Venice is heated with Clooney, Stone Premieres

George Clooney plays a famous actor on a soul search trip, and Emma Stone makes a turn as CEO of a pharmaceutical company in two of the films held at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday night.

Clooney and Stone are one of Hollywood’s many actors, such as Adam Sandler, Laura Dern and Jesse Plemons, to give the red carpet with the world premieres of “Jay Kelly” by Noah Baumbach and Yorgos Lanthimos’s “Bugonia”.

Both films are struggling for the coveted Golden Lion Award, whose winner often continues to get an Oscar nomination and even wins. Lanthimos is a veteran of Venice, having recently won the festival’s top prize for “poor things”.

The new film, “Bugonia”, is an adaptation of the English language of a South Korean movie, about two men with conspiracy-one of whom is played by the Plemons-who believe that Stone’s character is an alien and kidnapping it.

Baumbach was also recently in Lido with the adaptation of Don Delillo “White Noise”, who went to a less decorated prize. “Jay Kelly,” he said in his director’s statement, “he is a man who looks back in his life and reflects the choices, sacrifices, successes, mistakes he made.”

The film features a large cast cast, including Sandler as the director of the actor, his wife Baumbach and Off-Collaborator Greta Gerwig, Dern, Billy Crudup and Riley Keough.

Like “White Noise”, “Jay Kelly” is a movie produced by Netflix. After taking a year away from the festival, the Giant Streaming returns with three big competition films, such as Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” and Kathryn Bigelow’s political thriller “A House of Dynamite”.

The festival started on Wednesday at Lido. Paolo Sorrentino’s “La Grazia” opened the 82nd edition of the Oscar -winning director, revealing that his latest film was inspired by a real -life political dilemma that raised deep moral questions.

Starring Sorrentino Toni Servillo and Anna Ferzetti’s long -term partner, the film has been following in recent months in an office of a fantastic Italian president who has to decide whether to approve a law that allows for euthanasia and forgiven two prisoners.

Sorrentino told reporters that the story was triggered by President Sergio Mattarella’s 2019 decision to grant leniency-“grazia” to Italian-to a man who killed his wife affected by Alzheimer’s.

“It immediately looked like an interesting moral dilemma to say,” Sorrentino said. “For years I thought that the moral dilemma was a terrible narrative engine, more than any other narrative tool commonly used in cinema.”

Although the main character shares many features with the very popular Mattarella, Servillo said it was a fusion. “There are countless widows of the Republic, several Presidents of the Republic who are men of the law, several Presidents of the Republic with a single daughter,” Servillo said.

Sorrentino won the Oscar for the best foreign language image in 2014 for “Great Beauty” and received the Silver Lion Award in Venice in 2021 for “The Hand of God” for his childhood in Naples-and both of whom also starred.

Many of his films are sensual, rich and even surreal. “La Grazia”, ​​on the other hand, is often strict and sparse as it follows the elderly president who is struggling with his conscience, boxing with his spiritual daughter and mourning his retarded wife.

Sorrentino described his protagonist as a man who, behind his strict exterior, incorporates “a high idea of ​​politics”, which he said was increasingly difficult to find in real life.

Through the drama come brands blinking the Sorrentino comedy, with the president learning the lyrics in a song of rap, very much to the surprise of a ritual guard and looking for tips from a black, scooter-guide.

But the key issues are treated sensitized, and Sorrentino said he hoped that his film could help persuade politicians in Italy eventually draw up a law on assisted death.

“It is well known that (cinema) no longer has the devastating impact of popularity it once had, but it can still try. So I can just hope that a movie, in this case, can be caught up to a subject … it is fundamental,” he said.

“La Grazia” is one of the 21 films competing for the famous Golden Lion Award, along with the works of Guillermo del Toro, Kathryn Bigelow and Yorgos Lanthimos. The festival passes until September 6th. The festival lasts until September 6th.