Venice Film Festival 2018 - Report 2

Dakota Johnson in Suspiria (2018)

By Moira Sullivan

This year’s Venice Film Festival has one of the best lineups in years primarily because the competition is full of former award-winning directors that are well known. To get into the lineup without such a background is rare. It is worth mentioning that only one woman - Jennifer Kent - is among the competition this year with The Nightingale which debuts September 5. Venice did not grant women the red carpet to make a protest of the marginalization of women in the competition and festival president Alberta Barbera defers to the overall society where he believes the real problem of gender inequality lies.

Several of these films will be available soon to view on Amazon and Netflix in the next months. Venice has avoided the problem these streaming platforms had at Cannes in May which requires that a film be released in French theatres first before streaming or will not have a debut.

The remake of Suspiria directed by Luca Guadagnino will soon be released on Amazon, but many will be put off by the image of an Italian director on the Red Carpet premiere proudly displaying his t-shirt “Weinstein is Innocent” (Luciano Silighini Garagnani).

Suspiria is a cult class directed by Dario Argento in the 70’s starring his wife Daria Nicolodi, the parents of Asia Argento. Dakota Johnson plays Susie Bannion in this remake -  an American dance student in Italy. Also starring Mia Goth and Chloe Grace Moretz as students under the tutelage of Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton) The film is out on Amazon soon though not as chilling as the original.

Double Lives by Olivier Assayas stars Guillaume Canet as Alaine, a Parisian editor. Juliette Binoche is his wife Selena who is employed playing a cop on a TV series. The film is more of a comic exposé on how the French has received or not received the digital economy, set in the environment of a Parisian publishing business. The digital world -the promotion of binge TV shows, both addictive and often superficial, blogs and social media, and the gig labor market fueled by apps and cellphones are up for discussion where the actors try to make sense of it and flow with the flow.

Other auteur directors include Joel and Ethan Coen who serve up their latest creation - The Battle of Buster Scruggs produced by Netflix, and Annapurna Pictures – a six-part narrative about the American west.

Alfonso Cuarón has made ROMA about a middle-class family in Mexico City.

And Julian Schnabel presents At Eternity's Gate about Vincent Van Gogh starring some of the revered actors in the art house world - Willem Dafoe as Van Gogh, Mads Mikkelsen, Mathieu Amalric, and Emmanuelle Seigner. 

Next week more from the Venice Film Festival

© 2018 - Moira Sullivan - Air Date: 09/05/18
Movie Magazine International