Venice Film Festival Day 4: Family viewing

Being a member of the surging, surly throng of the festival press corps in Venice is a little like being in a family: You're thrown together by circumstance, forced to politely endure each other's character flaws while jostling for limited space and resources. (And considering that I was surrounded by people speaking in a language I couldn't understand, many of whom also couldn't understand me, it really did make me feel like I was with my family. I'm kidding, Mom.)

Yet the more we all perp-walked together through the cattle-chute lines, the more we endured the evil-eye-ing from the blue-jacketed security guards at the Pala Lido doors (they have a look that suggests they're already mentally picking their teeth with your bones) and the more we maneuvered our way around the omnipresent armed guards surrounding the festival's gated HQ (Polizia? Some paramilitary unit? Your guess is as good as mine), the more we bonded in mutual exasperation. What we have to put up with, our sheepish shrugs to each other say, just to watch a movie!
Still, nothing makes a crowd of fatigued, jaded journalists covering what's universally been considered a less-than-stellar lineup, feel more familial than having collectively experienced something like Claire Denis's 35 Rhums. A gentle, genuinely moving look at a dad (Alex Descas) dealing with his grown-up daughter (Mati Diop) finally leaving the nest, the French director's filial drama is apt to bring out a parental sense of protection in everyone who sees it; I'd defend this movie with the same dogged determination that I would ward off a bear attack on my own offspring.

Denis works hard to make things appear simple, portraying both the ties between father and child and a tight-knit North African community in France with her customary grace (that this diaspora is treated so matter-of-factly and is only one element of the story, as opposed to the film's entire justification for existence, only adds to the film's marvelously muted sensibility). The wonderfully dusky visuals (viva Agnès Godard!) and offbeat musical choices characteristic of Denis's films are used to great effect; if you never though that the Commodores' "Night Shift" had any erotic potential, just wait until you hear it played over two impromptu couples slow-dancing in a bar. Yet her penchant for Hello-Dalle delirium has wisely been put on hold, and except for one incident near the end, the director simply concentrates on rendering the process of letting go with as much unforced realism as possible. At its most fundamental level, 35 Rhums is a riposte to the idea that narratives about family don't have to equal melodrama. It's also the best film this festival has yet to offer, period. The competition entries should be thankful that Denis's near masterpiece was slotted into the "Masters" sidebar.

(A quick word about the competition selections: This has been a major sticking point with almost everybody I've come into contact with on the Lido. Strong works like 35 Rhums and Ramin Bahrain's Goodbye Solo get shuffled into sidebars, while Barbet Schroeder's J-spolitation-with-shrimp-jobs debacle Inju and Amir Naderi's Vegas: Based on a True Story—one of the few American entries here and the sort of sloppy indie schlock that wouldn't even cut the mustard at Tribeca—have a long shot at winning a Golden Lion. No sense of criteria regarding what gets picked and what doesn't seems to be in effect; if the festival wants its awards to be taken seriously, some major rethinking needs to be applied to the selection process.)

When we all walked out of the Pala Biennale after the 35 Rhums screening, you could see badge holders exchanging looks of unbridled glee. The reactions to the other three family-based films might, however, be best described as dysfunctional. Guillermo Arriaga's The Burning Plain finds the screenwriter of 21 Grams and Amores Perros stepping behind the camera for his feature directorial debut, and guess what? It's a movie in which nothing happens in a linear chronological order! Didn't see that one coming, did you? Arriaga undoubtedly knows he's coming perilously close to turning his mix-and-match narrative style into a gimmick, though I'm not sure that this story involving three mother-daughter strands would work any better if told in a straight A-to-B fashion.

Charlize Theron plays a Pacific Northwesterner who shows the classic signs of being damaged goods: cutting herself, promiscuity, shifty darting eyes. (In case you couldn't glean from the picture on the left, the starlet is in full glamor-trash mode, though thankfully she never pulls that Monster hitching-her-pants shtick.) Kim Basinger is a stifled housewife living in New Mexico who embarks on an affair with a rugged local, and Tessa Ia is a young girl in search of her mother. These stories are connected, naturally, and it takes a third of the film to figure out how the pieces fit together; you can feel your tolerance for the film's paint-by-numbers humanism being tested long before that. Except for Jennifer Lawrence's wounded take on the movie's requisite rebellious teen, every performance here could be referred to as Acting with a capital A.

The other two films were, coincidentally, both Italian, and neither particularly stood out despite offering different takes on the clan-in-crisis scenario. Pupi Avati's Giovanna's Daughter follows a middle-aged man (Silvio Orlando) who loves his mentally challeged daughter (Alba Rohrwacher) so much that he covers up a murder on her behalf. The fact that the story takes place during the ’30s, just as fascism is rearing its hydra head in the motherland, is supposed to be significant, yet the political background serves only to remind you of all those landmark Italian movies from the 1970s that tackled the same territory with more verve and wit. A Perfect Day (ironic title alert!) is Turkish-Italian director Ferzan Ozpetek's soap operatic take on what happens when a mercurial cop (Valerio Mastandrea) separated from his wife (Isabella Ferrari) and estranged from his two children finally hits his breaking point—by which we mean violence, attempted rape, kidnapping and one truly horrific incident. It's not a bad film, only a bland one despite the sensationalist aspects, and admittedly might have played better had Ozpetek trimmed the underdeveloped vestigial subplot about a corrupt politico, his trophy wife and the hotheaded son who pines for his stepmom. And this informs the main story…how, again?

There is one more family-focused movie on the bill: Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married. I don't want to say much about Demme's dramedy, since it hasn't premiered here yet, but having seen it in New York, I will say that (a) if it's not the director's best film in a decade (an arguable concept), it's certainly my favorite; (b) it's the first American film here that seems truly festworthy, though I haven't seen Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler or Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker yet, as they don't screen until later this week; and (c) the competition section now has a strong contender. I'm just bummed I won't get a chance to see it with a crowd here and get another glance at a sea of beaming faces.