Venice Diary #06 - A comedian, a captain, and multiple torturers

by Elisa Giudici

A lot of movies to discuss today (the festival ends tomorrow) including two potential Golden Lion winners....

Reflection (Valentyn Vasyanovych)
A major theme in this edition is torture, as experienced by both victims and torturers. It is common to see movies on such brutal acts of violence revolving around the need to give a voice and a spotlight to the forgotten victims and their true stories. Some of the movies shown this year in Venice prefer to focus on the torturer, asking the audience if it is really possible to atone for such a crime?

Set during the war at the Eastern Ukrainian border, Refllection is brutal yet masterfully shot. Serhiy is a surgeon captured by Russians, and he's only able to survive because of his profession. After being the victim of torture himself (shown in great detail by Valentyn Vasyanovych, who spares the audience nothing) he starts working as a doctor and undertaker for his capturers, witnessing indescribable acts of violence against his compatriots.

Reflection shows the before and after of this very traumatic event, following the secret attempt of Serhiy to obtain the corpse of the new partner of his ex-wife. He had witnessed the terrible death while being imprisoned. Vasyanovych' style is impressive. He somehow creates uncompromising cold and complicated compositions with a tense rhythm all without moving the camera for minutes on end.. When the camera does move following the characters, the director realizes continuous shots whose complexity is stunning. With another jury, it might be a strong contender -- it can't be ruled out --  but I expect Reflection to win the director prize instead.

Captain Volkonogov Escaped (Natasha Merkulova and Aleksey Chupov)
POTENTIAL GOLDEN LION WINNER ALERT. The torturer tortured by the idea of being forgiven by his victims this time. This Russian movie is set in 1938 when the Russian paranoia about spies and secret agents of foreign countries was out of control, Captain Volkonogov Escaped follows the story of Captain Fyodor (Jurij Borisov), who is able to avoid a purge in his army cops, becoming a fugitive. A vivid dream (hallucination) changes his attitude: he is not just running from his captors to survive, but also chasing the relatives of people he tortured and killed, trying to be forgiven by just one of them... and almost impossible task. I loved Captain Volkonogov Escaped's visuals and composition: the format is even wider than the usual 16:9 and the elegance of the setting is fit for a classic Russian fable, even if it is also a brutal, violent story of dictatorship, institutional paranoia, and redemption. It reminded me a little the way Fëdor Dostoevskij describes guilt and self-awareness in those who have committed crimes they regret. After the Cannes debut Compartment Number 6, Yuriy Borisov gives another strong performance -- he is definitely the rising star of Russian cinema on the international circuit.

The Catholic School (Stefano Mordini) 
Based on a huge novel (1200+ pages!) that won a major Italian literary prize in 2016, Mordini's La scuola cattolica showcases the life of a group of teenagers sent by their wealthy families to a private, Catholic high school in Rome. Their names are well known for Italian audiences: two of them brutally kidnapped, tortured, raped, and tried to kill two girls from the Southern, poorer part of Rome. The crime is remembered as "The Circeo Massacre". Mordini walks on a dangerous path showing the unhappy, repressed lives of the future rapists and murderers within their affectless families. I'm sure it's not his intention but linking the unhappy families the kids were raised in and the terrible crime they committed is too reductive. The director lose balance when portraying the crime at a fancy villa by the sea. Mordini shows some nudity and small pieces of the violence at Circeo, but it is too little to faithfully portray what really happened and also too much to reclaim the choice not to show the atrocities. An uninformed audience won't be able to truly grasp the level of sadism and evilness behind this case that shocked and frightened Italy in 1975. Mordini's approach to the movie is quite impersonal. On the other hand, I really liked the cast. It's not so easy to find very strong young actors in contemporary Italian cinema, but La scuola cattolica showcases a couple of strong performances. Remember the name of Benedetta Porcaroli who plays one of the victims. Time will tell if she has true depth as an actress, but she has already been declared a movie star, so we'll see her in a lot of Italian cinema in the next few years.

Okay, moving on from torture....

Old Henry (Potsy Ponciroli)
I am not a western person...but I am fair. My predilection goes to the likes of Jane Campion's The Power of the Dog or Jacques Audiard's The Sisters Brothers. Previous years have taught me that westerns in Venice can be surprisingly emotional. Not the case of Old Henry, though: this is 100% pure western with harsh life in the frontier, logorrheic villains vs one-word answers heroes, and people that seem unable to smile. It's not my cup of tea, really, but I did enjoy this classic take on western tale with tough farmers, naive sons, and dangerous bandits settled in 1906's Oklahoma. Tim Blake Nelson is the main protagonist and he embodies well the trope of 'man who has clearly has more of a past that he wants to admit and it would be advisable not to mess with.' 

Qui rido io (Mario Martone)
Why is every Italian movie set in Rome or Naples? Both cities are more than mere locations but I crave a different setting, another city (spoiler: I will never be satisfied). As with Sorrentino's Hand of God, Martone's Naples is a place of the soul, a trait of both the psychology of movie characters and of their director. Qui rido io is the almost forgotten story of Edoardo Scarpetta, a masterful king of comedy and a playwright in Naples during the first decades of the Twentieth century. Scarpetta had many illegitimate children but one of them, Edoardo De Filippo, became a very notable playwright, outshining and condemning his father to oblivion. Qui rido io is Tony Servillo's one-man show. Before becoming a famous movie star, Servillo was known as a prominent theatrical actor on the Neapolitan scene and his love for Edoardo De Filippo is immense. How close this topic is to his heart is evident in the sumptuous movie about the Salieri and Mozart of playwriting in Italy. I am not a fan of Martone's cinema in general but I found this one solid and enjoyable in telling the story of the rise and fall of a man unable to recognize the limitations of his art and works.

La Caja/The Box (Lorenzo Vigas)
Back in 2015, I was really impressed by the Golden Lion winner Desde Alla / From Afar by Lorenzo Vigas, even if it is widely considered an overvalued winner. La Caja proves two things: First, Vigas likes to work on a limited range of topics (he has a fascination for the power dynamics between father-like figures and young teenagers, fooling or being fooled by them) second, he hasn't been able to impose his name as one for the major leagues on the festival circuit. La Caja/The Box is a powerful yet ambiguous movie about a young boy who begins working a shady job for a man he believes to be his father. Mexico, as portrayed by Vigas who is from Venezuela, is a land with majestic landscapes in which it is really easy to hide secrets and bodies, a nation where "it is quite common that children don't know their father and find solace even in a dictatorship figure", in the words of Vigas himself. I admire his work but this time some things felt unclear to me from the start. There are some crucial details you need to deduce yourself to fully understand what is happening. I was not bright enough to get all of them and some colleagues I spoke to were equally confused. Luckily for me, Nathaniel was there with a much-needed explanation. The foreign press largely thinks Hatzín Oscar Navarrete will win the Mastroianni prize for a young actor, but I think Filippo Scotti for Hand of God has a concrete shot.

More Venice coverage

• Elisa's Diary #1 Parallel Mothers and Power of the Dog
• Elisa's Diary #2 The Card Counter, Hand of God, The Lost Daughter
• Elisa's Diary #3 Spencer, A Plein Temps, Il Buco
• Eiisa's Diary #4 Sundown, Official Competition, etc...
• Elisa Extra Dune - full review
• Elisa's Diary #5 L'Evenement, Lost Illusions, Mona Lisa...
• Elisa's Diary #6 Reflection, Captain Volkonoff Escaped, Old Henry, etc...

• Nathaniel in Venice #1 Parallel Mothers
• Nathaniel in Venice #2 Power of the Dog, Madeleine Collins
• Nathaniel in Venice #3 Atlantide, Les Promesses, The Lost Daughter
• Nathaniel in Venice #4 107 Mothers, Official Competition, Miracle, etc...
• Nathaniel in Venice #5 Last Night in Soho, Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon
• Nathaneil in Venice #6 Catholic School, A Hole in the Fence, La Caja