VarietyLA DVFLA090911 : Page 4

4 V ARIETY .COM/VENICE FRIDA Y , SEPTEMBER 9, 2011 WRAP Continued from page 1 Christopher Hampton’s “The Talking Picture.” (Inciden-tally, it was Hampton who translated “God of Carnage” from French into English, though Polanski’s film uses a different interpretation.) Continuing the theater trend was one of the later competition entries, “Killer Joe,” William Friedkin’s sec-ond Tracy Letts adaptation following his cultish “Bug.” Out of competition, festival honoree Al Pacino unveiled his “Wilde Salome,” a docu-mentary tribute to a play for which he has long nursed a personal passion. These various stage-to-screen adaptations all had their merits, though even the best of them revealed a perhaps inevitable formal tension. If Cronenberg’s Jung-vs.-Freud psychodrama struck me as the most suc-cessful of the lot, it’s largely because the helmer and Hampton have chosen to em-brace rather than downplay the talkiness of the material, honing its ideas into a razor-sharp, intellectually bracing text that turns argumenta-tion into potent drama. Novel adaptations, too, had a formidable competition presence, and far from de-spoiling the Lido’s cinematic Eden, most of them found inventive movie solutions to tough literary problems. Tomas Alfredson’s “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” which managed the unenviable task of compressing John Le Carre’s modern spy classic into just over two hours, sur-prised everyone by not mak-ing a mad dash through the material, but instead moving with the same hypnotic grace and ease of the director’s ear-lier “Let the Right One In.” Working further outside the safety net, Andrea Ar-nold fashioned something raw and vital with her revisionist, racially charged “Wuthering Heights.” Though the film could be about 15 or 20 min-utes shorter and is marred by some inexpert performances from its largely non-pro cast, its real star, d.p. Robbie Ryan, captures images of such wild, untamed beauty as to justify this umpteenth stab at Emily Bronte’s novel. (It was cer-tainly scheduled on the right day, as those of us rushing to see it found ourselves caught up in a brief but decidedly Bronte-esque windstorm.) But no literary reinven-tion proved more experi-mental or challenging than Alexander Sokurov’s nearly 2½-hour “Faust,” an uncat-egorizable oddity that served as this year’s designated high-art endurance test (every fest needs one). A willfully ec-centric reading of the Goethe text, the Russian auteur’s lat-est opus was by turns tedious and transporting, alternating passages of exquisite beauty with spasms of grotesque im-agery that seemed closer to old-school Cronenberg than the actual Cronenberg film in competition. Pure cinema? Not exactly; there wasn’t a wordier, more exhaustingly subtitle-heavy film in compe-tition. At the risk of being called a cinema purist myself, my own personal favorites hap-pened to have no associa-tions with preexisting texts, and indeed played outstand-ingly to their directors’ visual strengths. The strongest film I saw in Venice, “Shame,” is a wrenching drama of sexual addiction in which the bold, muscular compositions are as powerfully expressive as the kudo-worthy performances of Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan. And Greek helmer Yorgos Lanthimos didn’t disappoint me or other “Dogtooth” admirers with “Alps,” a bizarre, disquiet-ing tale of deceit and psycho-logical transference that feels less shocking and out-there Reaction was divided over Amir Naderi’s “Cut” at the festival. than its Oscar-nominated pre-decessor but demonstrates even more formal command. A mastery of mise-en-scene also distinguished “Peo-ple Mountain People Sea,” a strikingly composed second feature from Chinese helmer Cai Shangjun, who took this year’s surprise-film slot. Good as the movie was, “surprise” took on a new and unwelcome meaning after the film’s first screening was canceled due to subtitling issues and the second screening was inter-rupted for a full 30 minutes after a false fire alarm sent viewers running for the exits. Of the numerous technical glitches that plagued Venice this year, from the frequent schedule changes and screen-ing delays to the improper 3D projection at Shimizu Takashi’s “Tormented,” the “People Wait People Worry” incident was by far the most embarrassing; that it befell a talented new director making his debut on a prestigious in-ternational stage merely com-pounded the indignity. “People Mountain People Sea” served to point up the unevenness of this year’s Asian selection, usually one of Venice’s strong suits. Ann Hui’s tender, moving “A Sim-ple Life” was a lovely choice for the competition; rather less so were Wei Te-sheng’s bombastic “Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale,” a sort of Taiwanese “Apocalypto” crippled by sprawling over-length (and that was the short version), and Sion Sono’s “Hi-mizu,” one of the busy Japa-nese maverick’s less enthu-siastically received entries. Elsewhere in the program, the practice of slotting Asian films simply for the sake of slotting Asian films reached an arguable nadir with “The Sorcerer and the White Snake,” a CGI-clogged bore that had no real business pre-miering at a major festival. Still, as of this writing, we have yet to see “Life With-out Principle,” the anticipated new film from Hong Kong genre master Johnnie To. Will it make the “Cut” cut? Who knows, but my own per-sonal pick in that department would be “Inni,” the latest concert film from the popu-lar Icelandic group Sigur Ros. Shot in black-and-white and running a haunting, emotion-drenched 75 minutes, it’s as pure an experience of the cin-ema as I’ve had, and one of many reasons for Venice audi-ences to be grateful. Christine Pettinger/Getty Images Laffer “Scialla!” (Chill), marking Italo scribe Francesco Bruni’s directorial debut, won the main nod in Controcampo Italiano, dedicated to new trends in Italian cinema. Pic, starring Fabrizio Bentivoglio and Barbora Bobulova, has been a surprise Lido hit. Arab spring brings docus By NICK VIVARELLI The spring Egyptian revolt in Cairo’s Tahrir Square has prompted a deluge of docus. But “Tahrir 2011 — The Good, the Bad, and the Politician” is likely to be the only one loosely inspired by a spaghetti Western. “I wanted to do the same event from different perspectives, so Sergio Leone’s ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ came to mind,” said Amr Salama, one of three helmers of the some-times playful docu structured in three half-hour chapters. “ It’s a like a three-dimensional film, in a way,” said Salama, who handled “The Politician” section, which delves into the psyche of toppled dic-“Tahrir 2011 — The Good, the tator Hosni Mubarak. Bad, and the Politician” used Salama’s section images sent in by Egyptians. is a satirical take on “how to become a dictator in 10 steps,” he said, “as if it were a bad infomercial; and the 10th step is the denial and how a dictator falls.” For Ayten Amin, who shot “The Bad” section dedi-cated to the country’s police and security forces, the film is first and foremost “a personal journey.” Not surprisingly, most the police officers she inter-viewed did not want to talk to her , at least not at first. “All the interviews went on for five or six hours; but the last 30 minutes were the most important be-cause they just got tired of lying,” she said. In a way, Tamer Ezzat, who handled “The Good,” about the ordinary heroes in Tahrir Square, may have had the easiest task. “For me it was obvious. I really identified with who the good people were and who the bad people were,” he said. But he had to sift through a massive amount of material . “Our editor has established a media center in the middle of Tahrir Square where we received do-nated footage shot on cellphones and video cameras. We used that as our starting point.” Docu, being sold by Pacha Pictures, segues to To-ronto and a slew of other fests.

Arab Spring Brings Docus

Nick Vivarelli

The spring Egyptian revolt in Cairo’s Tahrir Square has prompted a deluge of docus. But “Tahrir 2011 — The Good, the Bad, and the Politician” is likely to be the only one loosely inspired by a spaghetti Western. “I wanted to do the same event from different perspectives, so Sergio Leone’s ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ came to mind,” said Amr Salama, one of three helmers of the sometimes playful docu structured in three half-hour chapters. “ It’s a like a threedimensional film, in a way,” said Salama, who handled “The Politician” section, which delves into the psyche of toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak. Salama’s section is a satirical take on “how to become a dictator in 10 steps,” he said, “as if it were a bad infomercial; and the 10th step is the denial and how a dictator falls.” For Ayten Amin, who shot “The Bad” section dedicated to the country’s police and security forces, the film is first and foremost “a personal journey.” Not surprisingly, most the police officers she interviewed did not want to talk to her , at least not at first. “All the interviews went on for five or six hours; but the last 30 minutes were the most important because they just got tired of lying,” she said. In a way, Tamer Ezzat, who handled “The Good,” about the ordinary heroes in Tahrir Square, may have had the easiest task. “For me it was obvious. I really identified with who the good people were and who the bad people were,” he said. But he had to sift through a massive amount of material . “Our editor has established a media center in the middle of Tahrir Square where we received donated footage shot on cellphones and video cameras. We used that as our starting point.” Docu, being sold by Pacha Pictures, segues to Toronto and a slew of other fests.

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