Venice Diary #10 - Saints and martyrs

by Elisa Giudici

It's the last full day of Venice with the awards about to be announced as you're reading this... or maybe they've already been announced depending on when you clicked over. Yesterday, I was chatting with some Italian colleagues. Our country's films in competition ranged from distinctive to very good. We were quite proud... but then two more Italian films arrived and some of us had to rethink our position.

CHIARA by Susanna Nicchiarelli
Saint Chiara is a revolutionary figure in Medieval Italian history. She was a true radical in society of the time. Influential from a young age, Chiara's fame is somewhat obscured by the fact that she lived with Saint Francesco, the patron saint of the country.

While Nicchiarelli aims to give the Saint the attention she deserves, her film will do next to nothing to achieve that. The production reads somehow false from the very beginning, giving TV movie rather than historical feature atmosphere. The acting is also not strong. Nicchiarelli's direction does little to help Margherita Mazzucco (My Brilliant Friend). In her film debut, and the titular role, she's left alone in front of the rolling camera, trying to react to the most trivial plot twists and miracles in a similar fashion. She's also asked to break out into song like a Disney princess. 

There is no sense in the screenplay of how innovative and radical Chiara's work with the poor outside of the monastery and the Church was. She was also a controversial figure, so intent on her fasting (ostensibly for God), that some historians believe she actually suffered from a severe form of anorexia, which caused her mystical visions. Almost nothing that makes Chiara such an interesting woman of the Middles Ages in Italy is depicted. The aspect thats most galling is that Nicchiarelli tries to shine a light on Chiara by denying Saint Francis his own remarkable charisma; It should not be difficult to give back some space to an iconic female figure without diminishing the merits of the men around her.

SICCITÀ by Paolo Virzì
Siccità is also a mess, albeit quite an iinteresting one. Siccità brought somethign to the festival that no other major title did: the present. Writer/director Paolo Virzì (The First Beautiful Thing, Human Capital) wrote it during the lockdown. Virzì imagines a Rome without drinkable water, the Tevere river a distant dream, and insects everywhere. The assembled characters (rich and poor, famous and unknown, ordinary people and powerful ones) move about the city, not truly realizing the gravity of the situation. It's a potent set up but Siccità has too many stereotypical characters. Monica Bellucci plays a famous actress living in a huge apartment with an impressive terrace. She seduces an expert in water crisis who has become a sort of rising star on television. Watch out also for Tommaso Ragno (also in I Eat Your Heart this year at the Lido) and for Emanuela Fanelli, an Italian comedian who plays a pivotal role in the film.

For all its faults the movie also has truth in it. It is an apocalytic, allegorical tale of the downfall of Rome, a city that in recent years has seemed lost and doomed. Better to fail to ambition and thinking outside the box. Whatever its flaws, Siccità deserved the Competition slot that went to Chiara!

NO BEARS by Jafar Panahi
A lot of cynical takes out there on this situation, basically saying that Panahi has to do very little to be a Golden Lion contender. The thinking goes that the jury will be affected by knowing he's in a jail. And yet Panahi has done more than "very little" -- he's made a remarkable movie. No Bears is somehow, against the odds,  a step forward in Panahi's career. The writing is more complex, giving us a layered movie-within-a-movie which mimics a documentary and sometimes is able to make you believe you are witnessing a scene from Jafar Panahi’s life. Then you remember someone is behind the curtain -- yes, there is a camera recording the scene.

Jafar Panahi's character is shooting a movie about two people attempting to leave Iran for Europe. We eventually realize they are shooting the movie as a sort of documentary about their actual attempt to depart Iran for Europe. So No Bears is a sort of mockumentary about two people fleeing from Iran while filming the fictional version of their own story. Out of Tehran, Jafar becomes a character in the script's other major plot line. A famous person in the capital, in the small village of Jaban he has a lot of difficulties figuring out how to navigate life in the country. One memorable line in the movie to this effect "City people have problems with institutions. Country people have superstitions". No Bears is a story about a nation trapped inside its own geographical and cultural borders, inhabited by people who are desperately unhappy but unable to leave.

Panahi's film is less optimistic and darker than his previous movies. The director himself lingers on the possibility of escaping his beloved country. Anger and frustration are visible in his eyes at the end of a movie in which dangers (bears, police, smugglers patrolling the Turkish border) are not quite visible, but lured from the darkness.

I would like to see Panahi win the prize for the screenplay, but I would not be surprised to see him winning a second Golden Lion. The movie is well written and directed with small technical virtuosity that underlines his creativity, even in a desperate situation like the one he is living in.

My 'jury of one' festival wrap-up coming tomorrow

Also...

#1 - Tár, White Noise...
#2 - Bardo False Chronicle of... 
#3 - Bones and All, Monica, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
#4 - The Whale, Argentina 1985, Master Gardener
#5 - L'Immensità, Other People's Children, Love Life
#6 - Banshees of Inisherin, Don't Worry Darling, Eternal Daughter
#7 - Saint Omer, Lord of the Ants
#8 - The Son, Beyond the Wall, Dreamin' Wild 
#9 - Blonde, Our Ties, Athena

Comments

[Lenard W]

Golden Lion (Leone d’Oro): All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, directed by Laura Poitras

Grand Jury Prize: Saint Omer, directed by Alice Diop

Silver Lion (Leone d’Argento) for Best Director: Bones and All, directed by Luca Guadagnino

Special Jury Prize: No Bears, Jafar Panahi

Volpi Cup (Coppa Volpi), Best Actress: Cate Blanchett for Tár

Volpi Cup (Coppa Volpi), Best Actor: Colin Farrell for The Banshees of Inisherin

Marcello Mastroianni Award, Best Young Actor: Taylor Russell for Bones and All

Golden Osella (Best Screenplay): The Banshees of Inisherin, written by Martin McDonagh