Venice Film Festival: Day 1

28 August 2008

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American filmmaking may be very much taking a back seat at Venice this year but on the opening evening it was Hollywood royalty that descended on the festival.

Burn After Reading ignited the ten day event as George Clooney, Brad Pitt and recent Oscar winner Tilda Swinton graced the red carpet.

Burn After Reading is the latest film from Joel and Ethan Coen since their Best Picture and Best Director Oscar wins earlier this year for No Country For Old Men. The film also reunites them with actor Clooney who starred in O Brother Where Art Thou?

The film follows two gym employees who bungle an attempt to blackmail a CIA veteran after his damning memoirs about the organisation are left in the gym.

Another highlight of the opening day came in the form of sixty year old classic The Bicycle Thief by Vittorio De Sica.

The film has undergone painstaking resoration work as parts of the originsl prints became damaged. Both De Sica's sons were in the audience to celebrate this film returning to the big screen.

But it's day two where the festival really gets underway as the first of the in competition movies get their moment in the spotlight.

Takeshi Kitano's Akires to Kame or Achilles and the Tortoise gets the competition started. The film follows priviledged Machisu who grows up dreaming of being a painter. But when he is orphaned and left to struggle he holds onto his passion for art.

Against all odds he manages to attend art school but faces some tough criticism from an art dealer but continues to pursue his dream but by middle age he has still not sold a painting.

Last year's film festival kick started the awards season as Atonement, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Michael Clayton were all screened and went on to gain major award honors in the months that followed.

But this year, with fewer American movies on the festival's shortlist, candidates for major award honours seem harder to spot.

And of those American films that did avoid the effects of the writer's strike it seems The Burning Plain has the most going for it.

Starring Kim Basinger and Charlize Theron as mother and daughter the film is directed by Guillermo Arriaga who recieved an Oscar nomination for his scipt Babel in 2006.

So it remains to be seen if some of the films on show here over the next ten ten days will gain the momentum and critical support to carry them through to awards season.

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw

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