“Cinema is in great shape,” declared French movie icon and festival jury head Isabelle Huppert during the awards ceremony.
And just like that the 81st Venice Film Festival has come to a stunning, star-studded close with the Isabelle Huppert-led jury bestowing top prizes at Saturday night’s (Venice time) awards ceremony. Other members of the jury were James Gray, Andrew Haigh, Agnieszka Holland, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Abderrahmane Sissako, Giuseppe Tornatore, Julia von Heinz, and actress Zhang Ziyi.
Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language debut, The Room Next Door, starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, was awarded the Golden Lion, beating a formidable roster of nominees.
Almodóvar’s win came after his film, a meditation on friendship and death, received a 17-minute standing ovation during its screening, with Variety joking that their stopwatch guy had to be given fluids for exhaustion. The Spanish filmmaker has long been a Venice Film Festival fixture, having premiered many of his films at the festival over the past four decades.
“I would like to dedicate it to my family,” Almodóvar said. “This movie … it is my first movie in English but the spirit is Spanish.”
Nicole Kidman, meanwhile, was awarded the best actress prize for her raw and daring portrayal of a CEO caught in an intense affair with an intern in Babygirl. So erotic and vulnerable was her performance that Kidman said in an interview with Vanity Fair that she’s not so sure if she has that “much bravery” to watch her own film.
The 57-year-old Australian actress, however, missed the ceremony due to the death of her mother. “I arrived in Venice and found out shortly after that my beautiful, brave mother, Janelle Ann Kidman has just passed,” Kidman said in a statement read by Babygirl director Halina Reijn. “I’m in shock and I have to go to my family, but this award is for her. … She shaped me and made me.”
Maura Delpero’s Vermiglio won the runner-up prize Silver Lion award. The Italian-French-Belgian drama is about the last year of World War II, when a refugee soldier arrives at a remote Italian Alps village and changes it profoundly.
Other big winners were Brady Corbet, for directing the 3h15m-long post-war epic on antisemitism and capitalism The Brutalist, and Vincent Lindon, for his lead performance in The Quiet Son.
The Brutalist, which stars Adrien Brody, is about an architect and a Holocaust survivor rebuilding a life in America. “This is all very overwhelming. … Brevity has never been my strong suit,” Corbet said during his acceptance speech. “Thank you for not holding its length against me.”
The Quiet Son, meanwhile, follows Pierre (played by Lindon), a widowed father of young men in provincial France who tries in vain to stop his eldest son becoming radicalized by his friends and by online hate groups.
Other highly anticipated high profile films in the competition included: Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux, the “not-a-musical-musical” starring the power duo of Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga; Pablo Larraín’s Maria Callas film Maria, starring screen legend Angelina Jolie as the famed soprano; and Luca Guadagnino’s William S. Burroughs adaptation Queer, with former James Bond Daniel Craig as a junkie expat obsessed with a young student.
With another Joker film in the festival’s roster, it’s worth mentioning how five years ago, the Venice jury caught the film industry by surprise by giving the Golden Lion to the first Joker film, which went on to win a best actor Oscar for Phoenix as the titular character.
Last year, the top award went to the Emma Stone-starrer Poor Things, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, and the year before, it was the documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, which follows the life of artist Nan Goldin and the downfall of the Sackler family, the pharmaceutical dynasty that was responsible for the opioid epidemic’s massive death toll.
More than the prestige that accompanies the Venice Film Festival—not to mention its magical venue—it has cemented its reputation as a bellwether for awards nominations over the past 12 years.
Since 2014, the festival hosted four best picture winners (Birdman, Spotlight, The Shape of Water, and Nomadland) and 19 nominees, according to the Associated Press. So it comes as no surprise that speculations are already rife about possible best actress nominations for Kidman and Jolie, actor for Craig, and supporting actress for Gaga, as the fall film season beckons.
Cinephiles could only be happy for the festival to be back in its A-list form this year, with last year’s shine dulled by the actors’ strike. Aside from the stars mentioned, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Sigourney Weaver added even more star wattage to the event.
And just like any premiere international film festival, the event was also a celebration of fashion. Gaga’s breathtaking ensemble (and gigantic engagement ring)—a Christian Dior gown paired with a vintage lace Philip Treacy headpiece—was indelible. Kidman was a stunner as usual in her body hugging Schiaparelli. Blanchett was a vision in her Armani Privé with strands of pearls cascading down her back.
Rachel Weisz and Daniel Craig also turned heads with Weisz in a shimmering blue Versace gown and Craig in a sleek, cream Loewe suit. The Beetlejuice Beetlejuice stars also had their own fashion moments on the red carpet
For the full list of winners, you may visit this site.
