wins the Golden Lion, and looks askance at Hollywood

Pedro Almodovar has made history once again. The genius from La Mancha won the coveted award for best film at the Venice Film Festival this Sunday with The Next Room, his first feature film in English, and it is the first Spanish film to achieve this. The Golden Lion, Although Aragonese Luis Bunuel He achieved this in 1967 with Belle de Jour, although it was a French film. Almodóvar himself received the honorary Golden Lion in 2019. It was an edition packed with stars such as Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and George Clooney, and directors such as Luca Guadagnino and Pablo Larraín, so Almodóvar’s triumph is even more meritorious.

“I never dreamed of winning the Golden Lion, but now that I have it, I think I’ve become addicted,” the director of joked Return before the press. It had been more than 50 years since a Spanish director had achieved this recognition, with Luis Buñuel being the last to do so in 1967 with Belle de jour. For Almodóvar, who at the age of 74 dared to film in English, this triumph is the icing on the cake of his decades-long relationship with Venice, where he made his debut in 1983 with Entre tinieblas.

During his speech, the filmmaker highlighted the Spanish spirit of the film and dedicated it to his family and the protagonists, Julianne Moore y Tilda Swinton, thanking them for their “talent, trust and generosity.” The film was acclaimed with a 17-minute standing ovation and led critics for its reflection on dignified death and euthanasia, through the reunion of two friends in a difficult context. Moore plays a successful writer, while Swinton embodies a journalist with terminal cancer, who decides to spend her last days in a house in the woods. Almodóvar took advantage of the scene to defend the legalization of euthanasia, arguing that “saying goodbye to the world in a clean and dignified way is a fundamental right.”

In this edition, The Room Next Door beat the impressive The Brutalist, which earned Brady Corbet the Silver Lion for best director. Starring Adrien Brody, The three-and-a-half-hour film, with a 15-minute intermission, in 70 millimeters, addresses the life of a Hungarian architect after the Holocaust. Nicole Kidman, With her role in Babygirl, she won the Volpi Cup for best actress, although she was unable to collect it because her mother died when the Australian was travelling to the city of canals. Frenchman Vincent Lindon was named best actor for Jouer avec le feu (Playing with Fire), in which he plays a father struggling with his son’s neo-Nazi ideology. The jury also awarded Georgian film April by Dea Kulumbegashvili, which deals with access to abortion in rural areas, and Vermiglio by Maura Delpero, an intimate look at the aftermath of war on an Italian family.

The 81st edition of the Mostra was notable not only for the large presence of stars, but also for the distance they kept from the press, which generated complaints about the lack of interviews. However, the red carpet saw unforgettable moments such as the tune of Brad Pitt and George Clooney, the audacity of Lady Gaga, and the dazzling passage of Jenna Ortega y Monica Bellucci at the presentation of Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice. According to the president of the jury, Isabelle Huppert, “The cinema is in excellent shape,” leaving great expectations for the coming months.