It is particularly significant that the first Spaniard to win the Golden Lion, Luis Buñuel in 1967 by Beauty of the daydid it with a French production. Of course, this could not have been done under the Franco regime. Almost sixty years later, Almodóvar’s victory technically carries the Spanish flag, but… do we believe it?
I mean, beyond the fact that The next pieceThe Venice award-winning film is shot in New England, in English, and outside Tilda Swinton And Julianne Moorehalf of the Spanish cast (Victoria Luengo, Juan Diego Botto…) had fun disguising their Castilian accents as Yankees.
Although cinema is fundamentally stateless, Pedro Almodóvar’s triumph has raised some shards that deserve to be made visible. First, at this point, we should be angry that a technicality in the rules of the Oscar for best international film (which requires a quota of non-English speakers on the part of the candidates) excluded the very good asset of a Red Golden Lion in the selection of the three Spanish pre-candidates for the 97th edition of the Oscars.
Among those who were able to present themselves, Second prize, The Blue Star And Framewithout harming them, none have the power or international prestige of Almodóvar… The void of Frame by Jon Garaño and Aitor Arregi, who in Venice competed in the Orizzonti parallel, speaks for itself.
Almodóvar’s Disjointed Images
Then we will have to deal with the broken mirror in which Almodóvar’s image is reflected. There is the international press, which has been absolutely cold towards the America drawn by the man from La Mancha and has discredited its protagonists for not being realistic enough (IndéWire Implied, to make matters worse, that this was due to an idiom “lost in translation”), with “effeminate” performances.
On Tuesday, Tilda Swinton predicted that they would not have understood the anti-realist poetics of Pedro’s cinema, a defense akin to the “what do they know” that comes to everyone’s mind when we are told, without propriety, what is ours (let’s say call it Almodóvar-explanation).
Now: given the mixed results of his recent films at the Spanish box office, it can be said that Almodóvar – in practice, when you have to pay eight euros for a ticket – here we are not very interested either. As Juliet, Parallel mothers It was a real mistake… For many reasons, but among them its premiere in October stands out, a weekend full of premieres; a very similar image to that of The next piece (arriving in theaters October 18).
Is it fair to compare the seventeen minutes of standing ovation at the film’s screening in Venice with the silence it surely awakens when it hits theaters? Let’s hope to avoid the dilemma with a box office to match.
That said, The Golden Lion continues to be wonderful news. Not only on the merits of a brilliant, deep and enjoyable work (our critics testify to this), but because Pedro Almodóvar, who represents in himself the perfect blend of folklore and critical thinkingtakes advantage of each of his public interventions to formulate strong and clear political denunciations.
In fact, during the press conference, the director spoke of the urgency of the fight against fascism, climate change and religious fundamentalism; three themes that are also present in the film. He was also very clear about the need to regularize euthanasiaa right that he reiterated during his acceptance speech. Almodóvar knows how to take the microphones around him to return, again and again, to the inseparable link between aesthetics and ethics. Using privileges selflessly; So glad he keeps winning.
Isabelle Huppert and the cinema that can be saved
Every day more hieratic and with fewer filters, the president of the international jury Isabelle Huppert She let slip on the first day of the competition that she felt uncomfortable. Cinema’s “very poor” healthreferring more or less explicitly to a certain uncompromising auteur cinema. Last night, during the presentation of the verdict, the actress seemed to make a clean slate by joking: “I have good news for you. Cinema is in great shape”, then invoking the four vague virtues of the collective dream (“the ability to make us travel” and other subjects).
That is to say, after twenty-one films, the actress has completely changed her mind… And according to her track record (in the absence of further explanation), her change also seems to be due to a very specific type of cinema. On the one hand, it has rewarded the die-hard cinephile corner of Risky Paris and indistributable magnum opus beyond the niche.
Here falls the Silver Lion for best director, for the fantastic The Brutalist of Brady Corbetwith its disturbing three hours and forty minutes and its glossy Vistavision format (an obsolete format) evidence of the “corporate Goliaths trying to manipulate us” to sell tickets. Or Dea Kulumbegashvili’s Garlic, Aprila film that deliberately abuses sensibilities and reaffirms the Golden Shell for Beginning and in Venice he won the Special Jury Prize.
However, The film that received the most awards was a French production. and, more specifically, medium format (films with a social character but no less popular for that reason). By parts: except for The Brutalist And little girlAmericans and The next pieceSpanish… the rest of the winners are French or co-produced by France.
The data can go unnoticed because neither Vermilion from Italian Maura Delpero (Grand Jury Prize) or Ainda is here from brazilian Walter Salles (Best Screenplay for Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega) take place in Gaul, and do not have a single line in French. But their credits include the participation of Charades and MACT Productions, respectively.
Seven out of ten. This may seem like a shameful “grand sweep”, fueled if possible by the familiarity that Huppert and Vincent Lindon had during the presentation of the Volpi Cup for Actor, when the actor repeated four times “thank you, Isabelle”, gave her a kiss and then mechanically listed the rest of the members (among them James Gray, Andrew Haigh or Agnieszka Holland) and forgot the name of Abderrahmane Sissako. So much affection for one, so little for the others. A favoritist logic for a favoritist recording.
In Cannes, whose competition is completely dominated by the protectionism of the national product (due to the dynamics of monopolies and regulation, the issue is complex), it would surely not have been given so much importance. However, if we compare yesterday evening’s winners with the jury’s decision last year, we will find only two French co-productions among the eight winners: Io captain from Italian Matteo Garrone And green border varnish Agnieszka Hollande.
On the contrary, the forgetting of the balance sheet is the product of a careless vision of maintaining the balance of quotas… But the colonialism of country In the circuits of great auteur cinema (class A festivals) it exists and will not disappear overnight. Even if we do not detect it, or precisely because we do not know how to recognize it.
At the end. Because of the popular nature of the winners – we said they all came from a cinema of middle room, with a commercial spirit and without renouncing a more theoretical or social formalism (so that we understand each other, offer for the ladies Verdi) –, laurels can be useful. Do you remember the Golden Lion printed on the capitals of poor creatureslast December? No? That’s because the Lion wasn’t even on the poster.
Yesterday, however, the award went to a type of release that has lost a lot of its vigor in recent years: a type of medium-sized film that used to be released in national formats, but now has to rely on good theatrical treatment or immediate success to avoid being quietly kicked off the billboards by the big premieres. While we propose a deep structural reform on the logic that kills them, let’s put them a lion as a bandagelet’s see what happens.
