Festivals

After the highly charged male-driven series of English language films – Everest, Spotlight, Black Mass – Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl finally lent a needed softer tone to the festival here. In fact, a different gaze altogether, a female energy one would be tempted to say, were it not that the film’s subject is precisely the sometimes uncertain boundaries between genders.

Star power finally ignited the Lido in earnest with the arrival of Johnny Depp for the premiere screening of Black Mass and hordes of fans – many of whom had spent the night waiting – besieged the Palazzo del Cinema. Scott Cooper’s telling of the life story of Boston gang boss Whitey Bulger and his unholy alliance with FBI agent John Connelly features a stellar cast that includes Joel Edgerton, Dakota Johnson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Corey Stoll, Kevin Bacon and Peter Sarsgaard, but the molten core of this movie is undoubtedly Depp who proves, as Cooper put it in Venice, to be a superstar willing to take risks that few others would.

Jonathan Demme is president of the Horizon Jury in Venice this year. He also was the recipient of the Persol Award for Visionary Talent which festival director Alberto Barbera presented to him at a ceremony at Sala Darsena.

Long applause at both press screenings. A seemingly endless standing ovation at the premiere.

Almost forgotten amid the glamour and flashbulbs of the opening of the Venice Festival were three unassuming figures who accompanied the cast of the opening day film Everest. Bemba Sherpa, Ang Dorje Sherpa, Ang Kula Sherpa are from their native Nepal but they are far from supporting players in the real-life adventure and drama narrated by Baltasar Kormakur’s movie.

The stars are ready to celebrate their films here even if the Lido is not: in the afternoon of opening day construction was still not done in front of the Palazzo del Cinema and the adjacent Casino that houses the press office facilities during the festival. While hordes of fans – mostly minors – were camping out for hours with umbrellas to shield them from the sun and the extreme heat behind the barriers at the red carpet, workers were still busy nailing down the floor and removing plastic sheeting.

There was almost as much white off-screen as on: while the festival audience on opening night watched climbers fighting for their lives on a snow covered Everest, the two most glamorous members of the jury walked the red carpet in breathtaking white gowns. Elizabeth Banks dazzled in a backless Dolce & Gabbana while Diane Kruger wore a sweet but sexy Prada.

The beachfront Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido got a taste of high altitude as the Venice Film festival opened with a screening of Baltásar Kormakur’s Everest a fictional telling of dramatic real-life mountaineering. The Mount Everest climbing season of 1996 will forever be remembered as one of the most tragic in the annals of mountain climbing.