From left to right, Nicole Holofcener, Matt Damon, Ridley Scott, Jodie Comer and Ben Affleck, before the presentation of 'The Last Duel' Joel C Ryan / AP
The truth can only be one.
There are, however, always multiple ways of telling it, both today and in the 14th century.
That's how far Ridley Scott goes back in
The Last Duel
to rescue a real event with clear echoes of the present: an excess of testosterone, a rape and a victim that almost no one believes, and most questions.
Her own husband, Jean de Carrouges, sees the matter as the umpteenth outrage on his behalf.
The main victim, it would be missing more, is him.
The defendant, the squire Jacques Le Gris, has it just as clear: the woman deep down wanted it, she resisted him because it is part of the seduction game.
But what about her?
What does Lady Marguerite think?
In the film, presented out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, Scott reconstructs the three points of view of a medieval chronicle over the course of two and a half hours that could be on the front page of any newspaper tomorrow.
And more with protagonists like Jodie Comer, Matt Damon, Adam Driver and Ben Affleck.
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The Philippine
On the Job: The Missing 8,
by Erik Matti, which is opting for the Golden Lion, offers a longer duration, 208 minutes, and another fact as tragic as it is real: the murder of eight journalists at the hands of the corrupt system of his country. He also shares the allusion to the present: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has often been criticized for the river of blood that his war against drug trafficking is leaving. Finally,
Un autre monde,
by Frenchman Stéphane Brizé, also in competition, recalls a truism, familiar in too many houses, but one that many companies try to hide: layoffs are not numbers, but ruined lives. The Mostra, then, closes with a review of the shadows of reality. Until tomorrow, Saturday, the lights are turned on over the record.
Apart from an authentic drama,
The Last Duel,
which will be seen in Spain in October, part of a book of the same name published in 2004 by Eric Jager. Damon said that a contributor to Pearl Street Films, the company he shares with his friend Affleck, emailed them for years encouraging them to read it. In the end, they bought the rights. Scott's phone immediately rang. "And when Matt Damon calls you to read something, you don't say no," said the filmmaker. The two screenwriters also hired director Nicole Holofcener to co-write with them. “This movie was exhilarating because of the strength of Marguerite's character. And for the narration. He also had a story that people didn't know about. We didn't want to be didactic or boring, so we called Nicole, ”joked Affleck.
The feature maintains a certain interest throughout its footage. And it will raise in many commercial rooms a reflection that is more than necessary. Many of his dialogues, however, fall into the temptation of evidence. In the cinema, activism is sometimes a bad counselor. Although
The Last Duel
can also serve to fuel another very current debate: perhaps claiming itself as a great bulwark of feminism and receiving applause for it is not the role that corresponds to a man. So given to filming in Spain, perhaps Scott knows the ironic label that this category deserves there: the ally. At the very least, the female perspective of the script was primarily written by Holofcener. Damon and Affleck took care of the other two prisms.
Both also concentrated, of course, the overwhelming majority of the questions in the press room. The only question addressed only to the two women present inquired into the influence of the Me Too movement. “I felt the duty to pamper [such a project], also for all the spectators who would see it. But when you film you focus on doing the best you can, ”said the actress. And the screenwriter added: “We were very careful that Marguerite's version of the story was the real one. But I worked mostly on it as a human being ”.
The protagonist of
Un autre monde
is also made of flesh and bones
.
And, as such, he is wrong, and he suffers. “The last movie!”, Two journalists congratulated each other in the room before the projection that closed the official competition. But the film also adds a new chapter, the third, to Brizé's research on the cruel consequences of capitalism for workers, always with Vincent Lindon as an actor.
The law of the market
followed the burden of an unemployed person;
In war it
showed the revolts of the union; here, the protagonist exercises command, but to a certain extent: director of a French subsidiary, within a multinational.
The plot is a daily bread in half Europe: a readjustment, the famous "doing more with less". Although the company never talks about layoffs: taking 10% of the workforce, in its vocabulary, becomes "having the value" that is needed. Words count too, and the characters dedicate most of the film to them. Because the director is trapped, between the desperation of his employees and the blind orders from above. No broad brush: Brizé's brushstrokes are subtle, full of nuances. And they perform a complex fresco, as life always is. Only the epilogue sins of simplicity.
On the Job: The Missing 8
never comes to an end.
Erik Matti, an author so far turned on series B, tries to evoke Tarantino and Soderbergh with his colorful
thriller
about the volatilized journalists and their search.
But after an hour and a half, stylistic games and situations begin to repeat themselves.
So much so that, looking around, another absence was discovered: half the room had also disappeared.
The Spanish film 'Eles transportan a morte', awarded in Venice
They transport them to death
, by the Spanish directors Helena Girón and Samuel M. Delgado, won today Friday the Mario Serandrei - Hotel Saturnia award for the best technical contribution, within the framework of Critics' Week, the parallel section of the Venice festival where it was presented . The jury highlighted “his ability to create an immersive dimension of sound, in which the tension between the characters and the environments is amplified and deeply dialogues with the visual search of the authors. A soundtrack of sounds, noises and images, which feeds a story of mystery, life and death, from the dimension of the myth to the existential drift of the characters ”. It is the first feature length of the duo of directors,that mixes the story of three men who flee from one of Christopher Columbus's caravels in 1492 with that of a woman who goes to a healer to save her sister. The movie
Zalava
, by Iranian Arsalan Amiri, has won the Critics' Week competition, as well as the FIPRESCI (the international federation of the film press) award.