Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera says he’s been “toiling for the past nine months like a factory worker on an assembly line at a Chaplinesque pace” to assemble the star-studded lineup he just unveiled that on paper also looks like one of his best.
The Lido’s upcoming 81st edition features a geographically balanced mix of known names and potential discoveries across a wide range of genres spanning from pure entertainment to highly political works and marking the return of erotically charged cinema, as Barbera tells PvNew.
It looks like a great lineup. Are you happy?
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Yes, of course I’m happy. I’m very happy because, as you say, the lineup is rich and varied. Let’s say that I’m 95%-98% happy, because we can always do better. But, having said that, I actually have to note that this year’s selection reflects the ambitions and guidelines of the type of festival I’ve been working on for years. It brings together great auteur cinema; great spectacular cinema for the public; discoveries; debut filmmakers; and unexpected things. There really is an attempt to provide an overall picture of the state of contemporary cinema in all its very different components.
Let’s talk about the American movies. Was it tough to get them? Was there less stuff out there?
It wasn’t that tough. The films we got are actually mostly the ones that we started talking about when I did my usual tour at the beginning of the year in New York and Los Angeles, between the end of January and the beginning of February. But it’s true, there has been a slowdown in production. In February the effects of the pandemic and post-pandemic period were still being felt and had negatively impacted production numbers. In truth many of the American films that are in Venice this year, apart from the Warner Bros. movies (which include “Joker 2”) are mostly independent productions, even if their distribution may have been entrusted to the major studios.
This year there aren’t any movies from Netflix, which used to be a Venice fixture. Why?
Netflix is absent because they didn’t have any festival product. They are going through a transitional phase after Scott Stuber (former head of Netflix Films) left in the fall. He was replaced at the beginning of this year by Dan Lin who obviously needed some time. But they will likely be back next year. I am in constant contact with Netflix, I already know what films they have in the pipeline and which ones will be ready for the festival’s next edition. They are great titles, by great auteurs.
A24, which was in Venice for the first time two years ago with “The Whale” and last year with “Priscilla,” is back with erotic thriller “Babygirl”starring Nicole Kidman.
Yes, I think they had been hesitant before “The Whale” because they didn’t know Venice. But they’ve been happy with their experiences.
You said earlier today that sexuality is back in Venice “in all its forms, heterosexual, homosexual, fluid, sadomasochistic, and adolescent,” marking “a true return to eroticism after years of respectability and self-censorship.” Can you elaborate?
Well, “Baby Girl” speaks for itself, right? It’s about a sadomasochistic relationship within an American corporation with the novelty that, compared to other similar films, the ending actually testifies to the differences between now and the past. A film on this same theme 20 or 30 years ago would have ended very differently. Without spoilers, I will say that the female protagonist who engages in illicit behavior, so to speak, in the past would have been punished.
Bur the most erotic work at Venice – again, I don’t want to give away too much – is the Alfonso Cuaron-directed TV series “Disclaimer” [starring Cate Blanchett]. The fourth episode of the series is really very extreme. I can’t say more, obviously. Then there is another film that addresses the theme of sexuality and free sexual behavior in a very free, frank and direct way, and that is the Norwegian filmmaker Dag Johan Haugerud’s film “Love,” his follow-up to “Sex” which premiered in Berlin earlier this year and completes a trilogy dealing with very modern sexual behaviors.
And then there is “Queer” of course – is it true there is lots of onscreen sex?
Yes there’s “Queer,” obviously, in which the two big themes are drug addiction and then addiction to physical and sexual attraction to men of the same sex. In this film, too, we are in the realm of great, absolute frankness, of absence of prejudices, of the ability to address these issues in a direct, explicit manner. And the fact that Daniel Craig lent himself to a couple of very explicit erotic sequences is a sign of great courage in an era in which these behaviors are still rejected by a significant part of the audience.
In the press conference, you defined it as the greatest role of Craig’s career.
Look, I usually don’t do this because a festival director going out on a limb like this isn’t right. But there are two, so to speak, memorable acting turns this year [at Venice] that are the performances of a lifetime and those are Daniel Craig in “Queer” and Joaquin Phoenix in “Joker 2.” They are absolutely memorable performances and I would be surprised if they didn’t end up competing for the highest recognition both in Venice and at the Oscars.
