I had every intention last night of bringing you a report on a couple more films, but packed-out screenings and overlapping screening schedules put paid to that idea.
Moreover, filing material online is proving something of a challenge, as the festival’s wi-fi access works in fits and starts, while my hotel has helpfully decided to dispense with their own such facilities altogether.
The slate of evening screenings, meanwhile, was sacrificed in favor of other plans. Call it lack of cinematic dedication on my part, but would you turn down dinner on the rooftop of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, with Todd Haynes and John Sayles in attendance?
I was lucky enough to be seated at an especially chatty table, with affable Australian critic (and former Edinburgh fest director) Shane Danielsen and Screen International’s Mike Goodridge leading the conversation.
The evening revealed that I’m in a minority favoring Todd Solondz’s “Life During Wartime,” while reactions to “The Road” continue to be all over the map. (I also learned the identity of this evening’s supposed “Surprise Film” in competition, though I promised not to reveal it.)
Other dinner-table topics included the collective hotness (or notness) of the “Nine” cast, and the virtues of all-female prison TV dramas. It’s not all auteurist debate when critics converge, you see.
Also overheard: much passionate praise for “I’m Glad That My Mother Is Alive,” the latest from veteran French auteur Claude Miller — which I missed on the first day much to my consternation, but should crop up in London next month — and middling word for Sherry Hormann’s “Desert Flower,” a biopic of Somalian supermodel turned human rights activist Waris Dirie.
The latter was one of the films I’d been unable to access yesterday, and while I didn’t have especially high hopes for it, I am interested in anything Sally Hawkins does these days, so I might catch a later screening. (Hawkins has a supporting best-friend role, apparently, but has been promoted to joint top billing. That’s what a healthy awards run — even without an eventual Oscar nomination — can do for an actor.)
Coming soon: a short take on Werner Herzog’s bananas “The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.” (Yes, the extra “The” is how it’s billed onscreen.)
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One response to “Disconnected Venice”
Todd McCarthy gave the Herzog film a positive review. Can’t wait to hear your thoughts. Also, scouring around the internet, and the reviews for The Road that have been posted seem generally favorable overall.