By Nicolas Rapold
“The Room Next Door,” directed by Pedro Almodóvar, was awarded the Golden Lion for best film at the 81st Venice International Film Festival on Saturday by a competition jury led by Isabelle Huppert. In the film, a journalist with cancer (Tilda Swinton) asks an old friend, played by Julianne Moore, to stay with her when she decides to take her own life.
“It is my first movie in English, but the spirit is Spanish,” Almodóvar said of his adaptation of “What Are You Going Through,” the 2020 novel by Sigrid Nunez. In accepting the award, the acclaimed auteur spoke of the decision to end one’s life in circumstances of unresolvable pain as a fundamental right.
Moore’s vigil with Swinton takes place in a rented house in upstate New York. The small cast features John Turturro as a former lover and Alessandro Nivola as a police investigator. Almodóvar won a lifetime achievement award at the Venice Film Festival in 2019 and, in 2021, opened the event with his film “Parallel Mothers” (for which Penélope Cruz won the best actress prize).
The 81st edition of the festival opened with “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” Tim Burton’s sequel to the original 1988 supernatural comedy. Other prominent films included “Maria,” “Queer,” “Babygirl,” “Joker: Folie à Deux,” “Wolfs,” “Cloud,” “April,” “Pavements,” “The Order” and “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter Two.”
Despite sweltering heat, the stars were back in full force in Venice after last year’s actors’ strike. The list of boldface names was remarkable: Nicole Kidman, Joaquin Phoenix, Angelina Jolie, Daniel Craig, Lady Gaga, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Antonio Banderas, Cate Blanchett, Adrien Brody, Jude Law, Jenna Ortega, Winona Ryder, Kevin Costner, Michael Keaton, Swinton and Moore.
The Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize went to “Vermiglio,” an intimate period drama by Maura Delpero set in an Italian mountain village. The Silver Lion for best director went to Brady Corbet for “The Brutalist,” a 3 1/2-hour drama about a Hungarian Jewish architect in America. Dea Kulumbegashvili won the Special Jury Prize for “April,” an acclaimed film about a Georgian doctor who performs abortions despite a ban on the procedures.
The 21-feature competition resisted easy classification, as the prizes reflected. The festival also screened episodes from new series, including Alfonso Cuarón’s drama “Disclaimer”; “M. Son of the Century,” a historical drama directed by Joe Wright; and the climate disaster story “Families Like Ours,” directed by Thomas Vinterberg.
Kidman won the Volpi Cup for best actress for her role in “Babygirl,” where she plays a tech executive who has an affair with an intern (Harris Dickinson). The film’s director, Halina Reijn, accepted the prize on behalf of Kidman, reading a statement by the actress that explained she had just learned of her mother’s death, and that dedicated the honor to her, saying, “She shaped me, she guided me, and she made me.”
The best actor award went to Vincent Lindon, who plays the father of a young man drawn to far-right politics in “The Quiet Son.” Paul Kircher received the Marcello Mastroianni Award, which is given to an outstanding emerging actor, for “And Their Children After Them.” The best screenplay honor was given to Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega for “I’m Still Here,” which follows a family during Brazil’s dictatorship in the 1970s; Walter Salles (“Central Station”) directed.
“Familiar Touch,” directed by Sarah Friedland, won both the Lion of the Future award for best debut feature and the best director prize in the Orizzonti section, another competition slate in the festival. The film’s star, Kathleen Chalfant, won the Orizzonti prize for best actress. “The New Year That Never Came” by Bogdan Muresanu nabbed the top prize, and the section’s Special Jury Prize went to “One of Those Days When Hemme Dies” by Murat Firatoglu.
This year’s Golden Lions for lifetime achievement went to actress Sigourney Weaver and director Peter Weir. The Glory to the Filmmaker Award went to Claude Lelouch, whose new film “Finally” played out of competition.
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