Venice 2025: monsters at the exhibition, but not masterpieces

A magical effect of the Venice Film Festival is the queue - this year thicker than in previous years - fighting to get inside a cinema, when in the rest of the year, in Italy at least, you have to scramble to throw spectators inside. The cinema is, therefore, still alive, even if it is only a means to attend an event, to watch a film alongside a director or a cast, or to breathe a little stardust. It is alive if a herd of cinephiles allow themselves to be lashed unmoved by rain and wind, at the risk of being electrocuted, to see a (forgettable) film with Julia Roberts. It is alive, since the Biennale wanted to start with a film, La grazia, promoting the euthanasia law still neglected by Italian politics. And it is alive, since the pro-Palestine procession decided to parade here yesterday - and not in Rome or Milan - and use the media showcase to shout the word genocide. In a politically significant context, it lacked, however - at least in this first part of the competition and the out-of-competition - the urgency of cinematic experimentation.

Paolo Sorrentino's inaugural film (La grazia, in fact) is remarkable and one wishes him all the luck he deserves. It is a work of depth that combines the Oscar winner's established directorial technique - the tracking shots and camera movements that are his hallmark - with a subject of civil commitment. A servant of the State, a President of the Republic (Toni Servillo), is grappling with the limits of law and of himself as a man on issues that cut the country in two, such as deciding on a condemned man's request for pardon or on the end of life. That is, the demand to be accompanied by the law when it becomes unbearable.

"Whose are our days?" asks the president's daughter, Dorotea (Anna Ferzetti), to her father, summarising the ethical and legal dilemma. Bravissima Ferzetti, who faces a Toni Servillo, compos sui pannières of those who must disguise themselves behind an institution even in their private weaknesses. It matters little that there are baroque moments in the film: the storm sweeping over the visiting president of the Portuguese Republic or the rasta pope, black, on a motorbike; and certain metaphorical redundancies, such as the dying horse in the Quirinale stables.

This is part of Sorrentini's 'grace' and, as such, should be enjoyed. But there is nothing to be said about the courage to express an idea very strongly, as he did in Il divo, about Andreotti, and in the disappeared from all screens Them, about Berlusconi. This strength is seasoned with an excellent script (even in the less credible prison interviews), with stretches of grotesque and comic flavour, in the tradition of Italian comedy. The figure of Coco, the president's friend, has a strong voice that is destined to stay, both because of Milvia Marigliano's acting and because of the icastic lines that the actress channels while maintaining comic timing and aplomb. "This is dinner hypothesis!" she exclaims, looking at the frugal food on her plate. The grace is not free of a certain sweetness either, with which she covers the fallacy of our human skin, its inclination to resentment, to doubt, as a vice, but also as a gift for reflection.Sorrentino has taken a stand, but stylistically he has not done something unusual.

Just as Yorghos Lanthimos did not in Bugonia, a sci-fi about the conspiratorial madness of that part of the United States adrift. Lanthimos takes us into the paranoia of Teddy (Jesse Plemons), one of the many Americans left behind by the absence of an inclusive social policy. Teddy, together with a cousin with cognitive deficits (Aidan Delbis), which however do not affect his kindness, kidnaps Emma Stone, whom Teddy considers an alien hiding in the guise of the CEO of a multinational company. The writing is taut and the direction always up to the twists and turns, the farcical violence and the grotesque, but rooted in a reality of social malaise in an America that has no qualms about drowning the weakest. In support, there is the well-oiled team of actors - Stone and Plemons, first and foremost - whose affinity for black humour and professional performance always verges on perfection. The film is good, it manages to make an impact even though it is a remake of a 2003 South Korean film, Jigureul jikyeora! by Jang Joon-hwan. But it lacks the awe and magnitude that had shaken the Lido theatre with Poor Creatures!