There are few things more glamorous than a red carpet, but the Venice Film Festival 2025 has found a way to level up the whole idea of making an entrance: Do it on a boat.
Held on the barrier island of Lido, just outside Venice proper, stars attending the Venice Film Festival don their finest fashion for red-carpet premieres and then make the most chic entrance imaginable, arriving not in a stretch limo or chauffeured SUV or even on a litter carried by shirtless attendants, but literally gliding into the scene, ferried on a little wooden water taxi or a flashy speedboat.
Stars heading for the carpet are practically set up for a freeze-frame worthy of a Bond movie, thanks to the wind in their hair, the opportunity to wear sunglasses, and the built-in cool points of an aquatic arrival. But some stars, such as Amanda Seyfried, who casually draped herself over her boat’s windscreen in 2019, or Brigitte Bardot, who arrived complete with a scarf to protect her hairdo and a huge smile in 1958, really make a splash.
Ahead, take a look at our very favorite, most fashionable Venice Film Festival entrances through the years.
Hundreds of Italian and international filmmakers, artists and cultural figures have signed an open letter calling on the Venice Film Festival to take a “clear and unambiguous stand” against what they describe as genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
The appeal, organized under the banner of Venice4Palestine (V4P), was sent on Friday to the Venice film festival umbrella organization the Biennale di Venezia, as well as the festival’s independent sections Venice Days and International Critics’ Week.
In the letter, the group accuses the Israeli government and military of carrying out genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing across Palestine, and urges the festival to avoid becoming “a sad and empty showcase” by instead providing “a place of dialogue, active participation, and resistance, as it has been in the past.”
Signatories include British filmmaker Ken Loach, Italian actor Toni Servillo — star of 2025 Venice opener, La Grazia from Paolo Sorrentino, Italian actress and director siblings Alba and Alice Rohrwacher, actress Jasmine Trinca, French directors Céline Sciamma and Audrey Diwan, British actor Charles Dance and Palestinian directorial duo Arab Nasser and Tarzan Nasser, who won best director in Cannes Un Certain Regard this year for their latest film Once Upon A Time In Gaza.
The group references the deaths of nearly 250 Palestinian media workers since the start of the conflict and frames artistic institutions as responsible for fostering awareness and resistance.
“As the spotlight turns on the Venice Film Festival, we’re in danger of going through yet another major event that remains indifferent to this human, civil, and political tragedy,” the letter reads. “‘The show must go on,’ we are told, as we’re urged to look away — as if the ‘film world’ had nothing to do with the ‘real world.’”
For once, the letter continues, “the show must stop. We must interrupt the flow of indifference and open a path to awareness,” adding, “there is no cinema without humanity.”
The letter calls on the festival to host events highlighting Palestinian narratives and to create “a constant backdrop of conversations and initiatives” addressing “ethnic cleansing, apartheid, illegal occupation of Palestinian territories, colonialism and all the other crimes against humanity committed by Israel for decades, not just since October 7.”
In a statement in response to the letter, the Biennale said they and the Venice festival “have always been, throughout their history, places of open discussion and sensitivity to all the most pressing issues facing society and the world. The evidence of this is, first and foremost, the works that are being presented [at the festival].” The statement noted that The Voice of Hind Rajab, a real-life drama from Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, about the killing of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl by Israeli forces in Gaza in 2024, will be screening in competition at Venice this year.
The Biennale noted that last year’s Venice lineup featured Israeli director Dani Rosenberg’s film Of Dogs and Men, shot in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks.
“The Biennale is, as always, open to dialogue,” the statement said.
A separate group of Italian artists, the Artisti #NoBavaglio network, has called for a public “stop genocide” protest on August 30, on the first weekend of the festival.
The 82nd Venice international film festival runs Aug. 27 to Sept. 6.
Martinique-born Julien Creuzet represented France at this year’s Venice Biennale, transforming the pavilion into a space where a radical and collective imaginary opens up. Photo: Djiby Kebe for CHANEL Culture Fund
Originally from Martinique, Julien Creuzet brought his distinctive French-Caribbean voice to the French Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale where he reflects on the sea as both a horizon of opportunity and a threat, a place of healing and life as well as death and suffering. In Venice, Creuzet envisioned a pavilion where ‘overseas territories’ and the ‘ultramarine’ merge into a fluid dimension, evoking our embryonic origins in water and humanity’s dependence on this vital element. His work, titled Attila cataracte ta source aux pieds des pitons verts finira dans la grande mer gouffre bleu nous nous noyâmes dans les larmes marées de la lune (or “Attila cataract your source at the feet of the green peaks will end up in the great sea blue abyss we drowned in the tidal tears of the moon”) reads like a poem that connects ancient mythologies and suggests a continuous flow of narratives and spiritualities born from intercultural exchange.
“We need to consider which is the first and oldest memory a child has, as an embryo, before birth,” Creuzet told Observer. “This is an immersive experience inside the liquid—the liquid of maternity and life. Sometimes, when we take a bath and go to the beach, more or less unconsciously, we can feel again and retrieve memories about that, especially when our body is floating inside the water.”
The static visual components of Creuzet’s work are paired with sound and video to create an immersive experience. Jacopo La Forgia
Building on this concept, Creuzet has created an immersive multimedia and multisensory installation that blends sound, video and sculpture to explore the myths of hybrid societies. Sculptural threads hang from the ceiling, rich in texture and pigment, unraveling across the space like an intricate forest of lianas or a coral cluster. These threads capture relics of human civilization entangled in the currents of nature and history. In crafting this sensory confluence of narratives and sensations, Creuzet has forged a radical imaginary that invites connection to the divine, ancestral and, simultaneously, to Venice, with its canals and maritime legacy.
In Creuzet’s work, water—particularly as it manifests in seas and oceans—serves as a vehicle for the continuous flow of history, the movement of people, energies and ideas shaping new forms. The mysterious narrative he weaves within the space embraces water as a repository of collective memories and traumas but also as a realm of initiation, healing and regeneration. As Creuzet recalls, although he was born and raised in the suburbs of Paris, his family took him back to Martinique before he was even a month old to have his first saltwater bath—a ritual of reconnection and the continuation of family heritage.
His evolving mythopoiesis through video, poetry and sculpture unfolds across media with a boundless flow, where imagination allows him to tap into and reactivate timeless archetypes and symbols in a cross-cultural dimension. This hybridization of traditions results in the creation of new mythological beings. As Creuzet explains, the deities and demons of the sea that fluctuate around the pavilion were conceived through extensive research by him and his studio into various mythological and religious traditions tied to the sea. “We did a lot of research on how different civilizations conceived representations and mythologies about water. It’s a mythology we find everywhere, with different names, as an innate necessity across geographies.”
Creuzet describes the pavilion in terms of form and sound, volumes and lines in movement and colorful encounters that combine in an intense experience. Jacopo La Forgia
Digital animation and new technologies serve as powerful tools in Creuzet’s hands, bringing his envisioned creatures to life as universal hybrids that embody various symbologies and traditions. These traditions have long sought to represent the mysterious forces and energies of the sea. As Creuzet noted during our conversation, monotheistic and polytheistic religions, particularly animism, once attempted to depict these forces as deities or demons. Today, in a society that has largely lost faith in religion, it seems artists are among the few who can still create magical representations. This ability is crucial for helping us visualize the unknown forces of nature and, more importantly, for imagining different futures. Artists hold a unique connection to the ancestral, with the ability to extend the past’s reality into the future.
Building on this idea, Creuzet has reimagined the statue of Neptune atop the staircases at Palazzo della Dogana in Venice. He explained that Neptune has symbolically entered the pavilion, embodying his classical role as the god of the sea and his cosmic connections. Other sculptural elements in the pavilion evoke ancient relics and remnants of a civilization lost to the sea. Yet everything in the pavilion exists in a suspended, liquid, embryonic space where past, present and future converge. The artist’s imagination, manifesting in this multisensory experience, invites visitors to immerse themselves and float between these dimensions.
“Creuzet’s forms stem from a locus of emancipation, which must be felt to see truly,” reads the exhibition description. “It is a moment of learning and unlearning as a reconciliation with our senses and a space to be untranslated and liberated.” Jacopo La Forgia
The artist reflected here that his Caribbean identity allows him to navigate and operate more consciously within these fluid, hybrid dimensions. Édouard Glissant’s concept of “Creolization” illustrates this well—the Caribbean’s history, with its composite population, exemplifies the fertile melting pot of cultures, deities and traditions that arose from centuries of movement, colonization, migration and trade.
“I think to be a Caribbean person is about this universalism,” said Creuzet. “Simply because the Caribbean is a considerable mixing of different civilizations.” Yet at the same time, this hybrid reality seems to be the only viable position for those in exile or distanced from a singular national perspective. Like Ovid writing Metamorphoses while in exile, Creuzet added, this detachment from dominant narratives opens the door to explore broader universal themes.
“Contemporary art is a question of metamorphosis, a potential metamorphosis of society’s vision,” he said, revealing his approach to art and this project. For him, art is an exercise in radical imagination. By drawing on the accumulated heritage of knowledge and symbologies from various cultures and historical moments, it can still shape a new, meaningful universe in a universal language, casting light on a more harmonious future.
Celebrating the boundless imaginative potential of art and poetry, the Biennale pavilion Creuzet conceived embraces a pioneering universalism—one already embedded in the Caribbean—that can inspire a rich and beneficial coexistence among diverse individuals and entities.
The Venice Film Festival has begun—get ready for 11 days of some of the best red carpet fashion of the year. WireImage
While last year’s Venice Film Festival was a quieter, more subdued occasion than usual due to the SAG-AFTRA and WAG strikes, the 2024 iteration is expected to bring the usual array of A-list filmmakers and celebrities to the Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido for a week and a half of premieres, screenings and parties.
Isabelle Huppert is the 2024 jury president, and this year’s cinematic line-up is packed with some of the most anticipated movies of the year. Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, is set to premiere at the Venice Film Festival, as is Luca Guadagnino’s Queer (with Daniel Craig and Jason Schwartzman), Pablo Larrain’s Maria (starring Angelina Jolie) and Halina Reijn’s Babygirl (Nicole Kidman), among many others. Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, screened out of competition, will open the festival.
Along with plenty of must-see films, the stars also bring their sartorial best for the glamorous film festival in Venice, Italy, strutting down the red carpet in fashionable designs—this is, after all, the very event that brought us couture moments like Florence Pugh’s dazzling black glitter Valentino ensemble at the Don’t Worry Darling premiere, along with Zendaya’s custom leather Balmain dress in 2021 and Dakota Johnson in bejeweled Gucci.
The 81st annual Venice International Film Festival kicks off on August 28 and runs through September 7, which means a whole lot of high-fashion moments are headed for Lido. Below, see the best red carpet fashion from the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
The Venice Film Festival showered Luca Guadagnino‘s Queer with lots of love Tuesday night at the film’s world premiere. In particular, the capacity crowd inside Sala Grande went wild for star Daniel Craig, who broke away from his James Bond persona for a provocative and challenging role opposite Drew Starkey, who also earned cheers from the capacity crowd that included Pedro Almodovar.
The Spanish auteur, who is also in the Venice competition with his buzzy drama The Room Next Door, was seated across the row from Guadagnino and his cast. He embraced them one by one during the lengthy standing ovation. Craig looked emotional at several points as his wife, Rachel Weisz, was beaming and hollering in unison with the crowd while standing on her feet.
The world premiere, which he ended with a 9.5-minute standing ovation, also marked a triumphant return to the Lido for the Italian auteur after his previous feature, the sexy tennis drama Challengers, was forced to pull out as Venice’s opening movie last year due to delays related to the Hollywood actors strike. Based on the novel by William S. Burroughs and adapted by screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, who wrote Guadagnino’s last film Challengers, Queer is set in 1950s Mexico City where the action follows Craig’s character William Lee.
An American expat in his mid-50s, William is leading a solitary existence in Mexico City. Addicted to opiates and alcohol, his life changes when a young man, Starkey’s Eugene Allerton, arrives on the scene, stirring Craig’s character into earth-shattering infatuation. The film — sprinkled with racy, fleetingly full-frontal scenes (including anal sex) — culminates in the search for a drug that William believes will let him communicate with Eugene telepathically.
Daniel Craig and Drew Starky in Queer.
Credit: Yannis Drakoulidis/Courtesy of A24
Guadagnino has said that he and his team saw around 300 young actors for the plum part, but they kept coming back to the Outer Banks star to play Allerton. He credits Call Me By Your Name producer Peter Spears (Nomadland, Bones and All) with alerting him to Starkey’s talents after showing him a self-tape he had from another project. Craig and Starkey topline a cast that also includes Lesley Manville, Jason Schwartzman, Henrique Zaga, Andra Ursuta, Andres Duprat, Ariel Shulman, Drew Droege, Michael Borremans, David Lowery, Lisandro Alonso and Colin Bates.
Also notable is that the cast features rising pop phenom Omar Apollo in his acting debut. Apollo, who broke out with a viral single “Evergreen” on his critically acclaimed album Ivory, has also spoken openly about being gay and how his own LGBTQ experience has shaped his music.
The 135-minute Queer — hailing from Fremantle and Frenesy Film Company and to be released by A24 — boasts a roster of fellow boldfaced name collaborators. The Oscar-winning team of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross scored the music while Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson served as costume designer. It’s the fashion designer’s second straight collaboration with Guadagnino after first making his film debut on Challengers starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist.
Perhaps because of Anderson’s involvement, or simply that Tuesday delivered the world premiere of the buzzy new film, it was a fashionable night on the Lido with some of the stars from the film wearing Loewe, including Craig, who went viral earlier this summer when his new campaign for the fashion house dropped.
The setting for Maura Delpero’s second feature is a sleepy wartime village in the Italian Alps, but the languid nature of the film is so soporific it borders on anesthetizing; indeed when the credits finally roll, it might be worth checking yourself for scars and other signs of organ harvesting. Technically, it is a marvel of period filmmaking, an immersive view of la vida rustica so bursting with authenticity that it may inspire more enthusiastic viewers to put on a folk hat and get a job in a heritage museum working the spinning jenny. Others may not be so gripped by its drawn-out drama; box-office blockbuster material it is not.
The year is 1944, and the war in Europe is still in bloom, with no end in sight. The center of Vermiglio, the village that gives the film its title, is the local school, which is presided over by the ever-so-slightly draconian but certainly patriarchal head teacher Caesar (Tommaso Ragno). Being the father of nine children, with another one on the way, means that a fair proportion of his charges are his own brood, although not all live up to his exacting standards. Some, he is sure, will go on to bigger and brighter things. The others will be condemned to a life of domestic or rural drudgery, like his daughter Ada (Rachele Potrich) and son Dino (Patrick Gardner). Dino especially gets his ire, causing his wife to admonish him: “It’s not his fault he’s the teacher’s son.”
Caesar’s Cheaper By the Dozen homelife is established early on, with the children packed three to a bed, and Delpero frequently returns to his offspring as kind of naïve Greek chorus. Like the Von Trapp family, they are plentiful and age-diverse. One of the youngest gets excited after receiving “two tangerines” on the feast of Saint Lucia. The eldest, Lucia (Martina Scrinzi) — who could be 16 going on 70, given the prematurely ageing qualities of rural life — finds her head being turned when her soldier brother Attilio (Santiago Fondevila Sancet) returns from the war with his new friend Pietro (Giuseppe De Domenico) in tow.
Pietro is from Sicily, with an accent some find hard to understand. He is also illiterate, which Caesar tries to deal with by including him in the adult classes he sets up at the school. The fact that he speaks very little doesn’t seem bother anyone at all: “Men who come back from the war have secrets,” someone says. “It’s like their tongues have been cut out.” Pietro is quick to register his affection for Lucia, however, passing her notes that begin as a hand-drawn hearts and, after a bit of schooling, quickly become rudimentary declarations of love.
Lucia falls for him and the pair marry, which, dramatically speaking (though we don’t yet know it), is perhaps the defining moment of the film. When he subsequently disappears back to Sicily, and radio silence ensues, it’s a source of anxiety — but mostly on behalf of the family, who worry about Lucia’s mental health as a war widow (“Without a man, the wheels start to come off”). Although it is very much concerned with the limited choices facing the women of Vermiglio, Delpero’s film is also about the presence — and absence — of the men in their world. Pietro’s vanishing act is simply seen as a side effect of the conflict, and no one judges him for it. They simply wait, and wait, and wait.
Who Pietro really is, and why he’s actually missing, is arguably what the film is leading up to, but we find out about his polyamorous ways in the same way that Lucia does, from a newspaper. In narrative terms, it’s frustrating, but, in a subtle way, it does fit with what Delpero is trying to say about this world: the people of Vermiglio are not stupid (most of the children can read), not incapable of sophistication (Caesar likes Chopin and Vivaldi, and believes music to be “food for the soul”), and not incurious (they pore over maps and discuss other countries and continents); they are simply disconnected and isolated in a beautiful snow globe, in a world that is about to change around them, its innocence shattered.
Title: Vermiglio Festival:Venice (Competition) Sales Agent: Charades Director/screenwriter: Maura Delpero Cast: Tommaso Ragno, Giuseppe De Domenico, Roberta Rovelli, Martina Scrinzi, Orietta Notari, Carlotta Gamba, Santiago Fondevila Sancet, Rachele Potrich, Anna Thaler, Patrick Gardner, Enrico Panizza, Luis Thaler, Simone Bendetti, and with Sara Serraiocco Running time: 1 hr 59 mins
Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Jurnee Smollett, and director Justin Kurzel, were among the team at The Order‘s Venice press conference this afternoon where they discussed the crime-drama’s resonance with extremism today.
The Order charts how a series of bank robberies and car heists frightened communities in the Pacific Northwest during the 1980s. It alights on a lone FBI agent (Law) who believes that the crimes were not the work of financially motivated criminals, but rather a group of dangerous domestic terrorists, namely the white supremacist gang known as The Order (led in the film by Hoult). The film explores the ensuing battle between law enforcement and the far-right group.
Hoult told the press how he and Law – adversaries in the film – didn’t speak or interact with each other for the first four weeks of filming in a bid to build distance between them. He was also tasked by director Kurzel to trail Law for a day without his fellow actor knowing.
The team were asked about the film’s relevance to the the divided political landscape in the U.S. today, to which Law responded: “Sadly, the relevance speaks for itself. It felt like a piece of work that needed to be made now. It’s always interesting finding a piece of work that’s relevant to the present day.”
Kurzel commented: “I think we live at a time now that was reflected in the film, where there is division, and there’s a lot of conversation about the future and about ideologies. The film was about an ideology that’s incredibly dangerous and how it can quickly take seed…in those that feel invisible or unheard…I think that’s a timeless thing, not only in America, but in Australia too [where the filmmaker is from]”.
Actress Jurnee Smollett added: “I think the history of America is very complex. And if you look back throughout history, whether we’re talking about the Jim Crow South or the Tulsa race riots in 1921 or the Oklahoma City bombing, this level of bigotry is not new, and unfortunately, it has existed in our nation since our nation was founded. One of the beautiful things about art is that we get to hold a mirror up to society, we get to reflect society back to it, and we get to explore the very complex sides of humanity, the ugliness, the darkness, in order for us to learn from it, and hopefully to not repeat it. The film could have been made at any moment and it would have been relevant, unfortunately, but that’s the great privilege that we have, as artists, to be able to help the fight for justice and to be able to illuminate some of these ugly sides of our history.”
The crime-thriller, directed by Kurzel and written by Zach Baylin, is based on the 1989 non-fiction book The Silent Brotherhood by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt.
Kurzel said he had been wanting to make an American film “for some time”: “A lot of the films that made me want to be a filmmaker, like the French Connection, All the President’s Men, Mississippi Burning, were those fantastic 70’s dramatic thrillers. Unfortunately it’s becoming harder and harder to make those sort of films. So this was an incredible opportunity after reading Zach’s [writer Zach Baylin] script”.
Acclaimed Australian filmmaker Kurzel is known for hard-hitting movies including Nitram, True History Of The Kelly Gang, Macbeth and Snowtown.
Vertical will release The Order in the U.S. in December, while Amazon Prime Video will distribute in multiple international markets.
When the filmmakers and celebrities aren’t attending premieres, screenings and official fêtes, they’re enjoying all that Venice has to offer, and they’re doing so in style—the Venice Film Festival is where you’ll find some of the best off-duty looks, because is there really any better backdrop than that of a Venetian gondola?
While last year’s Venice Film Festival was a somewhat sleepier event due to the SAG-AFTRA and WAG strikes, the 2024 edition is back in full force, with highly anticipated movies including Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, and Pablo Larrain’s Maria, starring Angelina Jolie, set to premiere.
The 81st annual Venice Film Festival runs from August 28 through September 7, so get ready for 11 days of incredible fashion. Below, take a look at the best off-duty looks from all your favorite stars at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
Meta has acquired Impulse: Playing With Reality, an interactive mixed-reality documentary exploring Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) voiced by Tilda Swinton. The project, from co-directors May Abdalla and Barry Gene Murphy, will premiere at the 2024 Venice Immersive program of the 81st Venice International Film Festival.
The project draws from more than 100 hours of interviews with individuals on the severe end of the ADHD spectrum, using the mixed reality format to give viewers a sense of what it feels like to live with the condition.
Impulse is the second installment in the “Playing With Reality” series from U.K. producer Anagram, co-produced by Floréal & France Télévisions, which aims to shed light on mental health conditions through immersive storytelling.
Swinton also narrated the first project in the series, Abdalla and Murphy’s 2021 VR work Goliath, an exploration of one man’s experience of schizophrenia, which went on to win the Grand Jury Prize for Best VR Immersive Work at the 78th Venice Festival and pick up an Emmy nomination in the outstanding interactive media innovation category.
Meta will present Impulse on its Meta Quest service. The documentary can be pre-ordered, for $4.99, ahead of its release next month. Meta also released Goliath.
Anagram dropped the first trailer for the film on Wednesday. You can it check out below:
Venetian glass is perhaps the most famous glass in the world. The island of Murano became the glass-making center of Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, creating art that was so popular it was sought out by royals well into the 19th century. Today, the intricate pieces are still in demand, and one entrepreneur is making waves by turning an old world craft into modern day art. Dana Jacobson has more.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Pope Francis made his first trip out of Rome in seven months on Sunday with a visit to Venice that included an art exhibition, a stop at a prison and a Mass.
Venice has always been a place of contrasts, of breathtaking beauty and devastating fragility, where history, religion, art and nature have collided over the centuries to produce an otherworldly gem of a city. But even for a place that prides itself on its culture of unusual encounters, Francis’ visit on Sunday stood out.
Francis traveled to the lagoon city to visit the Holy See’s pavilion at the Biennale contemporary art show and meet with the people who created it. But because the Vatican decided to mount its exhibit in Venice’s women’s prison, and invited inmates to collaborate with the artists, the whole project assumed a far more complex meaning, touching on Francis’ belief in the power of art to uplift and unite, and of the need to give hope and solidarity to society’s most marginalized.
Pope Francis prays inside St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, Italy, Sunday, April 28, 2024. The Pontiff arrived for his first-ever visit to the lagoon town including the Vatican pavilion at the 60th Biennal of Arts.
Alessandra Tarantino / AP
His trip began at the courtyard of the Giudecca prison, where he met with women inmates one by one.
“Paradoxically, a stay in prison can mark the beginning of something new, through the rediscovery of the unsuspected beauty in us and in others, as symbolized by the artistic event you are hosting and the project to which you actively contribute,” Francis told them.
The 87-year-old pontiff then met with Biennale artists in the prison chapel, decorated with an installation by Brazilian visual artist Sonia Gomes of objects dangling from the ceiling, meant to draw the viewer’s gaze upward.
The Vatican exhibit has turned the Giudecca prison, a former convent for reformed prostitutes, into one of the must-see attractions of this year’s Biennale, even though to see it visitors must reserve in advance and go through a security check. It has become an unusual art world darling that greets visitors at the entrance with Maurizio Cattelan’s wall mural of two giant filthy feet, a work that recalls Caravaggio’s dirty feet or the feet that Francis washes each year in a Holy Thursday ritual that he routinely performs on prisoners.
The exhibit also includes a short film starring the inmates and Zoe Saldana, and prints in the prison coffee shop by onetime Catholic nun and American social activist Corita Kent.
Pope Francis is greeted by Gondoliers upon his arrival in Venice, Italy, Sunday, April 28, 2024. The Pontiff arrived for his first-ever visit to the lagoon town including the Vatican pavilion at the 60th Biennal of Arts.
Alessandra Tarantino / AP
Francis’ dizzying morning visit, which ended with Mass in St. Mark’s Square, represented an increasingly rare outing for the 87-year-old pontiff, who has been hobbled by health and mobility problems that have ruled out any foreign trips so far this year.
“Venice, which has always been a place of encounter and cultural exchange, is called to be a sign of beauty available to all,” Francis said. “Starting with the least, a sign of fraternity and care for our common home.”
Pope Francis delivers his message as he meets with young people in front of the Church of the Salute in Venice, Italy, Sunday, April 28, 2024. The Pontiff arrived for his first-ever visit to the lagoon town including the Vatican pavilion at the 60th Biennal of Arts.
Alessandra Tarantino / AP
During an encounter with young people at the iconic Santa Maria della Salute basilica, Francis acknowledged the miracle that is Venice, admiring its “enchanting beauty” and tradition as a place of East-West encounter, but warning that it is increasingly vulnerable to climate change and depopulation.
“Venice is at one with the waters upon which it sits,” Francis said. “Without the care and safeguarding of this natural environment, it might even cease to exist.”
in the exhibit as tour guides and as protagonists in some of the artworks.
During the interview, Francis pleaded for peace worldwide amid the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
“Please. Countries at war, all of them, stop the war. Look to negotiate. Look for peace,” said the pope, speaking through a translator.
Pope Francis speaks with “CBS Evening News” anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell, April 24, 2024.
CBS News
He also had a message for those who do not see a place for themselves in the Catholic Church anymore.
“I would say that there is always a place, always. If in this parish the priest doesn’t seem welcoming, I understand, but go and look elsewhere, there is always a place,” he said. “Do not run away from the Church. The Church is very big. It’s more than a temple … you shouldn’t run away from her.”
The pope’s Venice trip was the first of four planned inside Italy in the next three months, Reuters reported. He is scheduled to visit Verona in May and Trieste in July, and is expected to attend the June summit of Group of Seven (G7) leaders in Bari.
In September, he is also set to embark on the longest foreign trip of his papacy, traveling to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and Singapore.
An extended version of O’Donnell’s interview with Pope Francis will air on “60 Minutes” on Sunday, May 19 at 7 p.m. ET. On Monday, May 20, CBS will broadcast an hourlong primetime special dedicated to the papal interview at 10 p.m. ET on the CBS Television Network and streaming on Paramount+. Additionally, CBS News and Stations will carry O’Donnell’s interview across platforms.
Residents who live near the Venice canals gathered Thursday to discuss new safety measures to adopt weeks after two women were brutally assaulted in the area.
Among the ideas explored to increase safety in the neighborhood were added street lights, foot patrols and a network of security cameras – all in effort to prevent more attacks like the one Mary Klein was victim to.
“He tried to kill me,” she told NBC4 from her hospital bed following the April 6 assault. “He knocked my two front teeth out.”
Klein was taking a stroll near the canals when she was randomly attacked by a man who police later identified as 29-year-old Anthony Jones. He was arrested in connection with Klein’s attack and another woman’s attack in the same area; he now faces charges that include attempted murder, rape, mayhem and torture.
“Something needs to change, and let’s use our technology and our resources and our computers to get that stack of critical evidence that a judge will look at and say, ‘Oh, you got the facts correct,’” Klein said Thursday at the virtual community meeting.
The disturbing crimes left neighbors feeling uneasy and fearing for their safety.
“I know a lot of friends of mine, especially women, are pretty scared to walk alone in the canals, which is a very safe area,” said Saar Kline.
Councilmember Traci Park said city leaders swiftly began to brainstorm ways they can keep residents safe.
“Immediately in the aftermath of these incidents, we started having conversations about lighting, street lighting,” Park said.
As a result of the assault, Mary Klein is continuing to recover from the severe bruises she suffered. She also had her jaw wired shut due to the severity of her injuries.
A woman who is recovering from a brutal attack during a stroll in the Venice Canals area is speaking out from her hospital bed and sharing her horrific experience.
Mary Klein is recuperating from the April 6 assault with her face severely bruised and jaw wired shut.
“He tried to kill me,” Klein told NBC4. “He knocked my two front teeth out.”
According to the victim, she was taking an evening walk as part of her normal routine after work. As she minded her business, she was suddenly knocked down to the ground.
“It feels like I got hit by a truck, but I really wasn’t there for it,” she said.
Klein shared she lost consciousness almost immediately. When she woke up, she went home, fell asleep and then returned to work the next day.
“I didn’t know I was in bad shape,” she said. “I had a really bad bleed. He had really knocked my head.”
An hour after Klein was assaulted, another woman in the area was attacked in the same area. On Friday, Los Angeles police announced the arrest of 29-year-old Anthony Jones, who was identified as the assailant.
Law enforcement believes both attacks were at random. Los Angeles City Councilwoman Traci Park addressed the assaults.
“People in the city of Los Angeles are sick and tired of feeling unsafe,” she said. “No woman, no visitor, no family should be unsafe walking in any neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles, much less our city’s number one tourist destination. Our businesses are being pushed to the brink and consumers are paying for it.”
While still recovering, Klein said she isn’t going to let the attack deter her. With her resolve unbroken, she said she plans to continue enjoying her walks once she recovers.
“We’re free spirits, that’s not going to change,” Klein said. “The thing is — we shouldn’t have these violent criminals out on the streets.”
Klein’s relatives have set up an online fundraiser to help cover her medical expenses.
How many times have you heard successful people talking about the obstacles they overcame, the discouraging chapters they endured, the “rock bottom” from which they rose up? Maybe you see your own life in similar terms. It’s a particular narrative that ends with success, and anyone who has lived it would tend to think other people’s lives can, with work, conform to this arc. We need to get away from that assumption. Some people’s lives aren’t on an upward trajectory and may never be, and those people also deserve respect and dignity.
Early this month I met with three of my unhoused neighbors in Venice, one who has been on and off the street for 20 years, one who has autism, and one whose life was upended by a toxic relationship. They agreed to share their stories with The Times on condition that their last names not be used.
Governments and nonprofits pour untold sums into caring for the unhoused through myriad programs, but in speaking with unhoused people, I often hear that their needs are not very complex. Even a modest monthly check would be transformative to the lives of many. What if a big piece of the solution to homelessness were simply a universal basic income? — Robert Karron
Brandon
My name is Brandon, and I’m 37 years old. I grew up in Lancaster, in the Antelope Valley. I was 9½ weeks premature — only a bit over 3 pounds. I’ve made up for it since then. But my first year of life I had lots of seizures.
“I didn’t understand why I had this unfulfilled feeling,” Brandon said of an early job he had. “My father had a face of fulfillment after a day’s work. Why didn’t I? I wanted to achieve that but didn’t know how.”
(Courtesy of Robert Karron)
I graduated from high school early, when I was 15. I did independent study, because school was becoming increasingly strange. There was violence and gang activity. Kids would get kicked out of L.A. County, then transfer to ours, in Kern County. I remember one kid shot and killed another in the eighth grade. They knew each other from L.A., and they had a beef from then. It happened in front of my math teacher’s house. For years, you could see the bullet holes in the wall. That kid was tried as an adult and got two life sentences. It’s like the school was a training camp for jail.
It was also a racial political zone. I celebrate Hanukkah, and there was a group of kids that chose to call me names. I put myself out there, telling people I celebrated — I didn’t have to do that. But I didn’t realize it was going to be something that would be detrimental to my social well-being.
So I took classes at home. It was good because I could go at my own pace, but it was bad because I got too familiar with my parents; we could have used more distance. I didn’t get along with my mom, and we clashed.
After high school, I thought I’d go to the Marines — my grandfather was a decorated war hero — and they accepted me into the deferred entry program, but they found marijuana in my drug test, so that didn’t work out. I was exposed to drugs early; it was rampant at my high school. You were pressured to take them because the kids who were selling were depending on it for their livelihood; in their families, they were the earners. It seemed glamorous then, but I don’t see any glamour in it now.
I just use these blankets. It’s not enough, but people steal so frequently, it’s hard to keep stuff.
— Brandon
I started working for an insurance company, and I stayed for seven years. I was also taking college classes at Antelope Valley College, music classes, my passion. I didn’t think of music practice as “practice,” because when you’re getting so much pleasure out of something, “practice” isn’t in your mind-set. But when the money started coming in, I let all that slide.
I had lots of jobs within the company, but mainly I was a patient service associate. By the time I was 17, I had my own apartment; my parents helped me furnish it, super sweet of them, but I wasn’t ready for that kind of responsibility. Even though I was making money, it was a miserable existence. It was a dark period for me. I kept feeling empty at the end of each day. I didn’t understand why I had this unfulfilled feeling. My father had a face of fulfillment after a day’s work. Why didn’t I? I wanted to achieve that but didn’t know how.
At 18, I fell in love with a woman who was 22 years older than me. I was with her for seven years. She was an amazing artist. Eventually I quit my job and worked as a butler for her friends. When I left her, I sought therapy, because I’d lost my grip on society. I tried to get into music then, but there weren’t many opportunities.
I’ve been on and off the streets for 20 years. I just use these blankets. It’s not enough, but people steal so frequently, it’s hard to keep stuff. I’d like to get my own space, but I’m not sure how. I’m putting one foot in front of the other. It’s hard because I have a stomach bug and all these wounds on my leg and hand that never heal. They’re in a constant state of infection.
Garrick
My name is Garrick, and I’m 56 years old. I’ve been in L.A. for nine months. Before that I was in New York City for 11 years (128 months). I’m scheduled to move again 39 days from now, on Tuesday, Feb. 20, and I need to find a place where I can spend the day before — from 8 in the morning till 8 at night — getting cleaned up. I don’t know where that will happen. Do you have any ideas? Is there a gymnasium in L.A. that has army cots and a big bathroom with showers and sinks and commodes where you can go and leave anytime you want as long as you sign your name? I’m asking because I’ve never heard of such a thing.
“What I’d like for after my bus trip is a CD player,” Garrick said of his plan to move to Boston. “Then I need a CD with every song Led Zeppelin ever sang.”
(Courtesy of Robert Karron)
I’m moving to Boston, but I need someone’s smart device to check Greyhound for the bus that makes stops in Phoenix, El Paso, Dallas, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and three stops in South Carolina: Anderson, Greenville and Spartanburg. Then I need to see what time the bus arrives in Boston. If I know the time, I can plan out my first day.
I’m moving because Boston has everything I need. In L.A. I’m laying on the sidewalk with chiggers. It’s better than New York by a long margin, but in Boston I’ll have better prospects because I know the neighborhoods and resources and trains and shopping centers. I lived there for four months, before moving to New York. In between, I was in Providence, for two days and two nights.
There are a lot of variables when you come from a broken home, and you have high-functioning autism, and your stepfather was drafted in the Vietnam War and was an authoritarian figure who moved you and your mother to Ohio.
My mother and I identify with each other and idolize each other. We could always work things out, if it was just the two of us. But that went down the toilet when my mother let people deter things between us, when they talked a line to her. When she was manipulated, things went in different directions.
Jobs? If you have high-functioning autism, you can’t hold a job.
— Garrick
I like heavy music, specifically the songs from the summer and fall of 1972 and the winter, spring, summer and fall of 1973. The utmost prime example of that is music by Led Zeppelin — by a long margin, my favorite singing group. What I’d like for after my bus trip is a CD player without earphones (those always make the player fall apart) that operates on batteries. I can pay for the batteries. Then I need a CD with every song Led Zeppelin ever sang.
Jobs? If you have high-functioning autism, you can’t hold a job.
I have three main sleeping spots. One of them is here. Last night it dipped down to 46 and 47 degrees. To keep warm I use linens I stash behind those bushes.
Cynthia
My name is Cynthia, and I’m 59 years old. I was born in Ohio but raised in Wisconsin. I completed junior high, but at 15 I quit school because I got pregnant. The father was a family friend in his 20s who my mother had asked to watch us when she took classes to become a certified nursing assistant. He ended things when he found out I was pregnant.
“I took the bus to Union Station in Pasadena, where they help you find a place,” Cynthia said. “But soon I was on the streets.”
(Courtesy of Robert Karron)
By 17 I was having problems with depression, and the state took my daughter away. It’d be illegal now: They threatened to cut off my mother’s welfare checks if I didn’t sign the papers. I got pregnant again at 21 and have a son who loves me to death; he’s in Kentucky now with his dad, my ex-fiance. We were going to get married, but he wanted me to live in his mother’s house for a year; I said no and moved back in with my mom. He came to get the engagement rings. That made me mad, so I threw them into the front yard. He searched for two hours but eventually found them.
I went back to school and got my GED. I was taking college business courses, but the man I was married to then couldn’t hold a job, so I quit and started working at a company that sent out cheese and candy packages.
Later I was engaged to someone who moved me to Minneapolis, where I worked at a Greek restaurant. When I found him in bed with another man, I had to find another place to stay. The owner of the restaurant, who liked me, was going to put me up, but his wife got jealous. So I had to move back home again.
I met my boyfriend Greg. We got to talking, and by nighttime he was cuddled up next to me.
— Cynthia
When I was living at home, I began a 10-year relationship with someone I saw a few times a year. He said he was in the armed services and was always traveling. After 10 years I was 53, and he asked me to move in with him in Los Angeles. I’m two hours on the bus when I call him. He says he’s in trouble and needs $500. I say I don’t have it. He says, get it any way you can. When I couldn’t get it, he stopped taking my calls. I took the bus to Union Station in Pasadena, where they help you find a place — but soon I was on the streets.
I was protected by this great guy called Tennessee (he was from Tennessee), and two weeks later, I met my boyfriend, Greg. We got to talking, and by nighttime he was cuddled up next to me. Tennessee gave him a blanket, but at midnight I told him to leave — it was going too fast. But it all worked out. We’ve been together 5½ years, and we’re going to get married after we move in together.
Robert Karron teaches English at Santa Monica College.
Editor’s Note: Sign up to CNN Travel’s Unlocking Italy newsletter for insider intel on Italy’s best loved destinations and lesser-known regions to plan your ultimate trip. Plus, we’ll get you in the mood before you go with movie suggestions, reading lists and recipes from Stanley Tucci.
CNN
—
If you want to take a day trip to Venice next year, you’re going to have to pay.
The city authorities have now approved dates and prices for the much discussed entry fee to the UNESCO-listed destination. There will be 29 days affected between April and July 2024.
It’ll be a flat 5 euro ($5.45) to enter on any day on which a fee is due. The sliding scale of fees that has previously been mooted will not be introduced for 2024. There will be no reductions, either.
The first set of dates on which the fee will be charged cover April to mid July, 2024. The period of April 26 to May 5 kicks off the season, which continues with charges on every Saturday and Sunday from May to July 14. Dates have not yet been set for the rest of the year.
The fee will be due for anyone entering the city without an overnight reservation (or an exemption) from 8.30 a.m. to 4 p.m..
The program will be managed via an online platform which will produce QR code “tickets” confirming payment or exemption. There will also be kiosks in the city to pay the charge.
Visitors will be able to go online to register from January 16, 2024.
Those claiming exemptions will also have to register to get a QR code – including overnight guests.
In short: all tourists aged 14 and over who are not staying in the city overnight will have to pay. But even overnight guests will have to register online to get a QR code showing their exemption.
There are other exemptions for the scheme, though anyone exempt will have to carry a QR code proving this, other than residents of the city and people who were born in Venice (who will instead have to show proof of residency or birth).
People who own property in the city (and pay property tax), students and commuters working in Venice will have to register on the new online platform to obtain a long-term QR code valid for the year.
Those visiting the city on business or short-term study are also exempt, but must register for a daily QR code. The same goes for tourists staying overnight in the wider Municipality of Venice, which includes Mestre on the mainland, and those visiting residents of what is being dubbed the “Old Town” – the historic center of Venice.
Children under 14 won’t pay either, and neither will people with “certified disabilities,” alongside their carers. However, they too must book and receive a QR code for free.
Those staying in Venice proper won’t pay the entrance fee, as they already pay an overnight tax. However they will need QR codes – a spokesperson for the council suggested to CNN that local hotels will likely arrange codes for their guests. If they don’t, the guests will have to register their exemption ahead of arrival.
There will be seven main access points and ticket checks, including the airport, train and bus stations, Fusina port, and the Fondamente Nove and Riva degli Schiavoni waterfronts, where many boats dock. A spokesperson for the council confirmed that these won’t be the only checkpoints, but couldn’t say where the others would be.
For 2024, the city has exempted the fee for those traveling to most of the lagoon islands, including visitor hubs Murano and Burano, as well as the Lido, home to the city’s beaches. However, most visitors to Murano and Burano will have to pay the fee anyway, since most arrive by taking vaporetto ferries from the city center.
People transiting through Piazzale Roma (the bus terminus), Tronchetto or the Stazione Marittima (where small cruise ships still dock) will be exempt, as long as they don’t cross into the “Old City.”
Fines will range from 50 euros ($54) to 300 euros ($327) per person.
The fee was first mooted in 2019, and finally approved for introduction in 2024 by city councilors on September 23, while the amount payable and applicable dates for 2024 were chosen on November 23.
“The entry fee is intended to curb ‘hit and run’ day tripping [by] inviting day trippers to choose alternative dates,” the council said in a statement shared with CNN.
“The aim is to achieve a new balance between residents, city users and visitors to the Old City who wish to experience positive emotions in the UNESCO World Heritage site.”
Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said in the council meeting: “This isn’t a revolution, but the first step on path to regulate day tripper access – an experiment whose aim is to better the livability of the city, of who lives here and works here.
“Venice is the first city in the world to start out on this journey which could become an example for other fragile cities that must be preserved.”
He warned that there could be “problems” going forward with the system: “The margins of error are wide, but we’re ready to make the changes needed to better the procedure.”
Visitor footfall will be “constantly monitored” by the city’s Smart Control Room, which uses cellphone tech as well as CCTV to watch where people are going, and which helped to work out the dates on which to activate the program.
Proceeds of the fee will go towards communicating with tourists on behaving more responsibly and “living the city” better, Brugnaro told reporters.
Speaking after the council meeting, he admitted they weren’t trying to make money from the scheme.
“We hope to bank not too much money because it’ll mean we’ve reduced footfall on those [busy] days,” he said. “We hope people who want to come on those days decide to find another date. Our goal isn’t to earn money, but to be able to contain those daily influxes that disadvantage the city.
“There are 365 days in the year, after all,” he added.
For the international film industry, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, the man nominated to take over as the next president of the Venice Biennale, the foundation that oversees the Venice Film Festival, is a bit of an unknown. Not so in Italy, where Buttafuoco is one of the most prominent voices of Italy’s new right-wing, which has seen political success in the election last year of Italy’s far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Fratelli d’Italia party.
The 60-year writer and journalist was literally born into the Italian right — his uncle was the extreme-right politician Antonino Buttafuoco —and for decades, as a journalist, novelist and television commenter, has been one of the right-wing’s prime promoters. He wrote a glowing biography of late Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was obsessed with what he saw as the hegemony of “the communists” in Italian cultural institutions. In a recent radio broadcast, he said he says a prayer every morning for Meloni “that she will make it.”
In the Italian media, Buttafuoco’s Biennale appointment is seen as the latest move by Meloni and her Fratelli d’Italia party to exert control over Italy’s culture industry. The government pushed through a law outing the more left-wing management of the Centro Sperimentale, the country’s main film public school, and giving Italian ministries more power over appointing members to its advisory board. Meloni supporters backed the appointment of right-wing journalists Alessandro Giuli and Mauro Mazza to management positions at key cultural institutions. Giuli is the new director of Fondazione MAXXI, which manages Italy’s national museum for contemporary art and architecture. Mazza was named the “extraordinary commissioner” to lead the delegation to the 2024 Frankfurt Book Fair, where Italy will be the country of honor. The government is also looking to put its people in key positions at Rai, Italy’s public broadcaster.
Buttafuoco has cultural management experience —he is president of the Teatro Sabile in Abruzzo and used to run the Teatro Stabile in Catania—but Lido insiders worry he may try to use his new position at the Biennale to push the Venice Film Festival in a more right-wing friendly direction.
“Another glass ceiling has been broken,” said Raffaele Speranzon, deputy group leader of Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia party, speaking to the La Stampa newspaper. “Often, the left has considered the Biennale Foundation its own personal fiefdom in which to place friends and acolytes. Buttafuoco, finally, affirms a change that the Meloni government wants to imprint in every cultural and social center of the nation: [Only appointing] people based on their depth, competence, and authority.”
Rachele Scarpa, a local center-left politician, said Speranzon’s comments were “a chilling vision of how the right conceives the cultural institutions of our country.” She added: “What is most alarming is that he calls into question the work of an institution, such as La Biennale, whose sole aim must be to take care of its exhibitions and certainly not to make the Fratelli d’Italia happy.”
La Stampa reported that Buttafuoco posted the phrase “Me Ne Frego,” (I don’t care), a popular slogan with Italian fascist groups, in his WhatsApp profile. He has had close connections with the neo-fascist group, having previously been a member of the central committee of the Italian Social Movement – National Right and the national assembly of the National Alliance, two far-right political groups.
But Buttafuoco’s precise politics are not so easy to pin down.
One of the most well-known facts about Buttafuoco is his decision to convert to Islam. In 2015 Meloni herself blocked Buttafuoco’s candidacy to become governor of Sicily, citing his conversion as the reason. “Everyone is free to practice the religion they want but I believe that in current times, Italy and Europe must claim their Greek, Roman and Christian origins in the face of those who would like to wipe them out,” she said.
Italian undersecretary of culture Vittorio Sgarbi, in contrast, has called Buttafuoco’s Muslim faith “a guarantee of originality” and dialog in his new job running the Biennale.
In 1999, when asked directly by Italian political philosopher Norberto Bobbio if he was a fascist, Buttafuoco’s replied: “I am not a fascist. I am something else.”
What that “something else” will mean for the Venice Film Festival remains an open question.
After providing such able support in movies like Top Gun: Maverick and Everybody Wants Some!, the actor Glen Powell is ready for some leading-man action. Hs EWS! director Richard Linklater has furnished him with just such an opportunity in the agreeable comedy Hit Man, which premiered here at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday. A sorta-true story about an average guy who finds himself caught in a web of crime and deception, Hit Man is a cute and clever (sometimes overbearingly so) showcase for Powell’s magnetic charm.
It’s an odd film to premiere at a fancy festival like Venice, so middle-of-the-road is its appeal. Linklater has made another of his broad comedies, not an experimental ramble like the best of his work. But the simple pleasures of Hit Man are quite welcome at this particular juncture in cinema history, in a time when star-driven genre movies that exist mostly to entertain feel in direly short supply.
Perhaps, then, this is Powell’s shot at placing himself in the rarefied company of performers who can open a movie, a roster of folks that was once quite deep but has been reduced—by the creep of I.P. dominance, among other things—to a lonely handful. He makes a persuasive case. Powell plays Gary Johnson, a New Orleans professor of philosophy who does a little work on the side helping the police ensnare folks looking to hire contract killers. A hobbyist electronic tinkerer, Gary is just a tech guy—until a sudden staffing shortage puts him into the field as a fake hit man meeting a real potential client about to incriminate themselves on tape.
This is not the sleek, globetrotting stuff of The Killer, another hit man film at Venice this year. The folks encountered by Gary, who proves surprisingly adept in the undercover role, are mostly regular people with axes to grind. They’re doing a bad thing, to be sure, but they are not sociopathic plutocrats or otherwise amoral operatives of power. Thus Linklater adds some moral shading to Gary’s successful trickery: is his trickery drawing people into a crime they maybe weren’t actually going to commit?
The film introduces that ethical question, but doesn’t really dig in. It is more invested in Gary’s talent for deception, which gives Powell the opportunity to put on an array of accents and don a bunch of wigs and false teeth. He’s a creepy British assassin with a red bob, a stern cigar-smoking Russian, a good ol’ boy looking to fuck some shit up. His most successful, and enduring, persona is Ron, a cool customer who is essentially Gary with the confidence and suavity turned up. Gary’s gradual realization is that if Ron was inside him all along, then he can adopt a few of Ron’s best qualities in regular Gary life—thus leading a more active, fulfilled existence.
Powell shrewdly keeps the differences between Gary and Ron subtle, but distinct enough that a sudden switch back to Gary after many scenes of Ron arrives as an amusing shock. It’s nimble work, sexy and sweet at once. Powell does, on occasion, play things a little too slick (which is partly a problem of the script, which he co-wrote with Linklater). And it’s not terribly credible that someone with Gary’s looks and natural charisma would be such a humble wallflower. (This is a “without those glasses, you’re beautiful!” kind of movie.) But isn’t that the suspension of disbelief we have long afforded our movie stars, radiant demigods whom we’ve readily accepted as anonymous, unlucky-in-love normies?
His magnetism finds great complement in Adria Arjona, as a would-be sting target whom Gary, as Ray, dissuades from committing the crime. A risky flirtation begins, leading the film toward its mild, though effective, version of suspense. There is dark possibility here—sex and romance flourishing so adjacent to murderous ideation—but Hit Man prefers to keep things light. Powell and Arjona groove on the film’s kicky patter, tumbling in and out of bed as only movie stars can, in between scenes of zippy dialogue.
Hit Man is determined to be fun above all else, and it largely succeeds in that honorable, populist mission. It entertains, and generously pushes two game performers closer toward the movie-star pantheon. So, naturally, it arrives at Venice without a distributor—an orphan in need of a studio (or, sigh, a streamer) that will take a chance on something as audacious as a star-driven crime comedy. What a novel idea, that anyone might go to the movies to see people scheme and seduce and glow. It’s sadly been many years since Hollywood believed everybody wanted some of that.
A smitten rock star rescuing you from your pedestrian teenage life is such a powerful, enduring fantasy that popular fanfiction about Harry Styles doing just that was recently adapted into a hit film series. (The After films, which I do not recommend you watch.) What a ludicrous, naive dream, one largely never realized in the real world. Though, of course, there was Priscilla Presley, who was all of 14 years old when she was ushered into Elvis Presley’s inner circle and soon became the main object of his affection, and eventually his wife. As is often the case, the true story was far more complex than adolescent imagination allows, a fact that the filmmaker Sofia Coppola seeks to illustrate in her new film, Priscilla, which premiered here at the Venice Film Festival on Monday.
Based on Presley’s memoir, and made under her consultation, Priscilla presents Coppola with a tricky task. She wants to honor a woman’s memories while also being clear-eyed about what were some pretty alarming circumstances. It’s a challenge she greets with measured insight; Priscilla is neither lurid nor sugar coated. It’s a sensitive, if slight, look at a young woman rousing from a dream and confronting waking life.
Priscilla is played by Cailee Spaeny, who is 25 but credibly embodies a high school freshman. She’s lonely in West Germany, where her military officer father has been stationed, far from the cozy trappings of mid-century American teenagehood. But there is Elvis, drafted as a soldier, living in a house not far from the base. Priscilla and Elvis’s meeting, reduced to a brief montage moment in Baz Luhrmann’s 2021 film Elvis, is laid out in detail in Priscilla, capturing both Priscilla’s innocent ardor and a creeping sense of predation. (Presley, who was 24, had a friend bring Priscilla to him.)
Elvis endears himself to Priscilla by showing his sensitive side, relating to her his homesickness and his grief over his late mother. Is this an act of grooming? Priscilla does not really editorialize on that, instead calmly showing true events as they happened (or in some version of how they happened) and letting the audience make assessments. As Elvis, Jacob Elordi—best known as a tortured hunk on HBO’s Euphoria—carefully calibrates Elvis’s appeal and his pill-addled, domineering presence, his exacting demands and storms of frightening anger. (His misogyny, too.) It’s a more enlightening take on the man than the one seen in Elvis, a movie more interested in broadstrokes iconography than interiority.
Priscilla is not an artist biopic, and thus we see barely any moments of Elvis on stage. The film stays close to Priscilla, depicting her isolation as she enters life as a kept woman (a kept teenager, at first) at Graceland, pining for Elvis to return from a tour or a film shoot and once again wrap her up in the warmth of his attention. Perhaps this is a telling picture of how it was for too many women of that era (and other eras): passed from father to husband, forever negotiating her place in the realms of men.
Spaeny lucidly delineates Priscilla’s mounting struggle for independence, her disillusionment complicated, still, by real love. She and Coppola choose stillness and quiet over flourish, crafting a portrait in gentle tones. Coppola’s aesthetics are immaculate but not fussy, there are no outsized gestures toward the curious customs of the time. Even Elvis’s style evolution, from clean cut crooner to jumpsuit-wearing oddity, is presented plainly, without wink or affect.
Priscilla is a muted film, but not staid or chilly. Judicious music choices (none of them Elvis tunes, I don’t think) poignantly score moments of Priscilla’s ache and confusion, her girlhood fleeting away so rapidly as the truth of things begins to reveal itself. Priscilla may be Coppola’s most straightforward film to date, spare and controlled. But it is still distinctly one of her signature creations, another of her studies of young women searching for steadiness as they reel through the world.
If there is fault to be found, it may be in the film’s air of passivity, the sense that Priscilla is adrift on currents entirely slowed and quickened by the whims of another person. But sometimes young love, or whatever this was, can feel like that: lost in the sweep of devotion, carried away from one’s former self. In the case of Priscilla, that self was barely formed when Elvis came calling (or had her come calling on him). Which is one of the great sadnesses of the film, the lingering question of who Priscilla, bright and decent, might have become had she never had her identity so subsumed by her famous and looming husband.
But that is the course that history took, and Priscilla is a fine rendering of that. No doubt there will be critics of the film who think that Coppola should have gone harder on the wrongness of the relationship. Maybe they’ll be right. Though, Priscilla Presley’s involvement with the film may be the only necessary response to such an argument. Here is, with all possible bias and omission accepted, how she remembers it, a recollection given grace and potent meaning by Coppola’s craft. Priscilla is not an emotional epic, nor is it a furious correction of the record. It is, instead, a convincing and humane sketch of a young woman caught up in something vast and eternally defining. She may as well be wandering Versailles.
The title assassin in David Fincher’s The Killer, which premiered here at the Venice Film Festival on Sunday, is a modern sort of death machine. He uses Amazon, has a complicated relationship with Airbnb; he’s seen the show Storage Wars. He even takes advantage of contemporary industry collapse: when we first see him on a job, he’s staked out in an abandoned WeWork space. It’s all a joke, at least in the arch, dismayingly airless confines of Fincher’s film.
Perhaps the thinking was that Fincher could return to the wry, coolly anarchic comedy of Fight Club, another grim movie that took aim at the banal trappings of quotidian American life. But the gag feels stale this time around; its references need an update. (Maybe the killer could get his assignments via TikTok?) That wouldn’t matter so much if the film balanced out its commentary with exhilarating suspense—of which Fincher is more than capable. A few moments in the film do get the blood up, but otherwise The Killer is curiously inert, its wheels spinning with little traction.
The hit man of concern is played by Michael Fassbender, slender and wolfish. He narrates much of the film, laying out his character’s simple rules for success: stay on task, don’t get tripped up by anything so pesky as empathy, make sure your heart rate is at a manageable level. We’re told he’s meticulous, that he’s a highly paid pro at the top of his clandestine field. But we don’t really see it. The film opens on a Paris sniper assassination gone wrong; a bystander catches the bullet and the killer, who goes by many names, has to go on the run.
Or, well, sort of on the run. No one seems to be chasing him after the film’s opening salvo. Maybe that was an effort to keep the narrative lean, but it direly lowers the stakes. Because the killer failed, something like an insurance policy kicks in and an attempt is made on his life. But they get to his girlfriend (or something?) instead, at the luxe home the killer keeps in the Dominican Republic. She survives but is pretty beat up, and thus the killer embarks on a mission of revenge, or at least a mission to make sure such an attack won’t happen again. He’s pursuing, but no longer pursued.
Fincher’s film is episodic, broken up into chapters, each of them comprising one leg of the killer’s retribution tour. Fincher’s keen command of cinema physics—how things move toward the camera, or glide across the frame—is evident throughout. Still, the film is frustratingly understated, holding back just when we think (or hope) that the movie is going to burst into action. One might call this admirable restraint, a seasoned master opting for finesse over flair. But I selfishly wanted more pop, more directorial preening. After the respectable period stateliness of Mank, I was hungry for the dark dynamism of Fincher’s earlier work.
Here and there, The Killer delivers. There’s a bracing, clever fight scene in a house in the Florida nighttime, a brawl of guns, fists, and household implements. It must have taken days to film, because of its many technical requirements and because of Fincher’s famous proclivity for retakes. The final product is stunning, a grimy pas de deux that Fincher ends with a blunt bit of punctuation. That is an interesting, and persuasive, aspect of the film: its frequent reminders that death is not innately operatic, does not usually leave room for poetic final words or pithy send-offs.
Though, there is a talky delight of a sequence involving Tilda Swinton, a dreadfully charged conversation over drinks at a restaurant that brings the film closest to purpose. The clunkiness of Andrew Kevin Walker’s script, adapted from Alexis Nolent’s graphic novel, suddenly gives way to elegance. Swinton is, as ever, alluring and surprising, a sharp and sophisticated jolt of electricity. In some ways, this is a cruel tease. We pine for a different movie, one that’s more focused on Swinton’s character, or that follows her and Fassbender going about their nefarious work in tandem or opposition. But, this is a film of vignettes, so nothing gold can stay. Swinton states her case, and then Fassbender’s laconic avenger is off to the next checklist item, and to the film’s eventual petering out.
Perhaps the movie’s anticlimax is deliberate, Fincher attempting to subvert our hit-man movie expectations, making us question our blood lust. Whatever its justifications, the film is terse to a fault, in a way that feels almost like an aggression toward the audience. Fincher knows that we know what he can do when he really gets going, but he denies us that pleasure—the cerebral kind and the more base. The Killer is an experiment in economy whose results are lesser than the effort put in. Calculating efficiency is all well and good, but at least some life is required to make meaning of all of this killing.
