by Helen Barlow
Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, 74, was clearly over the moon when his new feature, The Room Next Door, won this year’s Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. It represents the first time that he has won the top award at one of the three major film festivals, Venice, Cannes and Berlin.
“This film is my first in English, but the spirit is Spanish,” he said as he accepted the award.
A euthanasia story set in New York and Upstate New York, the film follows Tilda Swinton enlisting her friend, Julianne Moore, to stay with her in a stylish country house as she ends her life. The film is not as grim as it might seem, as Almodovar injects some of his distinctive humour into the story as he did at a press conference following the awards.
“I didn’t even dream of the Golden Lion, but once you have it, you become addicted to the award. From now on, I couldn’t live without it.”
Jury head Isabelle Huppert, who started at the conference by declaring “Cinema is in great shape”, said the jury had been impressed with the way Almodovar dealt with the subject of euthanasia.
“In a way, he does it with a sense of life, of transmission. I think he considers the end of life and death like a movement, something which stops and something which goes on. The film is philosophical and he makes us think about what it means to be alive and what it means to end your life. Obviously, we loved the two actresses who are great, because the film is, strangely enough, never really sentimental nor really melodramatic. It’s Almodóvar’s talent to keep a certain distance from his subject.”
Without being asked, Huppert commented on best actress winner Nicole Kidman’s inability to accept her award following her mother’s death. Kidman had travelled to Italy to receive the award but had to return to Sydney shortly after landing.
“I just wanted to express my compassion to Nicole Kidman, who can’t be here tonight, who had to go back unexpectedly, and I just want to tell her that we really miss her and we love her.”
At the awards ceremony, Babygirl’s Dutch director Halina Reijn had read out a message from Kidman as she accepted the award on her behalf.
“Today, I arrived in Venice to learn shortly thereafter that my beautiful, brave mother, Janelle Ann Kidman, has just passed,” Kidman said. “I’m in shock and I have to go to my family, but this award is for her. She shaped me, she guided me, and she made me. I’m beyond grateful that I get to say her name to all of you through Helena. The collision of art and life is heartbreaking, and my heart is broken.”
Babygirl was certainly one of the festival highlights. Kidman, in her most erotic role to date, marks her position as a strong contender for an Oscar nomination. The film follows her CEO as she becomes enthralled in a sadomasochistic affair with her intern, played by Harris Dickinson from Triangle of Sadness.
“It’s a very daring performance, but it’s not only what she does,” Huppert said. “It’s also about what the film is about. I really like the perspective of the director, the way she mingles the two aspects of a woman. You can be a woman of power and yet you can also be a fragile woman. And I think what Nicole Kidman does is quite extraordinary. She shows a range of emotions, of intelligence in what she does. I was really struck.”
Brazilian director Walter Salles’s I’m Still Here [above] had been another festival favourite. The film’s star Fernanda Torres, the daughter of Fernanda Montenegro who starred in the director’s 1998 film Central Station, for which she was Oscar-nominated for best actress and the film for best foreign film, was Kidman’s main competition in the Venice awards. Torres plays the real-life Eunice Paiva, who conducted a lifelong search to uncover what happened to her husband, former federal deputy Rubens Paiva, after he disappeared during the military dictatorship in 1970s Rio de Janeiro.
Ultimately, the film’s screenwriters, Heitor Lorega and Murilo Hauser, who adapted Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s book, won for best screenplay.
Huppert said the film is “deeply poignant. You know the events, but the story never really takes you where you think it’s going to go, and I think that’s really the quality of the screenplay.”
The ever-consistent Vincent Lindon [above, who won the best actor prize in Cannes for The Measure of a Man in 2015] was named best actor for The Quiet Son from directing pair Delphine and Muriel Coulin. The topical drama, one of the best French films of the year, follows a single father struggling to stop his eldest son (played by the also excellent Benjamin Voisin from Lost Illusions) from falling in with a far-right extremist group.
Lindon, who headed the Cannes jury in 2022, said he didn’t expect to be chosen by a French jury head since he clearly knows something about that. Huppert was happy to defy expectations as her jury also awarded the best newcomer prize to France’s Paul Kircher [above] for the coming-of-age tale And Their Children After Them. The talented 22-year-old had already won the best actor prize in San Sebastian for Winter Boy in 2022.
Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist [above], which won the FIPRESCI (press) award, was also a strong competition contender. He ultimately was awarded the Silver Lion for best director. The epic film, which runs at 195 minutes (and thankfully had an intermission) follows Adrien Brody’s Hungarian architect and Holocaust survivor as he comes to post-war America to forge a stellar career under the patronage of a wealthy man, played by Guy Pearce.
The Grand Jury prize went to Maura Delpero’s Italian film, Vermiglio, the intimate portrait of a teacher and his large family living in a remote mountain village during WWII. When a wounded soldier falls in love with his daughter, family secrets are revealed.
A Special Jury Prize was awarded to the Georgian film, Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April, which examines the challenges of accessing abortion. One reviewer cited the film as “one of the toughest – but most impactful watches” of the festival.
Australian director Justin Kurzel’s first American film The Order was a competition stand-out. In many quarters, Jude Law was expected to win for best actor (he also produced the film) or Kurzel for director, as his images are superb. Like The Quiet Son, the film focuses on the emergence of a right-wing group, though it is set in the past, 1983, and the story is based on fact. It’s one to watch out for.
