In Contention

Tag: The Double Hour

  • INTERVIEW: ‘The Double Hour’ director Giuseppe Capotondi

    With this year’s Cannes circus just a week away, now is as good a time as any to point out the strangely hobbled journey taken by so many festival films to our cinema screens. For all the concentrated media attention and occasional trophies lavished upon arthouse titles at Cannes, Sundance and the like, the festival itself is little more than a starting block in a long race for distribution — and “The Double Hour,” a wickedly splintered Italian thriller currently on limited release in the US, has been running it for a while.

    The debut feature of Giuseppe Capotondi, a director hitherto acclaimed for his commercial and music-video work, “The Double Hour” was one of the under-the-radar hits of the 2009 Venice Film Festival — the only title amid a lackluster slate of homegrown features to capture critics’ imaginations, it surprised many by landing the Best Actress award for striking Russian lead Ksenia Rappoport. Despite this success, it’s taken 18 months to reach American arthouses; in the UK, it still hovers in distribution limbo.

    The wait should have been shorter, not least because Capotondi’s film is anything but obscure in sensibility: a sharp, sexy hybrid genre piece generously bookmarked with cinematic references, it touches on heist thriller, psychological horror and romantic drama, all with equal panache.

    (more…)

  • Tornatore to represent Italy in Oscar race again

    BaariaAs the deadline for Best Foreign Language Film submissions looms on October 1, news of further entries keeps rolling in. Italy, Vietnam and Norway are the latest additions to the list, which presently numbers 54. (By my count, at least.)

    Italy’s selection is obviously the newsiest: the country’s 13 previous wins make it the leading Oscar champ in this category (though France still holds the record for nominations by a sizable margin). They’ve rather lost their golden touch of late, however, scoring only a solitary nom (“Don’t Tell,” 2005) since “Life is Beautiful” won over a decade ago, and I’m not sure they’ve made the wisest choice to reverse that state of affairs this year.

    On paper, their pick of Giuseppe Tornatore’s “Baaria” may seem like an Oscar slam-dunk. It’s a lavish, decades-spanning period drama from an Academy-favored filmmaker — Tornatore won for “Cinema Paradiso” in 1989, scored a further nod for “The Star Maker” in 1995 and made the 9-film shortlist with “The Unknown Woman” two years ago.

    Which is all well and good, except that “Baaria” was critically slaughtered when it opened the Venice Film Festival last month. Clearly, the massive budget of Tornatore’s film factored into the decision. I never got to see it myself, but Variety’s pan (“overblown in every sense … awash in phony nostalgia (and) cheap sentimentalism”) was typical of the consensus.

    (more…)

  • Thoughts on the Venice winners

    Colin FirthOkay, so I was mainly off the mark. When it comes to guessing festival awards, I usually am. But at the same time, few of the selections revealed tonight by Ang Lee’s jury at the closing ceremony of the Venice Film Festival really surprise me.

    It was clear that Samuel Maoz’s “Lebanon” would walk away with something (I had it pencilled in for Best Director), given its combination of political currency and personal investment on the part of the director. (The film is an autobiographical reflection on his own experience in the First Lebanon War.) Personally, I think giving it the Golden Lion is a tad generous for a debut that, while very accomplished, never quite hits home emotionally, but it’s a reasonable winner.

    I have more of a problem with the runner-up Grand Jury Prize going to Fatih Akin’s “Soul Kitchen,” though I saw it coming. The film is a sweet but slipshod effort that hardly represents the director’s strongest work; with several more deserving films in competition going unawarded, its selection feels like a nod to the more mainstream contingent of the competition. (The absence of critics’ favorite “Lourdes” from the winners list, meanwhile, is the biggest shock here.)

    (more…)

  • ‘Lebanon’ wins Venice’s Golden Lion

    Venice Film FestivalGuy will comment further on these winners later, but for now, just the facts:

    INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION JURY

    Golden Lion: “Lebanon” (Samuel Maoz)
    Silver Lion (Best Director): “Women Without Men” (Shirin Neshat)
    Grand Jury Prize: “Soul Kitchen” (Fatih Akin)
    Best Actor: Colin Firth, “A Single Man”
    Best Actress: Ksenia Rappoport, “The Double Hour”
    Marcello Mastroianni Prize for Young Performer: Jasmine Trinca, “The Big Dream”
    Best Screenplay: Todd Solondz, “Life During Wartime”
    Technical Contribution for Set Design: Sylvie Olive, “Mr. Nobody”

    OTHER JURIES

    Luigi De Laurentiss Lion of the Future: “Engkwentro”
    Venice Horizons Documentary: “1428” (Du Haibin)
    Venice Horizons Special Mention: “The Man’s Woman and Other Stories” (Amt Dutta)

  • VENICE: ‘Soul Kitchen,’ ‘The Double Hour’

    Soul KitchenHappily, the bug that kept me down yesterday seems to have flown on the wings of Nurofen and a night’s sleep, so I’m ready to face the Lido madness again.  As if sympathetic to my state, the Competition served up two relatively untaxing titles.

    Festival director Marco Müller made it clear that he was experimenting with a more mainstream-friendly approach in this year’s Venice programme — hence the inclusion of “Bad Lieutenant” and “Survival of the Dead,” among others, in the lineup — so the overt genre leanings of Italian psycho-thriller “The Double Hour” came as no surprise, particularly given its hometown advantage. Far less expected was that heavyweight German-Turkish auteur Fatih Akin would arrive with the fluffiest Competition entry to date.

    This afternoon brings a second “surprise film” in the Competition (here’s hoping it’s a more pleasant surprise than “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?”), as well as Jaco van Dormael’s “Mr. Nobody.” As eagerly as I’m awaiting the latter, I might have to postpone it to tomorrow, as a producer friend of mine unveils a short film next door. Onto this morning’s films …

    “Soul Kitchen” (**)

    Fatih Akin’s candyfloss-light character comedy will come as a major shock to those familiar with the 36 year-old director via his solemn arthouse works “Head-On” and “The Edge of Heaven.”

    (more…)