Volpi Cup Winners: Vivien Leigh

Vivien Leigh in "A Streetcar Named Desire"

(Won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival in 1951 over Pier Angeli in "Teresa", Judy Holliday in "Born Yesterday", Nora Swinburne in "The River", and Simone Valère in "The Night Is My Kingdom".)

Grade: *****

In an awards haul that would eventually net her a second Oscar, Vivien Leigh brings to life -- from the pen of Tennessee Williams -- surely one of the most introspectively challenging characters ever depicted on screen. Her Blanche Dubois is rather like what a 48 year-old Scarlett O'Hara might have amounted to, had she developed a feminine strain of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and forgot that the American Civil War even happened.

Arriving by streetcar Blanche at first appears to be one of those annoying relatives, who come to stay with low expectations of the life that you have made for yourself, and leave with an even sourer opinion. Upon her arrival she flounces around, primly studying Stella's bowling alley surroundings as one would a herd of cattle, and immediately addresses the issue of her sister's downward class-convergence. She coos, Miss Jean Brodie-esque in her Estuary version of Southern drawl, "Oh Stella, do you really live in this place?", continuing to spout from meaningless subject to meaningless subject. It's obvious that Blanche is a narcissistic conversationalist, content to talk through you if she thinks she's constructing a positive image of herself, hiding from the implications of her presence at the Kowalski residence.

Leigh's chatter, with its kooky erratic pitch, and its focusless shifting intonation, makes her so opaquely inaccessible that it's no wonder that Stella's husband Stanley finds her presence a maddening bother. As she flirts with a hapless, lovestruck Karl Malden like a sixteen year-old awake past her curfew it suddenly dawns on you that this woman is never going to face up to her age or her past. Leigh addresses Blanche's complete loss of identity, telegraphing the fluid literary majesty of a Jane Austen heroine into an ageing spinster, playing up to multiple facets and ideals of respectability to attain a marriage that she isn't sure that she wants anyway. Is Blanche just bored with existence? Destined to live a life more ordinary than the ones she teaches in her English class?

When you get two people that are either unwilling or unable to back down from their ideals, things are bound to end messily, and Blanche's inability to curb her worldly outlook eventually makes her the victim of the piece. The permanent state of self-imposed, disillusioned fragility etched on Leigh's face in Blanche's never-ending soliloquies, distort her playful artistry into such an artificially condescending tool. In the scene where Blanche and Stanley have their final showdown she flirts as Kay Francis would in the Thirties, attempting to mould Stanley into the fellow that he just ain't. Leigh lets Blanche revel and strain in gathering control of their exchange, fretfully backtracking as Stanley's infuriation grows. Blanche isn't sure whether she wants to be the sister that everyone loves, the "older" temptress, or the virgin bride, but whichever it is she wants it on her terms. Leigh does an incredible job in making each sly remark, each flippantly false self-diminishment, a clamouring attempt at affection, painfully exposing Blanche's motives when we least expect her to crack.

Leigh's own well-documented precarious mental state has often been cited as a reason behind the ambiguity in her "Streetcar" turn. However accurate an assessment that is, her work here is a complete physical embodiment of identity crises, and a gauntlet-throwing emotional immersion into the pressures of repressed female sexuality.

A Review of "The Expendables" (Stallone, 2010)

The Expendables

Directed by Sylvester Stallone

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Giselle Itié, Eric Roberts, Mickey Rourke, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steve Austin, Bruce Willis

Grade: C

Written for InRO:

As a 2010 picture Sylvester Stallone’s “The Expendables” shares more commonalities with action pictures of days gone by. That’s not to say that the film is marooned in the late Eighties; just that Stallone is essentially aware of how far removed the days of “Rambo” and “Commando” are from current forays into the genre. The film is somewhat of a resurrection of the era, but only to the extent of harking back to America’s testier times with Cuba, in the form of South American Generals and hefty guerrilla warfare.

The “expendables” themselves are a group of mercenaries, hired by dodgy American agencies to eradicate powerful, heavily-secured guys that take blazing weapons and tons of ammo to conquer. Although most of the bevy of stars have (admittedly, I’m sure) seen better days, there’s little use in debating the on-screen presence of Stallone, Rourke, and Schwarzenegger. Accompanied by plucky daredevil Lee Christmas (Statham), Barney Ross (Stallone) flies to the island of Velina to scout its dictator, upon arrival meeting the group’s contact Sandra. When local guards kick up a fuss Ross and Christmas are forced to flee the island, leaving Sandra at the mercy of Government officials, and ensuring that they must go back to finish the job that they started.

The presence of a feisty heroine notwithstanding, “The Expendables” is often turgid, and not as shrewd or easy to tolerate as it should be. One might say it’s more of a “Jewel of the Nile” than a “Romancing the Stone”, sacrificing narrative intricacy and thought for a familiar 101 depiction of corporate villainy (even if that depiction comes courtesy of a dynamite Eric Roberts). The rapid-fire encounters the group enjoy are interspersed with occasionally witty banter between bromance duo Ross and Christmas, welcomed largely because it requires the aural saturation to subside for a few seconds. Aside from an interesting-but-nowhere-to-go sub-plot involving Christmas and his would-be missus, Stallone is fairly stubborn in maintaining that this story is all about the men and their mission. The men are endearing and slick at a stretch, but the mission lacks composure and structure. As it is, I’m inclined to believe that barging your way through a castle with guns hardly constitutes a “mission” anyway.

While the badass credibility of the meaty cast allows for stoic genre convention, the array of different commodities on offer – from the martial arts exploits of Jet Li, to the ice-cold arrogance of Dolph Lundgren – suggest that while determinedly courting box-office pull, “The Expendables” is at least attempting a legitimately flexible oversight of the genre. The inter-generational nature of the personalities creates a sense of this being the family-tree of action piledrivers, a genealogically-linked tribute to how the genre has evolved since Stallone was roaming the jungle. The film feels particularly indulgent of drawing attention to the Actors’ renowned traits, going so far as to satirise Schwarzenegger’s retirement and foray into the world of American politics with the denunciation, “He wants to be president.” The group act as if taking down a General is akin to an evening at the local bar, but the suggestion of a world outside of social alienation is often ridiculed in this way. A tacky but trustier reaction to the Ocean films; these men are a bunch of pariahs, and they embrace it.

Dubbing the group as “expendable” is asserting the fact that they are flirting with death, and that their demise is unimportant in the grand scheme of the world. The underlying motives of the film, however, pertain to include the notion of the Actor as expendable. An action movie is rarely an actor’s movie, but “The Expendables”, as an homage to fifty-plus year-olds and their perpetually bulky guns, considerably bucks the trend. In Hollywood terms, the actor is as expendable an article as civilians in times of wartime; necessary casualties of the bigger picture. The lengthy absences from the screen of Sly, Mickey, and Arnie serve as an observation of how one’s profile can flounder from decade to decade.

With all their experience of wielding weapons from the filmic front-line the ensemble in “The Expendables” feel rather like a 21st-Century version of the jam-packed cast in the 1962 epic, “How the West Was Won”. Indeed, the film often reads an upgraded version of such erstwhile depictions of factional warfare, with its heady nostalgia and inherent sense of comradeship. While cultural overhaul was on the mind of John Ford, individualist tendencies and general disdain creep into “The Expendables”, and the film adopts a cynically-diminished attitude towards Nationalist ideals, blaming bureaucracy and the misdemeanours of Western philosophy for foreign instability, going so far as to reference the pain of the Vietnam War.

If rumours of a sequel are right, it doesn’t look as if “The Expendables” is the final hurrah that it appears to be. The tongue-in-cheek remarks of Stallone et al. only half-mask the remonstrations of “Look at us! We can still do it!”, and work in the sense that it binds the team. The film, however, is another matter, and “The Expendables” is a prime example of a picture coasting on star power. Even if the charm offensive isn’t wholly unsuccessful there’s a girth of quantity-over-quality, and I’d gladly expend of most of the former.

Venice Screening Schedule and Anticipation

As I've already mentioned I'm off to Venice again this year for the film festival. This is just a quick heads-up to let you know what I'll be seeing and when.

I'm planning to provide commentary on as many of the films as I can, and there'll also shortly be a special section added on the sidebar for gradings, as they filter in. Meanwhile, there'll be plenty of reaction to each film over on my Twitter page, with little zingers and the odd catty comment. Just six nights to go!

My screening schedule:

Wednesday 1 September

Black Swan

Directed by Darren Aronofsky

Starring: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder

Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen

Directed by Andrew Lau

Starring: Donnie Yen, Shu Qi, Anthony Wong, Huang Bo

Thursday 2 September

Machete

Directed by Robert Rodriguez & Ethan Maniquis

Starring: Danny Trejo, Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriguez, Robert De Niro, Steven Seagal, Don Johnson

Dark Love

Directed by Antonio Capuano

Starring: Irene De Angelis, Gabriele Agrio, Luisa Ranieri, Corso Salani, Valeria Golino, Fabrizio Gifuni

Miral

Directed by Julian Schnabel

Starring: Freida Pinto, Hiam Abbass, Willem Dafoe, Yasmine Al Masri, Vanessa Redgrave

Norweigan Wood

Directed by Anh Hung Tran

Starring: Kenichi Matsuyama, Rinko Kikuchi, Kiko Mizuhara, Kengo Kora, Reika Kirishima

Friday 3 September

Sleeping Beauty

Directed by Catherine Breillat

Starring: Carla Besnaïnou, Julia Artamonov, Kérian Mayan, David Chausse

Somewhere

Directed by Sofia Coppola

Starring: Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning, Benicio Del Toro, Michelle Monaghan, Laura Chiatti, Simona Ventura

Reign of Assassins

Directed by John Woo & Su Chao-Pin

Starring: Michelle Yeoh, Jung Woo Sung, Wang Xueqi, Barbie Hsu, Kelly Lin

Saturday 4 September

A Woman

Directed by Giada Colagrande

Starring: Willem Dafoe, Jess Weixler, Stefania Rocca, Michele Venitucci

Potiche

Directed by François Ozon

Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu, Fabrice Luchini, Karin Viard, Judith Godrèche, Jérémie Régnier

La Passione

Directed by Carlo Mazzacurati

Starring: Silvio Orlando, Giuseppe Battiston, Corrado Guzzanti, Cristiana Capotondi, Stefania Sandrelli, Kasia Smutniak

Sunday 5 September

Little Voices

Directed by Jairo Carrillo

(Animation)

Monday 6 September

Meek's Cutoff

Directed by Kelly Reichardt

Starring: Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Will Patton, Zoe Kazan, Paul Dano, Shirley Henderson

Tuesday 7 September

Essential Killing

Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski

Starring: Vincent Gallo, Emmanuelle Seigner

Wednesday 8 September

Promises Written In Water

Directed by Vincent Gallo

Starring: Vincent Gallo, Delfine Bafort, Sage Stallone, Lisa Love

The Town

Directed by Ben Affleck

Starring: Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Blake Lively

Black Venus

Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche

Starring: Yahima Torres, Olivier Gourmet, André Jacobs

Expect notes on previous Golden Lion and Volpi Cup winners before the festival begins; plus a review of a recent release.

Golden Lion Winners: Vera Drake

Vera Drake
Directed by Mike Leigh
Starring: Imelda Staunton, Philip Davis, Eddie Marsan, Sally Hawkins, Daniel Mays, Alex Kelly, Heather Craney, Peter Wright
Grade: A -

(Won the Golden Lion of San Marco in 2004, over "3-Iron", "Birth", "Howl's Moving Castle", "Kings and Queen", and "The Sea Inside")

It was around this time six years ago that "Vera Drake" was gathering buzz for its awards push, the height of which was for its little-known star Imelda Staunton. The film and Staunton went on to win the Golden Lion and Volpi Cup, before collecting three Oscar nominations. Although my feelings regarding the film's quality are unchanged, when I initially watched "Vera Drake" I considered it to be more of a parable, a tale of naivety being punished, than a social study. A recent viewing suggests that Vera herself is less sure or representative a heroine (she isn't made a martyr by Staunton or Leigh), and the production ultimately benefits from a more flexile approach towards the subject of guilt.

One of Mike Leigh's most enviable assets is how he compels his Actors to adapt to their filmic surroundings, to think about how their characters would react to the different social situations they find themselves in. As with any family the Drakes encompass an array of personality-types which flourish depending on the circumstance, the extended familial links allowing for nervous exchanges of budding relationships. It works well, meek daughter Ethel and her new fiancée Reg provide a platform for Vera to exercise her typical caretaking abilities; Stan's brother Frank and his wife Joyce act as an interesting aside on the growth of consumerism, part of the post-war baby boom that places Joyce on decidedly unsteady ground with the Drakes once Vera's revelation comes.

"Vera Drake" is much in the grain of theatre, subjecting its title character to a trial by proxy, rather discouraging us from taking a side in the moral issue on show. Abortion is a polarising enough discussion as it is without drawing attention to the spectrum of opinion, and for the most part the film is successful at relaying the matter to fearful glances and tension within the home environment. Leigh concentrates his focus and helps to richen our voyeuristic experience by using his Actors' own instinctive observations to broaden our sense of the period. Scripturally, his cast are making the best of what they have, and so the Drake family become a canny approximation of working-class post-war England, muddling through life without really taking it for granted. The literalisms of the narrative are strengthened by the aomebic, confined set-plays, anchored significantly by Dick Hope's squalid, tempered cinematography.

Imelda Staunton thrives on the responsibility of her character, ingratiating Vera's selflessness through her insistent tone. For a small woman she projects such a formidable air, and gives the impression that by allowing her to help you it will benefit her life as well as yours. One could imagine this frail, stubby woman carting bricks around, having hoodwinked builders into believing that her presence is indispensable. Vera's self-expository opening serves to create a sense of routine, of this being just another Monday in her busy life, and only enhances the dolorous fervour of her casual nursemaid act being violently upturned in the film's second half. Staunton reacts to the police's arrival with a mixture of firm acceptance and tangible collapse, and when forced to confront the severity of her crime in the subsequent interrogation, the geyser of shame has well and truly burst. A harrowing scene sees Vera whisper her secret inaudibly to distressed, faintly resilient husband Stan, the final fall from grace of a woman that appeared to be such an untouchable character.

While Von Trier's Dancer in the Dark so painstakingly draws attention to its politics, Godardian in the ferocity with which it questions why we think the way that we do, Vera Drake isn't on anywhere near as lucid a plain, since essentially Vera is guilty of the crime she is charged. That doesn't prevent her demise from bearing resemblances to Dancer's Selma: the creative, theatrical side of Selma -- where she isn't following instructions so much as exercising her rite as a leading lady, basking in a rare limelight -- is somewhat relative to the way that Vera wants to craft a path for her children, in a facilitative but harmlessly-maternal capacity. The primary function of both women is to serve their family, and when Vera is eventually confronted about her actions, the assimilating dread of being unable to organise family events, or oversee the births, marriages, and deaths in her period of impending absence, is the most sympathetic part of her plight.

A Review of "Hierro" (Ibáñez, 2010)

Hierro

Director: Gabe Ibáñez

Starring: Elena Anaya, Miriam Correa, Kaiet Rodríguez

Grade: C -

Written for Subtitled Online:

Like the starkness of a “missing” poster Gabe Ibáñez’s "Hierro" immediately seeks to hook an audience and serve a purpose, the underwater submergence in its eerie opening a nod to the natural mystic. The commonalities of recent thrillers involving absent youths suggest a struggle between practicality and supernature; can children really just vanish? While the reality, of course, is that many of the missing are never traced, "Hierro" imitates forays into this burgeoning sub-genre (The Forgotten, The Dark, The Orphanage, to name but a few) by entertaining the notion of the mother-son bond as transcendent of physical relativity.

"Hierro" is immediately complicated by the repetition of similar instances of mothers entering into consciousness -- from a car accident and deep sleep, respectively -- to find their sons nowhere to be seen. The latter of the two forms the basis of the film as María (Elena Anaya) wakes from her slumber on a ferry bound for the island of El Hierro and panics that her son Diego may have been kidnapped, or worse, drowned. Divers come up empty and three years pass before the discovery of a body brings María back there, where she is asked to identify the corpse. Revealing that it is not Diego the circumstances of her return to the island encourage María to ponder whether her son may still be alive somewhere, and when she thinks that she sees him on a deserted beach her mindset alters to accommodate an investigative instinct.

What of this mother-son bond then? Julianne Moore, Naomi Watts, Maria Bello, and Belen Rueda have all recently played distraught maternal figures attempting to track down their offspring by whatever means – usually to the extent of at least recognising what has happened to them. There’s a sense of atonement in their actions, that by contravening authority they become grown-up children themselves, that they are somehow behaviourally complicit, closer to relating to the people they have raised. We don’t really get the opportunity to gauge whether the guilt in María has set in at first, since the film skips forward in time rather abruptly after Diego becomes officially lost. It begs the question: what has María been doing in the three years that have passed? Why is she now suddenly demanding a resolution?

Fascinating as they are, neither the film nor an occasionally dynamite Anaya can fully address these queries, which are consigned to the backburner for the showier tendencies of director Ibáñez. The early premonitory announcement by Diego to his mother that he doesn’t like hide and seek, “because you might not find me”, is an early sign that Ibáñez is eager to plug the sinister undertones of the narrative. It proves alarmingly destructive in quelling the sensitivity of "Hierro"’s themes, as he overworks the production with incessant aural shock-tactics and saturates the mise-en-scene with revelrous flash-camera frippery. His attempts to allude to the mythical elements of the island, and mystery surrounding the whereabouts of Diego, extend to the kind of rash eventualities that see a maintenance man fish a doll’s head out of a blocked toilet. Even a shower sequence designed to demonstrate María’s cleansing of guilt, the final phase of her post-ferry grief, is so strobe-distorted that it’s borderline unwatchable. Pushing this overt brand of macabre creepiness detracts from the interesting socio-realist angle offered, María’s bitter desperation recalling shades of last year’s Katalin Varga, a film that chronicled a brewing sense of vengeance in its heroine.

It enables us to register with the dread of having our sense of scope rendered foolish, that we aren’t omniscient and that questions can’t always be answered, but cajoles us by confirming some of María’s suspicions about El Hierro and its inhabitants. During María’s quest for answers she boards a trailer and proceeds to have a violent face-off with the woman on board it, a scene which indebts itself to Tarantino’s Kill Bill and marks a shift in direction for the film. For periods the film is as dark and captivating as this scene, and Anaya’s presence carries it through even its most absurd revelations, but while often suggested that mortality is a less ambiguous state than rationale, the focus is placed more on plot than character. María’s grief is undermined by the gratuity of this stand-off, and the fetishisation of her as a powerhouse would-be-killer reinforces the sense that "Hierro" has become somewhat of a joyless spectacle.

Considering the emotional weight of the first act there is little organic about the way that the film is put together. Ibáñez, while essentially “generous” appears bound by influence, and heavy-handed with the more uncertain aspects of the story. "Hierro" benefits from the debilitating sparseness of the landscape, but is too compact as a narrative, and suffers from the many brazen efforts to generate suspense. A sombre lullaby over the closing credits may act as sonar relief at the end of a tiresome ordeal, but it’s only the cherry atop a stylistic mound of confection. Sometimes less is more.

Volpi Cup Winners: Victoire Thivisol

Victoire Thivisol in "Ponette"

(Won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival in 1996 over Oyanka Cabezas in "Carla's Song" and Irene Papas in "Party")

In her role as a girl who suddenly loses her mother Victoire Thivisol (Four years old during the filming of "Ponette") has emotion and sentiment on her side; rarely are children afforded an entire feature-length picture with which to display such a wrenching sense of loss. It's understandable since surely people as young and technically fledgling are somewhat of a loose cannon -- few kids beyond Jackie Cooper have commanded continual respect as a leading character actor. Thivisol never again attained the level of admiration she managed with this performance, but at the age of 19 one would certainly never count her out. A follow-up role in Chocolat brought promise, and she is still working, so perhaps if a hefty role comes her way she may become the next Marion Cotillard, however much you view that as a success.

"Ponette" is a brave film, not least because most of the dialogue centres around infant playground chatter, innocent remonstrations on religion and whether when people die they are truly "gone". Writer/Director Jacques Doillon modifies religious scepticism to accomodate the naivety of youth, and rarely over-calculates the spats Ponette has with her wily friends. He recognises the whys and why nots of grief, the struggle of accepting loss, and especially the problems that children have with understanding ideological difference (or indifference) in adults. Ponette's early reaction to the death of her mother -- a result of a motor accident involving the two -- is churlish, stroppy, as she clambers atop a car, part-rebelliously and somewhat uncertain of how such a vehicle has contributed so heavily to her mother's demise. Thivisol immediately asserts that Ponette is thinking about her situation, not merely reacting to finality by bursting into tears and stamping her feet. She accepts the "death" but evidently doesn't know how it will affect her life, whether she should even cry, since her father has confronted the event with a boulder-like sense of resentment. Even at such a dizzyingly-unidentifiable age Thivisol is able to impart an impressive amount of detail into the relationship she has with her father, reacting to him with fluid, unrehearsed fear, and recognises that this fear stems from emotional-not-physical abuse. Her later scenes with him possess a more aggressive dynamic, and you can see that Ponette wants him to cry, to confirm the pain that she is feeling instead of launching into a verbal coming-to-terms speech that doesn't help to explain what is buzzing around inside of her head.

Thivisol's emotional intelligence is such that even the intermitten breakdowns that come from prayers that don't produce, kids that attack her weakness, a growing inner-conflict between faith and logic, are telegraphed as waves of uncertain emotion, rather than wailing releases of surefire showmanship. She palpably wrestles with the internal unanswered questions we ask ourselves when someone dies, and therefore captures grief in its purest form. Keisha Castle-Hughes' Paikea also had an absent mother in 2003's "Whale Rider" (a role that made 13 year-old Castle-Hughes the youngest ever Best Actress nominee at the Oscars), and while I admire that performance immensely her efforts feel more orchestrated (either by her or Director Niki Caro) to generate sympathy for their protagonist. Thivisol benefits from the fly-on-the-wall style of her director, occasionally unsure of where to look and what to do, and subsequently the plight of Ponette is a much looser, organic prospect. Even at her blankest moments of extreme close-up Thivisol is crafting something for herself and the film, which I find astonishing given the enormity of the task involved and the obvious limitations imposed by her minimal acting experience.

In the late stages of Doillon's film Ponette is crouched over the grave of her deceased mother, clawing at the soil that separates her from the source of parental affection that she isn't getting elsewhere. When asked about this scene, or more specifically about how she managed to make herself cry, Victoire replied that it was normal for Ponette to cry because her mother was dead. It's an observation that only serves to reinforce the instinctual impression Thivisol brings to "Ponette", a generous respondent to her Director's studious childhood melancholy.

The Volpi Cup and its History of Best Actresses

(Note: Years skipped are those where the prize was not handed out, for whatever reason.)

• 1934 Katharine Hepburn in "Little Women"

• 1935 Paula Wessely in "Episode"

• 1936 Annabella in "Veille D'armes"

• 1937 Bette Davis in "Kid Galahad" & "Marked Woman"

• 1938 Norma Shearer in "Marie Antoinette"

• 1941 Luise Ullrich in "Annelie"

• 1942 Kristina Soderbaum in "Die Goldene Stadt"

• 1947 Anna Magnani in "L'onorevole Angelina"

• 1948 Jean Simmons in "Hamlet"

• 1949 Olivia de Havilland in "The Snake Pit"

• 1950 Eleanor Parker in "Caged"

• 1951 Vivien Leigh in "A Streetcar Named Desire"

• 1953 Lilli Palmer in "The Four Poster"

• 1956 Maria Schell in "Gervaise"

• 1957 Dzidra Ritenberga in "Malva"

• 1958 Sophia Loren in "The Black Orchid"

• 1959 Madeleine Robinson in "À Double Tour"

• 1960 Shirley Maclaine in "The Apartment"

• 1961 Suzanne Flon in "Tu ne Tueras Point"

• 1962 Emmanuelle Riva in "Thérèse Desqueyroux"

• 1963 Delphine Seyrig in "Muriel"

• 1964 Harriet Andersson in "Att Alska"

• 1965 Annie Girardot in "Trois chambres à Manhattan"

• 1966 Natalya Arinbasarova in "Pervyj Uchitel"

• 1967 Shirley Knight in "Dutchman"

• 1968 Laura Betti in "Teorema"

• 1982 Susan Sarandon in "Tempest"

• 1983 Darling Legitimus in "Rue Cases Negres"

• 1984 Pascale Ogier in "Les Nuits de la pleine lune"

• 1986 Valeria Golino in "Storia d'amore"

• 1985 Kang Soo-yeon in "Contract Mother"

• 1988 Shirley Maclaine in "Madame Sousatzka" & Isabelle Huppert in "Une Affaire De Femmes"

• 1989 Peggy Ashcroft & Geraldine James in "She's Been Away"

• 1990 Gloria Münchmeyer in "La Luna en el Espejo"

• 1991 Tilda Swinton in "Edward II"

• 1992 Gong Li in "Qiu Ju Da Guan Si"

• 1993 Juliette Binoche in "Trois Coleurs: Bleu"

• 1994 Maria de Medeiros in "Três Irmãos"

• 1995 Sandrine Bonnaire & Isabelle Huppert in "La Cérémonie"

• 1996 Victoire Thivisol in "Ponette"

• 1997 Robin Tunney in "Niagara, Niagara"

• 1998 Catherine Deneuve in "Place Vendôme"

• 1999 Nathalie Baye in "Une Liaison Pornographique"

• 2000 Rose Byrne in "The Goddess of 1967"

• 2001 Sandra Ceccarelli in "Luce Dei Miei Occhi"

• 2002 Julianne Moore in "Far From Heaven"

• 2003 Katja Riemann in "Rosenstrasse"

• 2004 Imelda Staunton in "Vera Drake"

• 2005 Giovanna Mezzogiorno in "The Beast in the Heart"

• 2006 Helen Mirren in "The Queen"

• 2007 Cate Blanchett in "I'm Not There"

• 2008 Dominique Blanc in "L'Autre"

• 2009 Kseniya Rappoport in "The Double Hour"

I have see 12 of these 56 performances, and there isn't a bad one among them. I've probably been spoiled there. The win that sticks out the most has to be Shirley Knight for "Dutchman", victorious over Catherine Deneuve in "Belle de Jour" (the Golden Lion that year), and in a sex comedy that lasts less than an hour. Still, who am I to judge?

Analysis of some of these women to follow soon, beginning with the youngest of them. Stay tuned!

The Golden Lion of San Marco, and its History of Winners

(Note: gaps denote years where the award was not given, for whatever reason.)

1949: “Manon” by Henry-Georges Clouzot

1950: “Justice est fait” by André Cayatte

1951: “Rashômon” by Akira Kurosawa

1952: “Jeux interdits” by René Clément

1954: “Romeo and Juliet” by Renato Castellani

1955: “Ordet” by Carl Theodor Dreyer

1957: “Aparajito” by Satyajit Ray

1958: “Muhô-Matsu no Isshô” by Hiroshi Inagaki

1959: “Il Generale Della Rovere” by Roberto Rossellini & “La grande guerra” by Mario Monicelli

1960: “Le passage du Rhin” by André Cayatte

1961: “L'année dernière à Marienbad” by Alain Resnais

1962: “Ivanovo detstvo” by Andrei Tarkovsky & “Cronaca familiare” by Valerio Zurlini

1963: “Le mani sulla città” by Francesco Rosi

1964: “Deserto rosso” by Michelangelo Antonioni

1965: “Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa” by Luchino Visconti

1966: “La battaglia di Algeri” by Gillo Pontecorvo

1967: “Belle de jour” by Luis Buñuel

1968: “Die Artisten in der Zirkuskuppel: ratlos” by Alexander Kluge

1980: “Atlantic City” by Louis Malle & “Gloria” by John Cassavetes

1981: “Die Bleierne Zeit” by Margarethe von Trotta

1982: “Der Stand der Dinge” by Wim Wenders

1983: “Prénom Carmen” by Jean-Luc Godard

1984: “Rol Spokojnego Slonca” by Krzysztof Zanussi

1985: “Sans toit ni loi” by Agnès Varda

1986: “Le rayon vert” by Eric Rohmer

1987: “Au revoir les enfants” by Louis Malle

1988: “La leggenda del santo bevitore” by Ermanno Olmi

1989: “Beiqing shenghsi” by Hou Xiaoxian

1990: “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” by Tom Stoppard

1991: “Urga” by Nikita Mikhalkov

1992: “Qui Ju da guansi” by Zhang Yimou

1993: “Short Cuts” by Robert Altman & “Trois couleurs: Bleu” by Krzysztof Kieslowski

1994: “Before the Rain” by Milcho Manchevski & “Aiqing wansui - Vive l’amour” by Tsai Ming-liang

1995: “Cyclo” by Tran Ahn Hung

1996: “Michael Collins” by Neil Jordan

1997: “Hana-bi” by Takeshi Kitano

1998: “Così ridevano” by Gianni Amelio

1999: “Not One Less” by Zhang Yimou

2000: “Dayereh” by Jafar Panahi

2001: “Monsoon Wedding” by Mira Nair

2002: “The Magdalene Sisters” by Peter Mullan

2003: “Vozvrashcheniye” by Andrei Zvyagintsev

2004: “Vera Drake” by Mike Leigh

2005: “Brokeback Mountain” by Ang Lee

2006: “Sanxia haoren” by Jia Zhangke

2007: “Se, jie” by Ang Lee

2008: “The Wrestler” by Darren Aronofsky

2009: “Lebanon” by Samuel Maoz

I have seen 12 of these 53, which is a lowly 23%. Tellingly, none of them have gone on to win the Best Picture Oscar (this is no middle-of-the-road hunting ground, after all), though "Brokeback Mountain" came tantalisingly close, and you can make an argument for "Atlantic City" too.

Observation and ranking of those twelve films to follow soon.

Venezia 67, Line-Up Announced

The line-up for this year's Venice Film Festival has been announced. View it here at the Festival's official website.

I'm obviously most excited for Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere", since I loved her first three films. Other interesting prospects come in the form of the already-announced "Black Swan", and Kelly Reichardt's follow-up to "Wendy and Lucy", Western "Meek's Cutoff". Work from Francois Ozon, Monte Hellman, Vincent Gallo, and Adellatif Kachiche also feature.

Hope Springs Eternal for Venice and Toronto

Awards fever is catching at the moment with the past week's announcements regarding the upcoming Venice and Toronto festivals. Thursday brought the news that Darren Aronofsky's ballerina-thriller "Black Swan" will open Venice, just a week after Toronto revealed it would be starting with "Score: A Hockey Musical". Julie Taymor's "The Tempest", starring Helen Mirren, has been chosen to close things on the Lido (out of competition), while news today puts some tasty-looking features on the rest of Toronto's slate. Among those making the trip to Canada are Nicole Kidman's bid for an Oscar comeback in "Rabbit Hole", and Mark Romanek's adaptation of the Kazuo Ishiguro novel "Never Let Me Go".

I will be going to Venice again this year up until September 9 and am hoping to catch the slew of titles circling, the likes of which include Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere" (already confirmed), Julian Schnabel's "Miral", and the probable World premiere of Ben Affleck's second film as a director, "The Town". There is still no news on whether the mysterious Terrence Malick and his interminably absent "The Tree of Life" will bow in Italy, although if that was a possibility I'd have expected something more concrete to go on by now.

The full line-up for Venezia 66 is expected on Thursday, and August on this blog will be dedicated to previews of upcoming Venice 2010 features and reviews/ranking of the modest amount of Golden Lion and Volpi Cup (Actress) winners that I've managed to see so far.

Sit Down and Shut Up: "Love Story" and its Ode to the Romance Genre

Love Story (1970)

Directed by Arthur Hiller

Starring: Ryan O’Neal, Ali MacGraw, John Marley, Ray Milland

Grade: D+

“You look wonderful” says Ryan O’Neal’s Oliver to Ali MacGraw’s Jennifer when he returns to their home one evening, to which she responds, “No I don’t. I look OK for a Thursday night.” If “Love Story” was less self-definitive one could believe that it could adhere to beauty being in the eye of the beholder, or at least that Jennifer was being a trifle modest about her appearance. Instead the issue is laid to rest with ease, and this moment is an apotheosis of the film’s heavy-handed approach towards reality.

Screenwriter Erich Segal ensures everyone is kept in check by doing away with much of the exposition of Oliver and Jennifer’s budding high-school relationship, which swiftly becomes something much more serious. The couple appear to know each other inside-out fairly immediately, casting opinions in their first encounter at a library that are rarely, if ever, contravened afterward. He is the promising Harvard law aspirer who almost wants to spurn ambition to stick two fingers up at his snobbish, pushy parents, and she is the mouthy small-town girl who knows her own strengths and limitations. The early moments of their courtship ingratiate the couple to us, partly because of the amusing punchy banter they engage in, and somewhat as a result of O’Neal and MacGraw’s discernible chemistry. Jennifer is more upfront at first, her flagrant use of “god damn” the seventies equivalent of outlandish femininity, and as she goads Oliver by calling him “preppy”, she lightens the assertion of the couple’s class differences while ensuring that they remain an issue. The lofty social superiority of Oliver’s parents is the only obstacle for the couple in the first half of the film, but barely really registers as a legitimate qualm since Oliver is already so resentful of them anyway. The argument reaches a heady conclusion and, in dramatic terms, is dealt with simply and cleanly.

“Love Story” as a title is projecting an impression of itself as the 101 of romance, a literary portrait, and whether one sees this as the pinnacle of its pin-holed genre is down to whether you buy into complexity being spurned for a lineated, easy-beaten path. Even the strengths of “Love Story” detract from the modesty of the patent-like setup. Spearheaded by one of the most rousing, iconic film scores, the accompaniment is utilised rashly, with a primary intention to manipulate the slightness of the film’s themes and plug them with an aesthetic sense of grandeur. Even at its most wrenchingly sour the dramatic force of the film is weary, since it permanently appears to be working to finalise its characters' uncertainties and encourage universal acceptance of fate. “Love Story” is constantly delivering on Shakespearian elements of romance and tragedy, but without making any of its characters daring or interesting enough, extinguishing what it enflames almost in fear of making its audience uncomfortable for ten minutes.

Hiller’s film will most likely be remembered for the drastic climax of its romance, which essentially reinforces the view of “tragedy” as natural but love as unbreakable. The emotional impact of the late tragedy is minimal, since the briskness of formulating their relationship makes the Actors’ late, thankless requirement to allude to years of attachment a little desperate. And is it years? The time that passes is so unclear and uneven, and the terminal illness of Jennifer, along with the rest of the film, feels rushed unsteadily, as part of feeding populist impressions of romance as heartbreaking and zealous. We aren’t registering with the characters so much as an idea of romance as a paradox of the physically-fragile and emotionally-untouchable. Even the illness is lower on angst than is expected of a true “melodrama”, the Doctor disclosing a bleak diagnosis (to her husband not Jennifer, I might add) that neglects to explain what she is actually dying of. “Love Story” doesn’t deem a detail like this important because it won’t affect people’s perceptions of the romance or the essential devastation of losing the love of your life, which I find more than a tad insulting. The film is perpetually unconcerned with clarity that doesn’t involve the bare essentials of romantic fiction, mechanically moving from A to B to C in order to deliver its payload of tragedy. “Love Story” could well be viewed as the mainstream extreme, since it mirrors the expectations of a romantic audience by never once challenging itself or its characters.

The famously spoken tagline of the film, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry”, speaks volumes. The people who cried during “Love Story” more likely did so in the way one would observe homeless, neglected animals on charity ads. The film is designed to collate thoughts about love as fateful and significant into a commonplace collective – of course romance can be tragic, but “Love Story” is willing us to accept its own shallow pool of thought as an honest concession. In the same vein as its characters we’re sucked into a regimental order of cinematic control, indoctrinated into a brand of weeping consumers neutered of senses, unconcerned with real people and real problems. “Love Story” is escapist fare, not in the least unconditional, and therefore somebody somewhere is surely owed an apology.