Rivalry takes back seat as Venice fest opens
From Denis Barnett

VENICE—US director Brian de Palma’s noir tale of obsession, manipulation and betrayal, “The Black Dahlia”, got a muted reception from critics as it opened the Venice Film Festival. The complex and lengthy movie may not have excited the critics but certainly caused a stir at the gala opening when the cast went missing as the curtain went up on the 63rd edition of the festival. Led by De Palma, Scarlett Johansson, Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart, they were ushered into the festival hall 40 minutes late, by which time an embarrassed festival president Davide Croff had already declared the festival open in their absence.
“It seems the culprit was sexy diva Scarlett Johansson,” reported Italian news agency ANSA, which nevertheless praised the actress for lingering on the catwalk for 10 minutes to pose for hollering photographers and sign autographs for hundreds of fans. The Venice festival, the world’s oldest, will show dozens of brand new films among hundreds to be screened over the next two weeks from 27 countries, from Hollywood blockbusters like De Palma’s to obscure finds from Chad and Cyprus.
But the hit of the opening day’s screenings was a documentary by US film-makers David Leaf and John Scheinfeld. Showing in the Horizons section, “The US vs John Lennon” traces Lennon’s transformation from pop star to anti-war activist, and how the US government tried to silence him. Featuring 50 Lennon songs, interviews with 30 contemporaries and much previously unseen footage as well as an in-depth interview with his wife Yoko Ono, it drew applause from critics.
A total of 21 films are vying for the prestigious Golden Lion award for best movie, including the “Black Dahlia”. The second of the films in competition, “Sang Sattawat (Syndromes and a Century)” by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, failed to excite critics at a screening late Wednesday. Set in a small town hospital, the slow moving film is based on the director’s personal recollections of growing up in a hospital environment where both his parents were doctors.
“Black Dahlia” stars the luminous Johansson in an unaccustomed role as a femme fatale locked in a love-triangle with Eckhart and Hartnett — hard boiled cops whose investigation of the brutal murder of an aspiring actress in 1940s-era Hollywood turns to obsession, corruption and depravity. The actors deserve credit for the rapid-fire period dialogue worthy of Jimmy Cagney and Edward G. Robinson. Based on a true story, the unsolved murder of B-movie actress Elizabeth (Betty Ann) Short in 1947, De Palma’s movie is a generally faithful adaptation of James Ellroy’s novel, which the writer penned to help come to terms with the murder of his mother in 1958 when he was an 11-year-old.
De Palma, whose films include classic crime dramas “The Untouchables” and “Scarface”, drew praise from Ellroy after Wednesday’s critics preview for his artful portrayal of “the systemic corruption of the world I write about”. Johansson, who won a Best Actress award at the festival two years ago for Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation”, plays Kay Lake, a beauty with a sordid past. The young star of “Match Point” and “Girl with a Pearl Earring” takes to the role of sexy femme fatale with relish.
“She’s not innocent in any way at all. She’s a survivor really. She creates a fantasy for herself in order to wake up each morning and not dwell on her horrible past,” Johansson said of her character Kay on Wednesday. Almost entirely shot in Bulgaria, where period Los Angeles was recreated on a set, the opening film has swung the spotlight away from a public spat which has dominated the preamble to the 63rd Venice festival.
Festival director Marco Mueller appeared to be relieved that the festival was finally underway, having attracted publicity for an ugly spat with a rival festival in Rome before a reel had been unspooled. “We wanted to give you the right films, films which have inspired us and which have taught us something. From this moment on, they will do the talking,” he told the audience at the glittering opening gala.
Mueller had earlier attacked Rome’s inaugural film festival, which opens in October, suggesting it would merely offer works already rejected by established festivals like Venice and Cannes. Rome’s festival organisers retorted by slamming Mueller for “an incredible offence to cinema” and to those contributing to the Rome event. Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli, who attended Wednesday’s opening, was finally forced to intervene, calling on Rome to move future editions of its festival back to a later date, to avoid stamping on Venice’s toes.