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Scene from "The Event": Director Audrey Diwan was awarded the Golden Lion
Photo: Venice Film Festival
The triumph of women is almost inevitably an injustice against a few men.
The French director Audrey Diwan won the Golden Lion on the Lido of Venice on Saturday evening for the film "L'évènement" ("The Event"), which tells of an abortion in France in the 1960s - she is only the sixth woman in the history of the festival, founded in 1932, which won the main prize.
The New Zealand director Jane Campion received the directing award from the jury for the late-western "The Power of the Dog".
And the American actress and debut director Maggie Gyllenhaal received the award for best screenplay for her Elena Ferrante film "The Lost Daughter".
For some of the winners' strong male directors, including Pole Jan Matuszynski and Venozelan Lorenzo Vigas, it may be a bit tough that they missed out on the prizes.
The award of the Italian Paolo Sorrentino for “È stata la mano di Dio” (“The hand of God”) is like a consolation award.
A film made "with brain, heart and gut"
Nevertheless, it is a well-deserved victory for the female view of the world and the art of film that the jury, with the participation of director Chloé Zhao ("Nomadland") and director Bong Joon-ho ("Parasite"), announced. The decisiveness with which the French Diwan portrays the struggle of a student against immorality and the laws of a man's world in her second feature film "L'évènement" gives the film a great impact, the intensity of the actress Anamaria Vartolomei in the lead role leaves that Viewers suffer almost physically.
The doctors and male fellow students to whom the heroine turns in her distress meet her with sour morals, cowardice and helplessness - that's what happened to the writer Annie Ernaux when she published the book on which the film is based in 2000. Years after the publication, Ernaux said that the men of the French literary scene buried the abortion story under the guise of a "monumental silence". Hopefully this ignorance will be over with the film version of which the director said at the awards ceremony on Saturday evening that she made it "with gut, brain and heart."
At the beginning of this year's film festival, its boss Alberto Barbera had apologized that this year there were only five female directors among the 21 participants in the competition for the Golden Lion.
According to Barbera, this is due to the corona pandemic - because it allegedly particularly hinders the work of women in the film business - "a brief setback on the way to gender parity, which we all want."
At the end of the festival you can see that this year, despite Corona, many good and a few outstanding films were shown in the competition program.
And one can say that the films that dealt with gender perspectives and roles in a polemical, curious, hands-on manner were the most exciting of this year's Biennale.
As expected, for example, the director Pedro Almodóvar, who competed in the love and baby mistaken drama "Parallel Mothers", for which Penelope Cruz was rightly named best actress.
A rather unexpected but highly interesting contribution to the gender discourse came from the 83-year-old warrior director Ridley Scott, who presented his film "The Last Duel" outside of the competition, but with it celebrated the most spectacular premiere of the entire festival.
An almost classic male fight, on horseback and in armor
"The Last Duel" is a star-studded knight film in which Matt Damon and Adam Driver compete against each other as unequal noblemen in France in the late 14th century - on horseback and in armor. Scott, who became famous with legendary cinema battles such as "Blade Runner" (1982) and "The Gladiator" (2000), shows from three different perspectives why the two men have to fight to the death.
Jean de Carrouges (Damon) and Jacques Le Gris (Driver) are comrades-in-arms and rivals until one day Carrouges' wife Marguerite (Jodie Comer) Le Gris accuses them of raping them. First the two men present their version of the story. Until the trial before the French king and a duel, which according to the administration of justice at the time should be considered a judgment of God: In the event that her husband is defeated in the duel, the woman is convicted as a liar and the pyre already set up on which Marguerite is to be burned alive.
It's a bit bold, but highly entertaining and plausible, how Scott turns the historical intrigue based on a true story into a #MeToo drama. Because, of course, the woman's view of events is the only credible one. "Deny everything, always deny everything" is the motto used by Driver's famously cocky knight Jaques Le Gris, a Harvey Weinstein in French castle walls. Damon as Carrouges is a rude husband who accuses the raped woman of slovenliness as well as the court, which even asks her about her ability to orgasm. And the mighty at court are a depraved group of men who preach prudish and indulge in fornication day and night.
The Venice festival has gained a fair fame in recent years as a launch pad for films that later made it big at the Oscars. Of course, it would be fair and it is very much to be hoped for the films by Audrey Diwan and Jane Campion that they too make it at least Oscar nominations. In view of Ridley Scott's not always fine, but stirring art of updating, one can hope that “The Last Duel” will not be overlooked on the nomination lists of the Academy in Los Angeles.