Noah Baumbach and Lars Von Trier play in Venice, and we fell (more) in love with Cate Blanchett

Yesterday, the night at the Lido breathed a charged atmosphere. Expectations were through the roof: for the first time, after two years, the Sala Grande once again had full capacity, an audience without masks and stars everywhere; the Venetian pomp with all of the law.

In fact, the president of the Official Jury walked the red carpet of the 79th edition of the Venice Film Festival, Julianne Mooreand a good handful of Important peoplesince Hillary Clinton to the new mass idol Rege Jean Page (star of the first season of The Bridgertons).

Likewise, the Golden Lion for Career was given to Catherine Deneuve and, as in Cannes, Volodymyr Zelensky returned to make an appearance (telematics), who wielded an unnerved rally. Whatever our political position, in a cinematographic context such interventions (today apparently normalized) should be put under harsh scrutiny.

Baumbach’s risky bet

In any case, the opening gala had to be capitalized, and for this reason the first projection was entrusted to someone from the house: Noah Baumbach premiered White Noisea Netflix film with two of the usual faces in the filmography of the director of story of a marriage, Adam Driver Y Greta Gerwig. A safe bet, especially considering that it is an adaptation of the homonymous literary success of Don DeLillo.

[Hollywood desembarca en Venecia]

Here is our surprise, then, when contemplating the timid applause of a few minutes (Variety count 150 seconds) that escaped through a room already emptied and sleepy. The puncture, we suppose, is due to the risk of a proposal that collides radically with the rest of Baumbach’s filmography. The filmmaker moves away from the realism of his previous sentimental portraits to construct a political satire around suburban America, enlightened but well off in innocuous speeches and proclamations.

Making free use of the forms of drama, apocalyptic movies and even musicals, White Noise is constructed as a deliberately confusing and grotesque journey, which dynamites that well-meaning, well-spoken and well-considered Baumbach to the ground. A cinematographic suicide with irregular results, but at least it smells of novelty.

Lars von Trier’s Missed Opportunity

We applaud Baumbach’s film for the same reason that we feel the return of Lars von Trier like a missed opportunity. The Dane, who has not been able to attend the Lido in person due to his worsening Parkinson’s disease, premieres the third season of The Kingdom exodusafter a quarter of a century without knowing anything about the original series.

It is a movement that returns him to the shadow of the masterpiece that sponsored his success, the Twin Peaks of David Lynch, which returned for a third season in 2017, also 25 years after going out of business. However, the dead time that Lynch took advantage of to turn his entire cinematographic universe upside down (and with it, our idolatry towards characters halfway through myth), this strange pause seems not to have served Von Trier much.

The Kingdom Exodus It takes us back to a Rigshospitalet that has seen its fame sullied by a series about a guy named Lars von Trier. What a great idea! In short, the original series not only attracts tourists, like the sleepwalking lady (and apparently possessed by the Devil) who co-stars in the series, but also colors the entire aesthetic (that sepia color, that is not lacking), narrative arcs and characters. At the head of the neurology unit, the son of the Swedish fan stig helmercopy and debtor of his father.

The series, which Filmin will premiere in Spain, updates plots but does not provide any novelty for those who followed the previous seasonsalthough it can open interesting debates about the referentiality and the nature of the reboot.

Cate Blanchet: firm, sharp and super lesbian in ‘Tár’

Another return closed the night, this time one that we no longer expected: Todd Field, director of the excellent Games secrets, had been away from the big screens since 2006. Today he returned, backed by an intriguing premise and a Cate Blanchett in a state of grace.

Tar is he biopic of Lydia Tarthe undisputed genius of contemporary classical music with some unfinished business with her “irreproachable” feminist stance (Field’s film plays with the thriller to reveal the reason for these quotation marks). Lydia Tár, composer and royal teacher, could have been born to be a character played by Cate Blanchett: assertive, sharp, super lesbian, and with just the right amount of authority from a role model, not a tyrant.

Around him a film is built that spends the first hour absorbed by his speech, his gestures and his values, firmly meritocratic. She is the center, and everything else, including her partner (Nina Hoss) and her faithful assistant (a Noémie Merlant more serious and diffident than ever), is blurred, relegated to the margins. Field shows a tremendous talent for drawing a precise story that leaves room for mystery.a journey of pristine yet surprising twists.

Tar nothing goes, until a storm awakens that, deep down, we would not want to witness. The film may lose impatient viewers, but it’s definitely an unexpected treat.

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