Festivals

The HFPA met with the lovely and ever charming Amy Adams following the screening of Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival in Venice. The actress is somewhat of the Lido Queen this year as she stars in two films, Arrival and Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals – not bad for a festival debut! Arrival was met with sustained applause in the Sala Grande and Amy told us it was an emotional moment for her.

Québécois director Denis Villeneuve is more of a regular at the Cannes Festival than on the Lido (he has shown no less than four films on the Croisette), but this year his Arrival had its world premiere here in Venice. After the emotional family backstories of Incendies, the gut-wrenching thriller Prisoners  and the dark cartel procedural Sicario , the  Canadian director treads new territory with this adaptation of Ted Chiang’s science fiction novella The Story of Your Life which conjures a “first contact” scenario in which sky scraper-sized alien crafts suddenly land in 12 locations around the world.

For the last several years the Venice Film  Festival grounds, anchored by the Casino and the Palazzo del Cinema, also included a not-so-elegant  feature. We are talking about the football-field size hole in the ground that stood as a sad reminder of the thwarted new Cinema Palace.

Following the acclaimed opening night debut of La La Land, the HFPA met director Damien Chazelle and his star  (and twice Golden Globe nominee) Emma Stone (Golden Globe nominee Ryan Gosling having been kept from the Lido by filming duties on Blade Runner). “Venice is the perfect launching pad for a movie like La La Land” said 31 year-old Chazelle, 31 years old, whose second film had the honor of opening the 73rd Venice Film Festival.

The Venice Film Festival opened with a bang – or rather a shimmy and a song – here in a sunny Lido with the world premiere of La La Land, as Damien Chazelle’s sophomore feature lived up to all of its pre-festival buzz (and augured well for a continuing festival streak). From the long tracking shot that envelops an ensemble dance number that erupts from a traffic jam on a freeway ramp  (how has no one ever filmed this before?!), to its fanciful duel ending, the film is both an homage and a fresh updating of the Hollywood musical.

The 73rd Venice International Film Festival opens this year under the shadow of a tragedy – the earthquake that made scores of victims in Central Italy on August 24 - and wrapped in the glow of what seems to be its unique power – the fact that, for the past three years, Venice has anointed the favorite title, the one to beat come awards season. The tragedy led to the cancellation of the traditional gala, after the screening of the opening film – this year, the highly anticipated La La Land, directed by Whiplash’s Damien Chazelle and starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling as lovers in a musical-fantasy version of Los Angeles.