Of Sara D'Ascenzo
In Luca Guadagnino's new film the incandescent material of which today's debate is made. Many films in theaters: from «Scirocco» to two Italians to forget
Alma Olsson (Julia Roberts) aspires to a philosophy professorship at Yale. Pulled, icy, very elegant, yet close to the studentsamong them even physically, Professor Olsson is loved, perhaps envied, perhaps, as happens when one is so in the spotlight, even hated, for that aura of perfection she emanates: beautiful house, beautiful marriage, an existence that exudes well-being. But everything can overflowlike a tub that absentmindedly fills up too much. And so the embankment collapses for Alma too, the day after a beautiful evening at her house, when one of her most brilliant students, Maggie (the Emmy-winning actress Ayo Edebiri) confesses to her that she had suffered violence by Alma's favorite colleague, her best friend Hank Gibson (Andrew Garfield, here at his most expressive), a talented teacher also waiting for a place in the sun. What happens on an American campus today when something like this happens and is reported? Everyone must take sides, Alma too, even though doubt constantly creeps in and she is constantly called to condemn her friend. The drama of these days: taking sides to survive, but succumbing to doubt; don't take sides and be condemned for not doing so. «Not everything here is designed to make you feel at ease»Alma tells Maggie. And it is the phrase that many of the middle generation would feel like saying to Gen Z, accused of worrying too much about everything, of immediately classifying everything as harassment, inappropriate behavior, vile betrayal. But where is the truth? The film, fortunately, doesn't say it, even if it gives its sentence, making the spectator spy on the life of the protagonists five years later like a prophecy. Much more interesting is understanding how to survivelike floating in the sea of prejudices, in the doubts that generate fear, that bring out past traumas. And secrets. The ones that each of us keeps in a box hidden under a tile in the bathroom. With a quotation of the titles from Woody Allen, Guadagnino declares from the beginning where this film fits: not so much in the territories of «Irrational man», the film by Woody Allen always set in an American college with a professor haunted by his demons, but rather in the parts of «Another woman»film on the theme of the double, psychoanalysis and feelings of guilt. Themes that are found printed in Alma's cold gaze, in her light clothes, in the use of lights: cold even in the good retirement to the professor's port which turns into the place of showdown. Vote: 7.5. IThe film has a solid structure and is burned by the incandescent matter of today's debate. Why yes: The way in which Maggie comes into contact with Alma's past might seem too easy, but it is clear that explanations are not the strong point of a film that delves inside. And it pushes for debate. Hurray.
Duel to the death in a small town in New Mexico between the county sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) and the current mayor (Pedro Pascal), when the sheriff decides to become the mayor himself. There is another rivalry involved: in the past the sheriff had married the mayor's ex-wife (a very dazed Emma Stone, a rag doll maker). In the background, the Covid 19 pandemicsomething that today appears obsolete but in which only five years ago, almost six, we were immersed. And something from that period resurfaces: fear and distrust towards those who did not wear a mask, conspiracy theorists, gurus, aggression, anxiety, combined with other hot topics: the fight against Antifa (declared outlawed by President Trump a few days ago) the Black Lives Matter after the death of George Floyd. And what else? Ah yes, the revisited western, the thriller, the murder mystery, and even the demands of the Native Americans and the whites who want to dewhiten themselves, in a frantic race to drive humanity crazy, concentrating all the idiosyncrasies of the moment, without exception, in two hours and twenty minutes of film. There are too many irons in Aster's firetoo many derailments which immediately cause the film to change color from a postmodern western to an apocalyptic thriller, where, all things considered, what drives everything is one of the most ancestral passions that has always pursued man: jealousy. Aster uses his actors like puppets in a theater gone mad, veering towards a film where anything happens in half an hour, too much even for a forcibly grotesque register. However, the dusty and frontier photography makes everything the same and the loaded acting of Phoenix and the Stone, who progressively resembles his rag dolls more and more, they contribute to taking away the depth of a work without identity, which the spectator is forced to endure.Rating: 5. Too much is really annoying. And little or nothing remains imprinted of all this deluge of images and concepts. Why not: because boredom takes over vision.
Parallel lives destined to intersect. The eternal variable geometry of Italian cinema, here it is as if it produced two films: a flat onewith a couple (Stefano Accorsi and Miriam Leone) desperate because they are unable to have children and after pregnancy interruptions and impossible assisted fertilization they choose the path of adoption; the other a little more interestingalthough still below an average French film, that these subjects - denied rights, scrambled feelings, families that are never born and families that fall apart - are masters at staging credible chamber dramas. So the second segment concerns Nunzia, a nineteen-year-old Sicilian who went to Rome to study (Tecla Insolia, good) who becomes pregnant despite the precautions. What to do? Abortion is no longer possibleit's late. So the pregnancy continues and at the same time the disintegration of the Accorsi-Leone couple also continues, under the weight of her many existential doubts. How will it end? The title should give a valuable hint. The acting by Accorsi and Leone is decidedly not believable and the characters are not very empathetic. The sloppiness of making Accorsi the famous concert performer by making him play only extremely famous and popular music does not help to free the film from a worrying two-dimensionalitywhere the characters look like stickers for which no one bothered to buy the right album.Rating: 5. Not very interesting, not at all empathetic, obvious. Difficult to save, even if you look for something good in the theme of imposed or forced, rejected or accepted motherhood, which is decidedly interesting.
Tender and adventurous animated film, poetic and full of colour, it tells the story of two little girls transformed by their resourcefulness and spirit of adventure, into two kittens catapulted into the Kingdom of the winds, the world above (or to the side) created by the writer Agnes, their mother's best friend. A world imagined after the death of his beloved sister, who transformed into an opera singer in the Kingdom. There will be adventures, there will be escapesthere will be arranged and forced marriages not to be celebrated in this escape into this dream world that fades into the nightmare you enter by drawing a bell on the ground, that child's game in which with chalk you create an architecture capable of holding an afternoon, until the first scraped knee. The animation has its own originality, even if some characters - Scirocco and the mayor above all - are a little too indebted to Miyazaki's aesthetics, but the story has its own feminine grace that will fascinate childrentaking them away from the norm of mainstream animation.Rating: 7. Delicate and joyful, he is capable of tackling strong themes such as death, touching the heart with the grace of a foil. Why yes: to loudly argue that different animation also exists. Distributed by the courageous Trent Film, from Padua.
Max (Lorenzo Zurzolo) from the deep Venetian province emigrates to Rome called by a hi-tech guru (poor James Franco) who will obviously eat his soul after appreciating his app designed for final year high school students faced with the choice of the future. Based on the novel of the same name by Giacomo Mazzariol (published by Einaudi), the film is the directorial debut of an author who had made his debut with a series. His declared intent is to also add a bit of magical realism to a dramatic story. The problem is not so much the thinness of the story - the plot is not enough to make a good film - but the style chosen to tell it. Which it is more like a music video than a filmwith images continually reassembled to underline narrative junctions, "turning points" in the story, but which end up making everything a little similar, predictable and "already seen". Let's leave aside the acting, with the painful note of the forced Venetian accent as in the worst cinematic traditions.Rating: 4.5. Everything to do again. It's a shame because the idea could also have had its own development. And even the crazy idea of involving James Franco could have given the film something more. But here we start low and there we stop.
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October 17, 2025
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