The Philippines’ “Melancholia” directed by Lav Diaz won the Orizzonti prize for feature film in the Venice Film Festival.
Last year, Diaz won the Special Mention in the Orizzonti for his documentary “Encantos.”Melancholia,” according to Diaz, is an 8 plus hour meditation on love, life and suffering. It was shot in various locations around the Philippine countryside.
MY good hunch about our two entries in the ongoing Venice Film Festival’s sidebar, Orizzonti, “Jay” and “Melancholia,” is proving to be right.
(Photo: “Jay” delegation on the Lido [from left]: distributor Ferdy Lapuz, actor-cinematographer Carlo Mendoza, lead actor Baron Geisler and writer-director-producer Francis Xavier E. Pasion)
Financial Times came out with the first review of director Francis Xavier E. Pasion’s “Jay” and it is very encouraging. The London paper’s critic, Nigel Andrews, cited Francis’ directorial debut which stars Baron Geisler, Coco Martin and Flor Salanga, as one of the standouts so far in the festival on the Lido.
Andrews wrote, “On the Venice fringe there have been two films to cheer: an Italian reconstruction and a Philippine satire. Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1963 La Rabbia (‘Rage’) was a potion of screen rhetoric, never before seen in the undiluted form the director intended…Giuseppe Bertolucci (Bernardo’s brother) has re-assembled the old material, added some never seen, and puts before Italy and the world Pasolini’s true original rage, a scintillating montage of 20th-century news footage – from Mussolini to Marilyn Monroe – unified and signposted by a genius’s vision.
“Perfidious media managers; treachery in the name of truth. They are everywhere today, not least in the lies of ‘reality TV.’ Francis Xavier Pasion’s Jay, from the Philippines, is an acutely funny tale of intrusive telly reporters, bearing down on a family bereaved by a gay son’s murder to make their grief part of a nation’s infotainment. They start by poking a lens at the family’s faces as they learn the news; they end by getting them to act, or re-enact, every emotional convulsion that needs a second, third or umpteenth take. The remuneration? The reporters will help find the son’s killer. By the time they do, even the murderer, we know, will be signing release forms and hungrily securing his 15 minutes of fame.”
Congratulations to the “Jay” delegation now in Venice! Next, Lav Diaz unveils his “Melancholia” on Saturday. I have high hopes for Lav’s second consecutive Orizzonti (Horizons) entry too.
“HOW disappointed you guys must be to have to interview me after Woody Allen,” Colin Farrell told us as he sat down on a chair that was just vacated by his “Cassandra’s Dream” director, the legendary Woody Allen. The setting was a terrace in Venice’s Hotel Des Bains.
Colin was being modest in light of his director’s body of work. But the actor, chain-smoking Camels, wearing a hat and torn jeans, was and is always an interesting, colorful interview subject.
He admitted, “At first, I was very nervous working with Woody.” But in the film, the nervousness doesn’t show at all. He and Ewan McGregor boost the movie with their good chemistry as brothers.
Editor’s note: Photo by Ruben V. Nepales
OUR camera flash failed us in this photo of Brad Pitt at the Excelsior Hotel in Venice but we liked the dramatic result.
For once, the much-photographed and scrutinized actor looked enigmatic, mysterious.
Brad breezed into town for the screening of his competition entry, “The Assassination of Jesse James.”
Editor’s note: Photo by Ruben V. Nepales
FROM playing a faun to a much-deserved leading man status in a big-budgeted romance-war drama, James McAvoy is certainly going places.
The actor who first made a splash as a half-man, half-goat in “The Chronicles of Narnia” is in Venice for the ongoing film festival. James’ film with Keira Knightley, “Atonement,” opened the festival to good reception.
Over lunch at the famed Hotel Cipriani, James told us that he has wrapped up filming his movie with Angelina Jolie, “Wanted.” But he is raring to go back to the stage after having been away from the boards for at least a couple of years. He said he may be back in theater next year.
We’re happy for James — he has remained the same simple, unassuming guy from his “Narnia” days, when he was a virtual unknown. When we congratulated and told him that he’s come a long way from “Narnia,” James simply broke into an embarrassed smile.
Editor’s note: Photo by Ruben V. Nepales
