This year, the 81st Venice International Film Festival jury awarded its top prize, the Golden Lion, to The Room Next Door, the first-ever English-language film by legendary Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. When asked at a press conference why that film was chosen, jury president Isabelle Huppert emphasized the performances of its stars, Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore. The programming at the festival has become edgier and more focused on actors in recent years, while its main competitor, the storied Cannes Film Festival, has traditionally emphasized directors. From the opening night film, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, starring Gens X and Z quirky “It Girls” Winona Ryder and Jenna Ortega, it was clear that there was a mutual admiration among many lead actors, especially those of different generations. From Best Actress winner Nicole Kidman with Harris Dickinson in Babygirl, the new film by Bodies Bodies Bodies director Halina Reijn, to Daniel Craig with Drew Starkey in Luca Guadagnino’s career-best film, Queer, there was an almost magical amalgamation of talents on screen. Here are some of the films from the festival that you’ll be talking about all year:
Babygirl
The moment tech CEO Nicole Kidman spots intern Harris Dickinson on the dancefloor at their office holiday party, the camera traces the lines of his glimmering chain, belt, and tie, signaling this is soon headed to an HR-inappropriate relationship. We have seen similar sexy workplace films like Secretary (2002), but this one is clearly (and thankfully) from a female director’s point-of-view. The film is pop, incredibly hot, and delves into complex themes of sexuality, power, and how these dynamics change with age—some of the same themes examined fantastically recently in Miranda July’s novel All Fours.
Queer
Daniel Craig plays a sad, louche, and elegant William Burroughs stand-in named Lee in Luca Guadagnino’s latest film, based on Burroughs’s novel of the same name. Lee is constantly searching for his next high in mid-century Mexico and South America (filmed with beautiful artifice on stages in Rome’s Cinecittà). Throughout these travels, he longs for the younger Eugene (Drew Starkey), who may or not be queer. There is a triple gaze of objectification on Starkey’s lean frame and fine features, as they are admired by Craig’s Lee, Guadagnino’s camera, and the clothes designed by Jonathan Anderson (head of Loewe and the film’s costume designer, as he was on Guadagnino’s Challengers). In one scene, Starkey’s visible skin beneath a slightly sheer, pale blue camp shirt is undeniably beautiful. At the same time, Anderson dresses Lee in perfectly tailored white cotton shirts and linen jackets, sagging with wear and too much living.
Maria
It’s hard to take your eyes off Angelina Jolie as post-retirement opera icon Maria Callas, wandering 1970s Paris while high on pills in Pablo Larraín’s latest. It is the third in his trilogy of films about remarkable women, following Jackie (Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy) and Spencer (Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana). It becomes clear in Maria that these films are as much about the actresses playing the roles as the women they portray. When discussing the casting of Callas, Larraín said he “needed an actress who would naturally and organically be that diva, carry that weight, be that presence.” Jolie embodies all of that, with her clavicle, neck, shoulders, and walk.
Joker: Folie à Deux
Joker: Folie à Deux
Joint Effort, courtesy Venice Film Festival
The sequel to the Academy Award-winning story of murderous clown Arthur Fleck introduces Lady Gaga as his love interest, a woman who transforms into Harley Quinn. Gaga introduces a wonky musical element into the DC universe that is fascinating to watch. Her professional singing contrasts delightfully with Joaquin Phoenix’s more amateurish voice. The film is less compelling whenever the characters speak rather than sing, with the exception of character actors like Steve Coogan as an American talk show host.
Harvest
Greek filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari’s (Chevalier) latest film in almost a decade is a more subtle take on societal collapse than Joker: Folie à Deux. Filmed in Scotland and set in an unspecified time and place, this speculative tragicomedy is about a group of villagers, including a nature-loving former manservant and the lord of a manor, facing an invasion from the outside world. This unusual, rich, and beautifully shot film reunites lead actor Caleb Landry Jones with cinematographer Sean Price Williams for the first time since the Safdie brothers’ Heaven Knows What.
Baby Invasion
Harmony Korine’s latest provocation returns to the Miami of Spring Breakers to explore an imaginary failed first-person shooter video game, where robbers invade mansions and violently kill people while their faces appear to be babies. Disturbing yet original, the film is narrated by a woman Korine discovered on OnlyFans. While his last Venice film, 2023’s AGGRO DR1FT, was shot using infrared photography, with Baby Invasion, he utilized security camera footage to give the film a gritty feel. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Korine said the “actors” he filmed were real-life burglars whom he had cast after they were arrested for robbing the homes of some of his friends in Miami. The real star of the premiere was Korine himself, a rare instance this year when the red carpet and post-film cheers were all for the director rather than movie stars.
The Brutalist
While Baby Invasion felt totally new at only 80 minutes long, director Brady Corbet’s third film was classically ambitious, shot on old-fashioned VistaVision, and runs three and a half hours, plus intermission. The story of a Hungarian immigrant architect played by Adrien Brody, The Brutalist follows a wide historical scope, just as Corbet’s previous films have, but is less peculiar. The movie was well received, winning the Silver Lion Best Director award and garnering comparisons to The Godfather and Once Upon a Time in America. A24 bought the film out of Venice, which will likely be in conversation for Best Director during awards season.
One to One: Yoko and John
One to One: Yoko and John
Plan B / Km Films, courtesy Venice Film Festival
This music documentary focuses on the eighteen months from 1971 to 1972 that John Lennon and Yoko Ono moved from England to a small apartment in the East Village, spending their time watching TV in bed and getting involved in radical politics. The real revelation in the film, though, comes from Yoko Ono’s recorded phone calls. It’s hard not to fall in love with her voice, intelligence, and conviction. At one point while discussing feminism, she says, “What happened to me was that I was living as an artist and had relative freedom as a woman, and was considered a bitch in this society. What happened after I started dating John is I was upgraded to a witch. And I think that’s very flattering.”
Pavements
A very different music documentary is Alex Ross Perry’s film about the formative indie band Pavement. The group’s nerdiness and super-articulate lyrics were a new style when they hit the scene in 1989, but none of that is the focus of this ambitious film that mixes traditional music documentary with a parody of a Bohemian Rhapsody-esque music biopic. Joe Keery, Nat Wolff, and Logan Miller are cast as the band, and Keegan DeWitt is shown producing a musical version of the band’s songs. Watching Keery spend at least ten minutes trying to mimic the nasal vocal fry of charismatic Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus is either funny or tedious, depending on your interest in the band, the actor, and hybrid documentaries. Future breakout star Fred Hechinger is the standout, playing musician Bob Nastanovich in a way that matches the band’s eccentricity.
April
Probably the strongest film at the festival aside from The Room Next Door was April, a film about a doctor in the country of Georgia who performs illegal abortions, risking both her own life and the lives of the women she is helping. It is that rare film where every shot is staggeringly beautiful, often original, and yet also anti-romantic. Director Dea Kulumbegashvili won a Special Jury Prize at Venice for April, and it would be shocking if this film isn’t nominated for the Best International Picture Oscar.
