“The Stranger”, a successful adaptation of “The Monkey’s Paw”

What should be done about the neighbour who whistles and swears at the top of his voice during a fine film in the competition? Confront him? Silence him? Hope he isn’t teaching at a public film school or at university? So often, we too are tempted to cry out in protest. Yet those who oppose Paolo Strippoli and his film L’estranea are the very same people who applauded The Echo Chamber, the posthumous Bernardo Bertolucci film directed by Andrea Pallaoro. Never heard of it? It happens – some directors who win festival awards end up driving audiences away.

“L’estranea” was the only genre film in the competition – but the director doesn’t want to be labelled as such, a sentiment shared by Quentin Tarantino and Dario Argento. Horror hasn’t yet been accepted in the same way as the western. For the naysayers: the films by the young directors who triumphed this summer were “scary”: Kane Parsons’ Backrooms grossed $394 million worldwide, and Curry Barker’s Obsession more than $500 million. If you care about the fate of cinemas, and of cinema in general, you would do well to take a look. To understand what is happening in the world, outside the film clubs.

Paolo Strippoli offers his own take on the scariest story of all (as written by Stephen King in "Dance Macabre"). The timeless classic entitled "The Monkey’s Paw". There are no monkeys in the beautiful southern house. The director rejects the ‘horror’ label, because he knows the world of Italian cinema. But it’s difficult to pass it off as the story of a middle-class family celebrating the success of their boutique.

Her father is Adriano Giannini, her mother Jasmine Trinca, and they have two children. Alice, as an adult, is played by Romana Maggiora Vergano, who delivers a brilliant performance. As a child, Alice was on the eve of a TV audition when the family dog mauled her leg. Her mother Anna entrusted her to a mysterious woman in a raincoat, whom she had met in the hospital chapel. She is prepared to do anything: one of those moments when the devil – or who knows who – steals your soul. A little girl is healed, in exchange for her son, who used to be a sportsman but is now putting on weight and getting fatter and fatter. Another little chat with the unsettling Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, and the excess weight disappears.

Anyone with a bit of experience of horror literature can imagine the build-up. Paolo Strippoli sets almost the whole thing out in the open – even less talented directors than him can create a sense of dread with darkness and creaking doors. It’s bound to be a hit at the box office, regardless of any awards it might win.

Sophie Fiennes, sister of Ralph and Joseph Fiennes (though the family is larger, with everyone being artists, starting with their parents), presents the documentary "The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias" in the Orizzonti section. It is the third in a series filmed with the philosopher Slavoj Žižek, a superstar who travels from festival to festival, and who, amongst a hundred bizarre ideas, occasionally gets one right. For example, he claims that the characters in Alain Resnais’s “Last Year at Marienbad” live in limbo (not metaphorically, but the kind where souls await an upgrade). Yet he then mocks one of the finest films ever made about cinema, “Sullivan’s Travels”, known in Italy as “I dimenticati”. In 1941, a director leaves Hollywood to make films ‘closer to the suffering masses’, only to discover that the poor want to be entertained, perhaps with Pluto and Donald Duck. An absolute masterpiece directed by Preston Sturges, yet according to Slavoj Žižek it deserves to be censored: the poor shouldn’t watch hilarious films; they should be making a revolution.