vividly evokes three American institutions: country, church and family. But it doesn’t leave viewers with an entirely wholesome picture of small town life or of the state of the American dream.

Zeroing in on rural America, Bahrani shows the crowd at a race track singing the national anthem in its entirety, which he said was inspired by Robert Altman’s Nashville as a way to connect all the characters in one space. “And to do it in a subversive way,” said Bahrani, who was raised in North Carolina by Iranian parents who moved to the United States in 1968. “I mean, the man is guilty, cheating on his wife, and they’re standing arm-in-arm. He’s a competitive killer and he’s saluting.”

Bahrani said he was inspired by the European financial crisis and the US housing bubble to look at the personal toll that economic crises bring and how aggressive people will get in competition — a question Henry and his son answer at the end of the film.

“People are dancing on top of graves. And those graves are us,” Bahrani said.

The Iceman, had a steep after-work decompression curve.

The Iceman dissects the duality of the real life of Richard Kuklinski, who for decades killed on order while keeping the truth of his occupation from tainting his perfect suburban family life.

The movie stars Michael Shannon, the film world’s latest Mafia hit man, Winona Ryder as his unsuspecting wife and Ray Liotta as the Mafia boss who sees hit-man potential in Kuklinski’s  dispassionate coolness and absence of fear.

Vromen said he was captivated when he saw Kuklinski, who was arrested in 1986, tell his story a 2006 documentary. He said he found himself surprised to feel empathy for a man eventually convicted of at least 100 mob hits and who may have committed more than twice that number.

All the while, Kuklinski created an idealised home life for his wife and two daughters, whom he sent to Catholic school and took on roller skating outings.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about it, about why did I care about that really, really extreme monster? And it was haunting me, the fact that I did care, that I had a very, very deep empathy,” Vromen said in an interview.

Vromen said he fought for two years to get Shannon for the role, warding off “the obvious choices.”

“Michael Shannon comes with a darkness,” Vromen said. “If he comes with darkness, my job is to be, how can I lighten that darkness? How can I make that darkness more refined?”

In a sign that Vromen was onto something, Shannon’s two-year-old screen test for the role has gotten over 200,000 hits on YouTube.

While Liotta joined the Hollywood hit men parade with his turn in Goodfellas, Vromen said choosing him to play Mafia boss Roy Demeo was anything but typecasting.

For Ryder, playing the seemingly clueless wife meant she had to purge anything she already knew about Kuklinski, rip out all the script pages dealing with his mob activities and stay clear of the set on days they were filming his criminal side.

She didn’t, however, attempt to reach out to the real life Deborah Pellicotti, who has denied any knowledge of her husband’s activities and has since changed her name, because “I just don’t know what I would have learned that much from her.”

While Ryder played the unsuspecting wife, she is not entirely persuaded that was the case.

Vromen said the only contact he’s had with the Kuklinski family is on Facebook with the older daughter.

“She personally is so in love with her father,” Vromen said. “ She said it was very, very tough on her and the family to realise who he was, but it didn’t take away the love she had. Until today, she refused to read any book or any article or any document about him.”

He asked if she would see The Iceman and there was silence.

“And I said, ‘Well, we got the answer,’” he said. lush cornfields or a sweeping commentary about the economic pressures of big agribusiness.

The second read raises very stark questions about how far people will go to protect their way of life, and, by extension, their families.

The movie stars Dennis Quaid as, Henry Whipple, a fourth-generation farmer faced with the dilemma “expand or die” and his second son, Dean, played by Zac Efron, who sees his future behind the wheel of a race car, not a tractor.

“I really wanted to make a film that any audience could enjoy,” Bahrani said in an interview. “You can really get wrapped up in the emotions of the characters and the stories. And if they don’t want to have the conversation about the economics, society, the politics or the food, they don’t have to.”

In the film, Quaid’s Whipple is cheating on both his wife, with former cheerleader Meredith played by Heather Graham, and on the big genetically modified seed company that supplies him by illegally cleaning seeds to resell. The story is driven by the question of whether he comes clean or covers up — but the moral dilemma presented at the end is much darker.

For Efron, the role was a bit of a risk. His character is rooted in his role as town heart-throb, but with an edge and the kind of youthful temper than can alter a life’s course. No one will be surprised to see Efron breaking the heart of his teenage girlfriend, played by Hallie Elizabeth Newton, but it is more menacing that it is in a tryst with his father’s mistress.

Efron, who came from a small town in Northern California, said he could relate to his character’s ambition to move on to bigger things in life. “My race car was theatre. That was my ticket out,” Efron said.

The movie vividly evokes three American institutions: country, church and family. But it doesn’t leave viewers with an entirely wholesome picture of small town life or of the state of the American dream.

Zeroing in on rural America, Bahrani shows the crowd at a race track singing the national anthem in its entirety, which he said was inspired by Robert Altman’s Nashville as a way to connect all the characters in one space. “And to do it in a subversive way,” said Bahrani, who was raised in North Carolina by Iranian parents who moved to the United States in 1968. “I mean, the man is guilty, cheating on his wife, and they’re standing arm-in-arm. He’s a competitive killer and he’s saluting.”

Bahrani said he was inspired by the European financial crisis and the US housing bubble to look at the personal toll that economic crises bring and how aggressive people will get in competition — a question Henry and his son answer at the end of the film.

“People are dancing on top of graves. And those graves are us,” Bahrani said.

Michael  Shannon casts darkness  on hit man  The Iceman

Loving father and husband at home, a ruthless killer at work: The real-life Mafia hit man who inspired Ariel Vromen’s new film, The Iceman, had a steep after-work decompression curve.

The Iceman dissects the duality of the real life of Richard Kuklinski, who for decades killed on order while keeping the truth of his occupation from tainting his perfect suburban family life.

The movie stars Michael Shannon, the film world’s latest Mafia hit man, Winona Ryder as his unsuspecting wife and Ray Liotta as the Mafia boss who sees hit-man potential in Kuklinski’s  dispassionate coolness and absence of fear.

Vromen said he was captivated when he saw Kuklinski, who was arrested in 1986, tell his story a 2006 documentary. He said he found himself surprised to feel empathy for a man eventually convicted of at least 100 mob hits and who may have committed more than twice that number.

All the while, Kuklinski created an idealised home life for his wife and two daughters, whom he sent to Catholic school and took on roller skating outings.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about it, about why did I care about that really, really extreme monster? And it was haunting me, the fact that I did care, that I had a very, very deep empathy,” Vromen said in an interview.

Vromen said he fought for two years to get Shannon for the role, warding off “the obvious choices.”

“Michael Shannon comes with a darkness,” Vromen said. “If he comes with darkness, my job is to be, how can I lighten that darkness? How can I make that darkness more refined?”

In a sign that Vromen was onto something, Shannon’s two-year-old screen test for the role has gotten over 200,000 hits on YouTube.

While Liotta joined the Hollywood hit men parade with his turn in Goodfellas, Vromen said choosing him to play Mafia boss Roy Demeo was anything but typecasting. For Ryder, playing the seemingly clueless wife meant she had to purge anything she already knew about Kuklinski, rip out all the script pages dealing with his mob activities and stay clear of the set on days they were filming his criminal side.

She didn’t, however, attempt to reach out to the real life Deborah Pellicotti, who has denied any knowledge of her husband’s activities and has since changed her name, because “I just don’t know what I would have learned that much from her.”

While Ryder played the unsuspecting wife, she is not entirely persuaded that was the case.

Vromen said the only contact he’s had with the Kuklinski family is on Facebook with the older daughter.

“She personally is so in love with her father,” Vromen said. “ She said it was very, very tough on her and the family to realise who he was, but it didn’t take away the love she had. Until today, she refused to read any book or any article or any document about him.”

He asked if she would see The Iceman and there was silence.

“And I said, ‘Well, we got the answer,’” he said.

Celebrity culture gone mad in Superstar

French film Superstar shone a harsh spotlight on celebrity culture at with the tale of an ordinary man who overnight finds himself the target of a media frenzy.

One of 18 films vying for this year’s Golden Lion prize, Xavier Giannoli’s tragi-comic work stars Kad Merad as a hapless Martin who searches in vain for the reason behind his overnight celebrity and in the process discovers himself.

“This character is very different from me,” the Algeria-born Merad said. in an interview in a garden on the seafront of the Venice Lido.

While his character rejects his newfound celebrity, the 48-year-old actor best known for his 2008 Welcome to the Sticks admitted he enjoyed his own. “Celebrity is a bit of a bonus even though it’s a bit complicated. Obviously my job is out of the ordinary and I think celebrity is part of that,” he said.

The film starts with Martin being whisked through a hotel into a limo andchased through the streets of Paris at night by paparazzi — a poignant allusion to the 1997 death of Princess Diana in a similar pursuit.

The plot then moves back in time to the day crowds of people suddenly started asking for his autograph and his picture on a metro train on his way to work, and a journalist played by Cecile de France who takes up his story.

The most poignant moment in the film is Martin’s scream of despair during a live television chat show when the obsessive attention reaches its peak. The scream’s meaning is lost on viewers and is quickly imitated on social media. De France’s character sees Martin as “a messenger” elected by the people to hold up a mirror to a celebrity-obsessed media world, but her interest fades as his celebrity star wanes and popular opinion quickly turns against him.

For all the seriousness of its intent, the film still manages to draw

laughs — like the obsession with every ordinary detail of celebrity lives or Martin’s struggle to explain he is not bidding for a “true reality” show.

Asked about his own attitude towards Internet social networks, Merad said he was cautious.

“I am fascinated by social networks. I have a Facebook page but I don’t communicate through them. I just look. I’m a voyeur!”