The failed courage of a Lion for Gaza. Jarmusch's film wins

Equally unbelievable, if not in the logic of dividing up the awards in the American independent filmmakers' enclosure, the silver for direction to Benny Safdie (without his brother Josh) for The Smashing Machine about the dawn of wrestling. Following the 'dirty' track of videotapes, Safdie never really decides which track he wants to deal with: the 'scandal' of these pioneers' paltry earnings, or the human side of drug addiction and toxic love affairs. All that was remarkable was the muscular mass of the lead actor Dwayne Johnson as Mark Kerr. Quite scandalous, however, is to award this film in Venice where Darren Aronofsky'sThe wrestler with Mickey Rourke had triumphed.

One can console oneself with the coppa Volpi awarded to Toni Servillo, deservedly best actor in Paolo Sorrentino's fine film, La grazia. Servillo is Mariano De Santis (Servillo), expiring President of the Republic, an exalted jurist, widower and Catholic, who is accompanied almost exclusively by his daughter, Dorotea (a very good Anna Ferzetti). On his table hang two requests for pardons for two prisoners and the euthanasia law. The director combines the established directorial technique - tracking shots and camera movements - innervated with irony (especially the figure of Coco Valori, exceptional Milvia Marigliano) that are his hallmark - with a subject of civil commitment. And Servillo masterfully maintains the mask, between caricature, prudence and wait-and-see.

Sorrentino claims that La grazia is a film about doubt, but for me it is above all a political film, centred on the question Dorotea asks her father: 'Whose days are ours?

The women's Volpi cup went to Xin Zhilei, star of The sun rises on us all by Chinese director Cai Shangjun. On the last day in competition, she immediately shone for her portrayal of the female figure. Two guys love each other, accidentally kill someone and he takes the brunt of the blame. They meet years later by chance in a hospital and resume a grudging but necessary bond for both. Xin Zhilei, an influencer at a third-rate clothing shop, perfectly renders the overwhelming weight of gratitude, the impossible reparation, the need to be forgiven and, finally, the sacrifice that does not lead to justice.

The sun rises on usall in its intense drama touches on the theme of the relationship between guilt, crime and will, as in Elisa by Leonardo di Costanzo, in which Barbara Ronchi is a very good protagonist. A pity for her, left empty-handed, and also for Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, sparkling Duse in Pietro Marcello's film.

À pied d'œuvre, written by director Valérie Donzelli and Gilles Marchand, was awarded for the screenplay, which is rather an oddity because the story is based on the autobiographical bestseller by Franck Courtès. The film is about work in a contemporary nuance, telling the story of a successful photographer (the talented Bastien Bouillon) who gives up wealth and fame to become a writer. There is no bohemian rhetoric of the artist who sacrifices himself to his talent, but rather a reflection on the idea, brought forward especially by young people, of putting a sense of identity before work fulfilment, through a delicate and bold narrative about the precariousness sought.

It would have been more correct to award this film the Special Jury Prize, which, instead, went to Gianfranco Rosi and his Nuvole, or rather, Sotto le nuvole, those rising from Vesuvius in Italy's most indecipherable city, where magical and ruthless contradictions coexist. A glorious black and white, dazzling, wanders between the Gulf of Naples, the Campi Flegrei, Pompeii and Herculaneum, amidst archaeological finds, trotting horses training as they enter the sea, the most bizarre calls to the fire brigade, combined with the tragic ones during an earthquake. Suddenly, a map of the city pops up (an homage to The Hands on the City by its namesake Francesco?) to locate the tunnels dug by tomb-robbers.

Incidentally, and to return polemically to the lack of a Golden Lion for The Voice of Hind Rajab, no one dared to call Rosi blackmailing when he took the Golden Bear for Fuocoammare, in which he followed the events of the immigrants of Lampedusa.

The Mastroianni Award goes to Luna Wedler, the young star of Silent friend by Ildikó Enyedi. Wedler is promising, but what is most interesting is the theme of the film, which in a triptych, set in three different eras, reveals to us the character and secret life of plants. A visionary work, as was the psychoanalytic film Body and Soul.

Illustrious forgotten from the palmares are Lanthimos with Bugonia, hilarious conspiracy madness in alien sauce; Kathryn Bigelow with her adrenaline-fuelled House of Dynamite about a possible nuclear war; Olivier Assayas with The Wizard of the Kremlin about the rise of Putin starring Jude Law and Paul Dano. But we will see them in the cinema. Hopefully, Gus van Sant's Dead Man's Wire, with the neurotically poetic Bill Skarsgård, will also arrive in theatres.

Fortunately, Giorgio Armani was not forgotten, so the Great Hall rose to its feet, dedicating a long applause to the master of elegance.