Feminist or low-key men, victimhood and a spot of gossip from the Venice Film Festival

As the Venice Film Festival draws to a close – it ends on Saturday with the Golden Lion awards ceremony, hosted by Greta Scarano and Nicola Maupas – we’ve also seen the ‘feminist man’. A type of person who had, in fact, been missing from the festival’s cinema screens. Outside the cinema, rumours of his existence had been circulating, yet no one had ever managed to spot one.

But here he is, the repentant man. In Nicolas Pariser’s film “Un peu avant minuit”, presented in competition and advertised everywhere with a photograph of Chiara Mastroianni and Melvil Poupaud. The viewer expects to see them both on screen. Instead, they see only the young-at-heart fifty-year-old; Chiara Mastroianni only appears in the final five minutes of the film. Half-brothers, they are the sons of the same rather womanising father, but they have never met. Now their father has died, and his will must be read. In Italy: cobbled streets, narrow alleys, restaurants and all the trimmings.

The narrative opens in Paris, which appears to be on the brink of civil war. Police officers are deployed everywhere, on foot and in vans; smoke bombs and truncheons are in evidence. The fifty-year-old protagonist visits old acquaintances—primarily the female friends and former girlfriends who once gravitated toward the newspaper where he worked. He seeks their confirmation as to whether, in his youth, he behaved like a predatory man. None of them tell him how boring he is – and he probably already was at twenty. They chat and chat as they walk. Somewhere in the world, Aaron Sorkin and his ‘walk and talk’ are contemplating suicide.

We have said it before, and we will say it again. At this year’s Venice Film Festival, the only men worth paying attention to were Martin McDonagh, director of “Wild Horse Nine” (who was on the red carpet with his girlfriend Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who wrote the series “Fleabag”), and his actors John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell. Two CIA agents spending a few days on Easter Island. On holiday. Malkovich needs it – he’s in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, so he blurts out the agency’s secrets to the pretty girls he meets. The idea of the island with the statues was his, but he doesn’t like it any more. Perhaps he doesn’t remember it any more. Meanwhile, he admires the horses roaming freely across the island.

As for the rest, to be honest, there weren’t any particularly impressive male leads. Louis Garrell was running on empty in Nanni Moretti’s film “Succederà questa notte”, hopelessly in love with Jasmine Trinca. It’s cinema; you have to suspend your disbelief. Yet, on occasion, this suspension is challenged. Just two days later, Trinca also appeared in Paolo Strippoli’s film “L’estranea”. She is married to the actor Adriano Giannini, whom we saw yesterday morning imprisoned in Argentine jails under Videla: the film was “Back to Buenos Aires”, directed by Marco Bechis. As for the film The Echo Chambers, directed by Andrea Pallaoro from an unpublished screenplay by Bernardo Bertolucci and starring model Luca Marinelli, we would advise anyone against watching it. He simply sits in a room, plays a music producer, takes drugs, and wants to make an album with Susan Sarandon. The actress, poor thing, said at a press conference that they won’t let her work because she supports the Palestinian cause.

The conflict has been going on for decades, and until the Palestinians are able to form a state, a solution will be difficult to find. However, anyone who points this out is often criticized, and the Israelis are frequently cast as the villains. In “Naza”, around twenty soldiers speak in the dark, recounting operations in Gaza whilst protected by anonymity. The phones of Hamas supporters have been hacked; evidently, they are all family men who return home every night to sleep.

‘Naza’ stands for collateral victims, who are inevitable in a war where those responsible for the events of 7 October have families and live amongst the people. Twenty-five minutes of applause – it’s in all the newspapers and they’ve said so on TV too. The record held by Mr Fantozzi remains unbroken: he was honoured with 92 minutes of applause for his – less than flattering – review of "Battleship Potemkin" at the company film club.

The Italian contingent at the festival—apart from the incestuous entanglements between the actors in one film and another—offered hope for the future with Paolo Strippoli’s film, “L’estranea”. An horror film – the director rejects the label, though there is an evil presence and family members are harmed and then die – set under the Apulian sun. The atmosphere only takes a turn for the worse when the young daughter has grown up, distanced herself, and is in Rome amidst the flooding – too much water to be anything but purifying.

Evil takes the form of Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, and a raincoat that makes her resemble the mysterious blonde who wanders behind the scenes at the Fitzgerald Theatre in Kansas City. This is where an episode of the radio programme “A Prairie Home Companion” is being recorded, in Robert Altman’s film “Radio America”. A femme fatale named Asfodelo, the plant of the dead which, according to Greek mythology, grows in Hades.

Speculation on the jury, chaired by Maggie Gyllenhaal, remains premature. Her directorial debut—the Frankenstein-inspired Bride!—has left observers uncertain about its critical reception. According to industry rumours, she enjoyed Nanni Moretti’s It’ll Happen Tonight.