Venice Dispatch. 8.

With so many disappointments in the international competition to date, why not turn to the Horizons section? Werner Herzog delivers, and has created an extraordinary science fiction "documentary," a blurred boundary piece about the future of the world: The Wide Blue Yonder.

A group of astronauts circle the earth for hundreds of years after the planet has died. They live in an ocean wonderworld and later return to an earth in pristine condition, as it should be. Takeshi Miike's vision in The Great Yokai War takes pollution to task in epic proportion but Herzog has inventively created an amazingly enchanting film with exquisite underwater photography.

Also from the Horizons section, Michael Glawogger wonders if the "working class" has died out. Obviously it hasn't, and the Austrian director who studied at the acclaimed San Francisco Art Institute provides brilliant exposés on workers in Nigeria, China, Ukraine, Germany and Ukraine in Workingman's Death.

Adding to the tradition of directors working with "non-actors" (see, for example, Pier Paolo Pasolini's neo-realist films or Gus Van Sant's Elephant), out-of-competition entrant Steven Soderbergh came to the Lido with Bubble, a film about a love triangle. After making such conventional films as Erin Brockovich, Ocean's Eleven and Traffic, Soderbergh claims he wants to get as far away from Hollywood as possible and still make films in the US. This strikes me as rather a curious comment. Filmmakers are doing that daily in different forms, even in Hollywood.

Other sections of the festival include Venice Days and the International Critic's Week (ICW) - both feature films by provocative young directors. C.R.A.Z.Y. is a Venice Day entry from Jean-Marc Vallée (Canada) about a hetero-normative family with a gay son, a story spanning three decades, from the 60s to the 90s. The authentic coming out story is shot through with music (Patsy Cline, David Bowie, Jefferson Airplane), with clever art direction and an imaginative script. C.R.A.Z.Y. presents a rich, inventive and colorful tableau.

In Massimo Andrei's Mater Natura, an ICW entry, all the actors come from the theater. The story centers on male transvestites and transgenders, some of whom support themselves through prostitution. They eventually set up an "agrifuturism" colony outside Naples and offer Trans-Vesuvian counseling. Problems with film are rooted in the overacting (ICW catalogue contributor Marco Lombardi notes that acting in Italian cinema is in a "sorry state," but asks us to indulge the film's other graces). Yes, the story is authentic and sincere with its excellent transgender iconography and colorful art direction. A main plot line has a MTF transgender falling for a heterosexual Adonis, a man who is engaged to be married. Ironically, Trans-Vesuvian counselors urge hetero men to go back to their families.

Parallel to the Venice festival is the Gay Lido Film Festival (September 5 through 8), with four films about male homosexuality. At the Venice fest this year, only John Irvin's The Fine Art of Love deals with lesbian relationships, though even the director and actors were unable to acknowledge the subject matter at the press conference.

During the festival, free vaporetto boats to St Giorgio were provided for screenings of ten restored Chinese films. I have yet to see these in the retrospective sections, the Secret History of Asian Cinema, with films from Japan and China, and Secrets of Italian Cinema, including Pasolini's Salò and Fellini's Il Casanova. When Takeshi Kitano was asked if he considered historical films of Japan of importance to him, he actually admitted that he didn't. But for many festival-goers, these retrospectives provide unique opportunities to experience landmarks of world cinema.

There is one other perhaps unheralded section - Venice screenings, a market venue. I chanced upon a pearl of a film in a room the size of an ordinary Cineplex theater, with a pretty good screen. Zaire, Rider of the Atlas, from Bourlem Guerdjou (Germany/France), is the story of a young Moroccan girl who is reunited with her biological father. Her mother's boyfriend had kept them both locked up, and one night, during a fight, she slips and dies. Zaire is determined to ride the race her mother won twelve years before - and was disqualified from for being a woman. The exceptional cinematography and story certainly helped at Locarno, where it won an audience award for best film.

Posted by dwhudson at September 6, 2005 11:36 AM