European Films

After a relatively well-organised effort last year, Venice again climbed more than a few places on the chart of the worst-organised major film festivals, a list it has topped several times in the not too distant past. Despite the chaos for journalists and film professionals alike, the prerequisite glamour still took the Lido island in the Venetian lagoon by storm: Scarlett Johansson, Josh Hartnett, Aaron Eckhart, James Ellroy and Brian De Palma were all on hand to grace red carpet for the world premiere of the 1940s noir The Black Dahlia, based on the novel of the same name by James Ellroy. The film was screened for journalists today and tomorrow (Thursday), and those who have seen it generally like the film, though everyone seems to have at least one "but" (I will try and catch the film tomorrow). Two films I did catch on this first day (or rather, evening): the Capote biopic Infamous and Jean-Pascal's debut film 7ans (7 Years).

Douglas McGrath's Infamous - Festival review (contains spoilers)

The opening film of the Orizzonti section here at the Venice Film Festival is the Douglas McGrath-directed Infamous, a biopic that follows American writer Truman Capote during the creation of his documentary novel In Cold Blood. If that sounds familiar, you are right, since that was also the topic of the film Capote, which won Philip Seymour Hoffman an Oscar just several months ago.

The two films are very different however: Capote (which was written by Dan Futterman and directed by Bennett Miller) offered a cold and strangely muted analysis of Capote's struggle to write his masterpiece that at times seemed more interested in Capote's mannerisms than his emotions. It aimed to get the outside right, but it struggled to offer a peek inside the heart and brain of the writer; it was not so much a film about Capote as one starring Capote. It also sorely lacked the wit that made Capote the toast of New York and helped him conquer the hearts of the reserved Kansas people he needs to research for his book.

Infamous is not only aware of the eccentricities of Capote but actually revels in them, much like one can imagine Capote doing himself. But Douglas McGrath's portrait of the writer also digs deeper: in the film's second and third act the wit is slowly abandoned for a brutally honest portrayal of the ugly human truth behind the strange relationship between Capote and Perry Smith, one of the two men who were arrested, incarcerated and eventually killed for their brutal massacre of a Kansas family that is the subject of In Cold Blood. The relationship between Truman and Perry was unhealthy to say the least, because Capote was writing about the criminal and to better understand him and give him more psychological depth he befriends him. It is, initially at least, a pure business motive that drives Capote, who, though he barely has the physique of a femme fatale, is certainly aware of his role as one.

The film's approach to homosexuality in general is much more overt than the subtle references of Futterman's Capote, and eventually turns so black and desperate that commercial prospects for the film will be much bleaker than for Capote. It is also has the ring of truth , however, and the film an sich benefits greatly from exploring this darker territory. It is sure that power games were part of the fascination of the relationship between the two men, and in this version Capote is a smaller, effeminate and extrovert manipulator who seems morbidly excited to be enclosed in the prison cell of a physically imposing murderer for the duration of their numerous interview conversations. Perry literally hulks over the writer as a near perfect specimen of the macho man and several times threatens to physically abuse him. Of course things are not so black and white and McGrath's insightful solution makes perfect sense: Perry was thought to be a homosexual by others, including his father and his co-murderer Dick, which eventually led him to prove to Dick through shooting the Kansas boys (Dick shot the girls) that he was a real man after all.

The film uses various techniques borrowed from fiction and non-fiction, including showing us some of the players involved who talk about their experiences with Capote direct-to-camera as if they were interviewed for a documentary. These scenes, though awkwardly inserted at times, connect the film more strongly with what Capote himself tried to achieve with In Cold Blood: marry fiction and non-fiction into one exciting and deeply profound whole that existed of gathered evidence combined with the profounder psychological depth of narrative fiction. Several flashbacks are also used, though the flashbacks to Perry's youth are superfluous -- a shot of Capote's face listening to Perry's description of his youth, showing the author considering the dramatic potential of his source material would have been more useful. An extended flashback to the actual killing of the family is very effective as it ties up many loose ends of thematic material, including why the killing happened (which also implicates why Perry fascinates Capote to no end, even though he did not know this empirically from the beginning).

The film also seems more adept at wringing the drama from smaller scenes, including Capote's first visit to the ominous home of the killed family (eerily accompanied by Rachel Portman's simple yet effective score) and the prolonged scene focussing on the eventual execution of Dick (who was executed before Perry), which is drawn out to an almost unbearable extent.

Of the two In Cold Blood Creation films, Infamous has the most well-known cast. Capote is played to eerie perfection by the relatively unfamous British actor Tobey Jones (strangely not only recalling Capote himself but also Hoffman's impersonation of him). He is flanked by Capote's New York socialite friends (including Sigourney Weaver, Isabella Rossellini and Hope Davis --the latter looking startlingly like Hilary Clinton) the people in Kansas (including the local "foxy" police chef played by Jeff Daniels), his best friend and fellow novelist Nelle Harper Lee (Sandra Bullock, effective but not up to the height of Catherine Keener's performance in the same role, though she does get a good fight scene with Truman and some emotionally wrenching material late in the film) and last but not least the future James Bond Daniel Craig in the demanding role of Perry. In some of the prison scenes, Craig has an unsettling sort of chemistry with Jones that is hard to place. In one scene Capote tries to relax Perry by making him think of Mexico, and in another Perry threatens to rape Capote. It is hard to define what is exactly in the air between the explosive duo. Could it be lust? Anger? Repulsion? Attraction? Fear? Dominance? It is probably all of these and more, but it is unmistakably there. It is this kind of chemistry that makes Infamous an explosively rich evocation of a twisted (or at least unhealthy) relationship. Capote would have probably called it suffering for his art.

Jean-Pascal Hattu's 7 ans (7 Years) - Festival review (contains minor spoilers)

Jean-Pascal Hattu's love drama 7 ans (7 Years) explores the sexual life of a woman whose husband has been incarcerated. The film's ideas are intriguing but Huttu, who makes his directing debut here and co-wrote the script, fails to completely bring his material into focus. Maite struggles to get by as a baby-sitter for the child of her neighbour while her husband Vincent (Bruno Todeschini, from Chereau 's Mon freBrother) is sitting out his first year of seven years of imprisonment. She diligently prepares her husband his washing and buys him the things he needs, but every night she is still alone in bed. This changes when she gives in to the insistence of Jean (Cyril Troley), who is allegedly in prison to visit his brother, who has also got seven years ahead of him. "We've got seven years to get to know each other," he says, and from his mouth it sounds not like vulgarity but like a fact.

At the beginning of the film's second act, the plot takes a sudden (or, for those with a lot of French films under their belt, not so sudden) left turn into sexual-psychologial territory that makes the story change gears. Huttu handles this change rather nicely, carefully pushing ahead, adjusting to the new situations at the same rate as his characters. It turns out that Jean and Vincent are actually quite good friends, which of course complicates things between the three, especially when Jean tells Maite that he really loves her.

The relationship between the characters, though based on a tried-and-tested conceit, feels real enough thanks to an impeccable direction of the actors and a low-key mise-en-scene reminiscent of the British kitchen sink dramas and the work of the Dardenne brothers. Where Huttu goes wrong is in the development of his story elements: his characters and their reasoning may follow through, but the scenes in which they find themselves do not always bear directly on the story. Two subplots illustrate this; one involves the loveable young boy whom she babysits for a living and who is in love with her, and the other involves the possibility of Maite working elsewhere. Both could add something to the narrative and our knowledge of the characters (is the small boy an indication that Maite attracts only the wrong, impossible men? Should she break with her habits completely, leave the small boy who adores her and work elsewhere?) but Huttu and co-screenwriters never develop these elements beyond a cursory outline that makes the film come up short in the end, despite an intriguing premise and solid work from the actors.