A movie star is measured by his career.
His awards, his great movies, his unforgettable performances.
Although there is another way, faster, to discover the brightest stars: just walk before the red carpet of the Venice festival first thing in the morning.
Some days, just a few faithful are camped, more than 10 hours before, to finally see their idols at night.
When the pageant welcomes Timothée Chalamet, however, the handful turns into a horde.
Surely a good part of the expectant ones would eat the actor with kisses.
His character in
Bones and All
, on the other hand, would go much further: he would devour his followers.
Because the most adored boy in Hollywood returns to work with Luca Guadagnino, the director who launched him in
Call Me By Your Name
,
in a kind of cannibalistic
road movie
across the United States.
Although the most anticipated film on the third day of the contest did not satisfy expectations.
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The contest itself, in fact, left moviegoers hungry for more quality.
Bones and All,
based on the novel of the same name by Camille DeAngelis, follows the journey of a young outcast (Taylor Russell) in search of answers to her strange impulses.
And
Athena,
by Romain Gavras, focuses on other social outcasts: he narrates the revolt in a
banlieu.
Both share an intention: to illuminate those who are out of the spotlight.
Although they are also united by a defect: beautiful execution, precious frame.
But what about the content?
Just the opposite of
A Couple
, third film in competition: the eternal Frederick Wiseman, at 92 years old, proposes his first work of fiction after more than 60 documentaries.
The text -inspired by the correspondence between Sofia Bers and her husband, the writer Lev Tolstoy- seduces, but is betrayed by the format: a monologue where almost only the natural background varies before which the main actress, Nathalie Boutefeu, declaim her sentences.
“I feel family and friendship love, also for Taylor, for Luca.
For the other love, I am still very young”, Chalamet smiled to free himself from one of the first questions at the press conference.
Down below, among the supporters, the answer would probably have elicited a cheer of hope.
Although later the actor also launched a more somber message, speaking of the tide of lawsuits triggered by social networks: “It is difficult to live today.
The collapse of society is in the air”, he sentenced.
“We have all experienced social isolation during the pandemic, and yet we have needed contacts to understand who we are.
In the script, there is deep disappointment in life.
It is the story of someone who belongs to a prophecy and cannot escape from it.
A truncated soul”, added the interpreter.
Director Luca Guadagnino arrives at the premiere of 'Bones and All'. YARA NARDI (REUTERS)
“My cinematographic ambition is to have control of the work I do, and at the same time abandon myself to the absolute pleasure of collaborating with friends, people who belong to my family and who contribute, with their great creativity, to generating a collective work,” said Guadagnino, who is facing his first film shot in the US. When it was said that
Call Me By Your Name
showed homosexual awakening, the filmmaker replied that it simply told the beginning of passion, in general.
These days, he is explaining that, through the drive to eat other human beings,
Bones and All
reflects on love, “its impossibility and its necessity”.
Despite him, it is inevitable to also think of Arnie Hammer, the other protagonist of
Call Me By Your Name
, actor fallen into disgrace precisely after being accused of cannibalism and at the center of a controversial series released these days.
Bones and All
follows Maren, a girl like any other.
Until she, suddenly, she bites the finger of a friend of hers.
Her father flees, the young woman is left alone with her ghosts and embarks on a journey to find her missing mother.
Along the way, she comes across other "eaters" like her.
And with cities, highways and forgotten people.
Guadagnino must be recognized for the courage to take risks, to always try something different.
And in this case she builds an intriguing premise, to pull the viewer in any direction.
However,
Bones and All
It barely moves from its starting point.
Beyond the identity dilemmas and the desire to feel in community, the film is what it announces: the journey of a young cannibal.
Correct, very well done.
But the director of the Mostra, Alberto Barbera, announced that it was "the deepest film about the marginalized United States made by someone who is not from there."
In hindsight, he did the length a disservice.
Romain Gavras, before the press conference for 'Athena', today in Venice.
CLAUDIO ONORATI (EFE)
by
athena
— which will air on Netflix on September 23 — Barbera said he was filming the violent protests in a French suburb “like a war.”
In this case he was right.
It is a fact.
The spectacular close-up sequence recounts how the fuse is lit: the young Idir has died under police beatings.
One of his brothers asks for justice, but he calms down and calls for a peaceful march.
Another, however, lights up and throws a Molotov cocktail at a police station.
So chaos breaks out.
The camera always follows him closely, infects the seats, enters the barricades or between the riot shields.
"We wanted an important iconography, that the public would not have the time to reflect, as happens to the characters," Gavras told the press.
The dangers of testosterone and radicalization are already very shredded topics.
The destiny of the characters is soon intuited and quickly forgotten.
On the contrary, the memory of films that recounted the unrest in a
banlieu
and its inevitable epilogue with emotion and mastery, such as
The Hate
, by Mathieu Kassovitz, or
Deephan,
by Jacques Audiard, does not help.
Gavras has recognized in his work the echoes of the "Greek tragedies that have marked" his life and education.
“This film could be set in any era.
Behind every war there is a manipulation, an original lie.
There are always shadow forces that nurture the darkness,” added the director.
Perhaps, then, the novelty that
Athena
brings is an accusing finger towards the French extreme right-wing leader Marine Le Pen and, more generally, against whom she blows on the embers of hatred.
Such a direct allusion, yes, that it is a broad brush.
Maybe Gavras will at least get the public to take notice.
Today.
And the next time he votes.