Venice film festival fails to inspire
Updated on 02 September 2008
The Venice Film Festival has reached its halfway point but critics have been disappointed by the lineup so far.
After the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading opened the festival to loud applause from the public and grumbling from critics, a mood of lethargy set in on the event.
The event has not yet produced a masterpiece, according to critics.
However, they have been unanimous in their praise of Japanese animated feature Ponyo On The Cliff By The Sea, Hayao Miyazaki's retelling of The Little Mermaid.
Little else has emerged as an obvious winner, although the performances of Kim Basinger and Charlize Theron impressed critics in Guillermo Arriaga's The Burning Plain, and Marco Bechis' Birdwatchers, set amid a tribe of Amazon natives, was received warmly.
The pair of much-hyped all-Italian films- Ferzan Ozpetek's A Perfect Day and Pupi Avati's Giovanna's Father - failed to grab critical support. Several other films reportedly started strongly, only to run out of steam, including Takeshi Kitano's Achilles and the Tortoise and Christian Petzold's Jerichow.
During so-called dry festival years, a lack of big-money, big-star successes has allowed smaller films to emerge as frontrunners.
Claire Denis' delicate father-daughter study 35 Shots of Rum continues to be talked about, as does Marco Pontecorvo's unsentimental clown tale Pa-Ra-Da. Adrian Sitaru's flirty Romanian fable Hooked received a thumbs up.
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