My, how the time has flown. It seems like only yesterday I was waving a scrap of paper in front of a confused security guard in a bid to get access to the press accreditation counter.
A week and a half, and 29 films later, and it’s all come to an end. Actually, that’s not quite true. We still have the awards to come, next post.
I’m sad to say the two film I saw today did not live up to prior experiences at the Festival. After Atom Egoyan’s twilight flourish yesterday, the standard took something of a nosedive as the finish line came into sight.
First up, a most conventional of conventional Hollywood thrillers in Go With Me. Swedish director Daniel Alfredson sends a respectable cast off to the Pacific Northwest to try and free an innocent young woman from the attentions of the local troublemaker, Blackway (Ray Liotta)
Go With Me is not a bad film, it’s just a very average one. Everything here has been seen a thousand times before.
Julia Stiles plays a schoolteacher/waitress recently moved back to a small logging town. An unfortunate encounter with Blackaway sees her seeking protection from Lester (Anthony Hopkins) and Nate (Alexander Ludwig).
The story relies upon by-the-numbers shocks all the way, although it does have the decency to get straight to the point without the usual meandering we see in so many tediously inflated running times, nowadays. There’s nothing much to dislike and nothing much to like, here. I expect Go With Me to turn up in DVD bargain bins in no time.
While Go With Me carefully avoided offence, Alberto Barbera’s For Your Love (Per Amor Vostro) proved infuriatingly bad. Film festivals seem feel the need to promote their own national product, even if it’s rubbish. My final film viewed at the Venice Film Festival is a perfect example of this tendency.
Thinly written characters and a number of irritating gimmicks, particularly the decision to show the world in black and white, and add to that an awful line in musical choices, only compound the lightweight plot here. The plot jumps between knockabout whimsy, romance and family discord, and it fails on every front.
When For Your Love ended, I felt intense relief. Of course, that’s not the best way to finish Venezia 72. But the festival can still redeem itself by handing out awards to the right films. Note to jury, that means Anomalisa, Remember and Rabin, the Last Day.