Venice at Home – Day 3: From Galleries to Gangsters

by Cláudio Alves

Day 3 at the Venice Film festival finds a nonfiction master dipping his foot into the murky waters of fictionalized narrative. Frederick Wiseman's A Couple purports to dramatize the correspondence between Leo Tolstoy and his wife, starring Nathalie Boutefeu, working from a script made from documented letters. Elsewhere in the official competition, Luca Guadagnino helms Bones & All, a cannibal romance starring Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell. Finally, Romain Gavras brings Athena to the festivities, working alongside Ladj Ly, who co-wrote the film.

As we wait for these movies to become more readily available, let's consider their directors' previous works, including an ode to museums, a fashionable short, and a Scarface revision…

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In Conversation: Oscar's Documentary Class of 2014 (Part 2)

Welcome back to The Film Experience's look at this year's Oscar documentary nominees. Glenn Dunks is again joined by Daniel Walber of Nonfics in this second part looking at the once maligned and controversy-filled Best Documentary Feature category. If you missed part one then go read that first - our thoughts on Wim Wenders' The Salt of the Earth were not echoed by you, the readers, but that's what makes this all so fun. If you're a fan, check out discussion from last year about the 1989 winner, Common Threads.

Daniel: (cont'd) The way [Virunga director Orlando von Einsiedel] orchestrates it all, particularly in the thrilling climax, is what sets it apart. In a way that makes it not unlike Last Days in Vietnam (Glenn's review). Both films take a single sequence of events, in that case the 1975 evacuation of Saigon, and tell its story with several different perspectives. I’m not sure the strategy works quite as well for Last Days in Vietnam, which is also the only nominee this year made up primarily of archival footage. Do you think that has something to do with it?

Archival power, Roger Ebert and our own ballots after the jump

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