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https://scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3026225/venice-2019-biggest-losers-film-festival-women-directors
Lifestyle/ Entertainment

Venice 2019: biggest losers of the film festival, from women directors to MeToo to true stories

  • World War II drama The Painted Bird, and some mediocre real-life dramas, were among the biggest losers, as was MeToo with wins for Polanski and Nate Parker
  • The focus on directors’ gender rather than the merits of their inclusion was annoying, one of the two women with films in competition said
A still from The Painted Bird.

These were the four biggest losers from the just-concluded Venice International Film Festival, where Todd Phillips’ Joker won the Golden Lion for best picture and Roman Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy took the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize:

1. Female directors

As soon as the line-up was announced, with just two female directors in competition, much of the media was gunning for artistic director Alberto Barbera, who consistently refused to offer gender parity in his selection for the sake of it.

Like it or not, the two women competing for the Golden Lion became unwitting spokeswomen for the debate. Saudi Arabia’s Haifaa al-Mansour came with The Perfect Candidate, the story of a female doctor running for local office. Australian theatre director Shannon Murphy, meanwhile, brought the excellent coming-of-age drama Babyteeth to the festival.

Mila Ahzhanari in a still from Haifaa al-Mansour's film The Perfect Candidate: Photo: Razor Film/Al Mansour's Establishment for Audiovisual Media
Mila Ahzhanari in a still from Haifaa al-Mansour's film The Perfect Candidate: Photo: Razor Film/Al Mansour's Establishment for Audiovisual Media
Babyteeth actors Toby Wallace and Eliza Scanlen and director Shannon Murphy on the red carpet in Venice. Murphy said highlighting her inclusion as a woman was a distraction. Photo; Reuters
Babyteeth actors Toby Wallace and Eliza Scanlen and director Shannon Murphy on the red carpet in Venice. Murphy said highlighting her inclusion as a woman was a distraction. Photo; Reuters

Referring to her own inclusion as one of only two women, Murphy said: “It dominates the conversation and what’s annoying is that what should dominate the conversation is that a first-time producer, director and writer are in the main competition in Venice. That’s the interesting news.”

2. The Painted Bird

Some critics decided early on that Czech director Václav Marhoul’s The Painted Bird would be walking away with the Golden Lion. After all, it had all the hallmarks of the sort of hard core European art-house film that used to rule the cinematic landscape.

Running at nearly three hours, this black-and-white adaptation of Polish-American novelist Jerzy Kosinski’s 1965 bestseller follows a young, unnamed Jewish boy as he endures all manner of atrocities at the tail end of World War II.

Featuring a cast including Udo Kier, Harvey Keitel and Julian Sands – who have all put down their markers in Euro-cinema in the past – it scored respectable critical praise from film trade publications. “Its subject, length and seriousness should give it a good shot at prizes,” noted The Hollywood Reporter.

A still from The Painted Bird, some critics’ favourite to win the Golden Lion but which went home empty-handed.
A still from The Painted Bird, some critics’ favourite to win the Golden Lion but which went home empty-handed.

Well, not quite. The film walked away empty-handed.

3. The #MeToo Movement

To those who have been campaigning for #MeToo in the wake of the sex abuse scandals that rocked Hollywood, this year’s selection rubbed salt into some very raw wounds. The inclusion in the competition of Polanski’s latest film, An Officer And A Spy – about the Dreyfus affair that rocked France in the late 19th century, a scandal involving a Jewish soldier falsely convicted of treason for passing secrets to Germany – saw jury head Lucretia Martel refuse to attend the red carpet gala for the film’s screening.

American Skin director Nate Parker with fellow American director Spike Lee (right). Parker’s film won a secondary award at the festival, three years after news of his acquittal for rape in 1999 torpedoed his previous film. Photo: Reuters
American Skin director Nate Parker with fellow American director Spike Lee (right). Parker’s film won a secondary award at the festival, three years after news of his acquittal for rape in 1999 torpedoed his previous film. Photo: Reuters

Polanski, as most people will know, pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor in 1977 before fleeing the United States for Europe.

Similarly, Nate Parker’s return with American Skin ruffled feathers. His earlier film Birth of a Nation was torpedoed when allegations resurfaced of a 1999 rape case involving Parker, who was acquitted, and his collaborator Jean Celestin, who spent six months in jail.

Ironically, both films wound up taking prizes in Venice: Polanski’s movie took the Silver Lion, while Parker’s film claimed the Filming Italy Award for Best Film of the festival’s Sconfini section.

Roman Polanski. Photo: Venice International Film Festival
Roman Polanski. Photo: Venice International Film Festival

It would seem Barbera, who suggested we must “distinguish … between the artist and the man”, got his wish.

4. True Stories

There were a few too many pedestrian “based on a true story” films at this year’s Venice, the worst of them being Olivier Assayas’ Wasp Network. The French director can, on his day, be one of Europe’s most elegant filmmakers, but this clumsy take on a 1990s true-life tale about Cuban-American espionage tripped over itself.

Gael Garcia Bernal and Penelope Cruz in a scene from Wasp Network.
Gael Garcia Bernal and Penelope Cruz in a scene from Wasp Network.

Despite the excellent cast – Penelope Cruz, Gael García Bernal and Ana de Armas included – it rather suffers by comparison to Assayas’ earlier epic, Carlos, in which he also told a real-life tale of violence and intrigue. It didn’t help that Edgar Ramirez, who previously played Carlos the Jackal, here stars as a Cuban pilot who makes a break for America in a dramatic escape.

Sadly, it only served to remind us that he and Assayas once made a much better film.

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