The Jury of the 74th Venice International Film Festival - chaired by Annette Bening, and comprising Ildikó Enyedi, Michel Franco, Rebecca Hall, Anna Mouglalis, David Stratton, Jasmine Trinca, Edgar Wright and Yonfan - awarded yesterday night the Golden Lion for Best Film to "The Shape of Water", directed by Guillermo del Toro (you can check out the complete list of winners here).
A charmingly monstrous film, "The Shape of Water" is set during the Cold War in Baltimore and revolves around mute and lonely Elisa (Sally Hawkins) who works as a cleaner in a security government laboratory.
Elisa's life radically changes when, together with her co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer), she sees in a tank a secret classified experiment - an aquatic creature (Doug Jones) reminiscent of The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Discovered in the Amazon by Colonel Strickland (Michael Shannon), where he was worshipped like a God, the creature is mistreated in the research facility and becomes the object of many speculations (should it be send to space or maybe dissected?).
Elisa feels the creature is like her, he can't communicate through words, and so she plays records, and feeds him hard-boiled eggs, managing to create a bond with him.
Through fantasy Del Toro addresses very contemporary themes, from collective incommunicability to the fear of the unknown and therefore intolerance, social violence, homophobia, sexism, marginalisation and liminality. In many ways this is an easy film to analyse, a monstrous romance with a glowing ending and a perfect cast.
The same couldn't be stated about a supposedly "fashion film" incuded in the Venice Film Festival programme that got many critics puzzled. The film in question is "Woodshock", the delirious directorial debut of the Rodarte sisters.
Now, we have seen the transition of Tom Ford to film and, while you may like the results or not, his movies still seemed to have a plot with a logical story supported by a script; "Woodshock" is instead a total mess.
Starring Rodarte's muse Kirsten Dunst, the film revolves around a young woman - Theresa (Dunst) - who helps her terminally ill mother (Susan Traylor) to die giving her a lethal cocktail of marijuana and another substance.
After her death, the film loses any logical threads, Theresa falls into confusion and the plot shatters into a many splintered and meaningless thing. Reality and hallucination merge in the heroine's confused psyche and she gets lost in a fractured limbo, inexplicably attracted by a strange force lurking in the woods.
The film title refers indeed to the mental state of fear and panic affecting people who become lost in the wilderness (Theresa lives with her boyfriend Nick nearby a redwood forest in California's Humboldt County).
The progressive deterioration of the heroine's mind is symbolised by the Mulleavys' own costumes (in collaboration with Christie Wittenborn) that transform with the character, going from simple and formal pieces to shiny and sequinned Rodarte numbers, hinting at Theresa losing grasp on reality and at her mental decay.
On screen Theresa's confusion is represented by visually striking frames, bright colours, filters, neon imprints, floral motifs, refractions and quirky angles, plus zero script and a terrible lack of substance (the same problem with fashion nowadays...) – imagine Spike Jonze and Sofia Coppola playing at being Kenneth Anger in a hipsterish key and you get the idea.
The resulting film is a disorganised psychological exploration populated by characters that the Mulleavys don't seem to be able to describe or portray. In a way, it looks like a long and pretentious fragrance advert or an arty film that you may show at a club or in the background of a fashion runway.
It wasn't just the critics in Venice who thought the film was a joke: probably included in the final selection just because it starred Kirsten Dunst, the film was introduced at the presentation press conference by the Film Festival Chairman Alberto Barbera with the words "even they (the Mulleavys) felt the compelling need to shoot a movie."
Maybe we should consider the film as the final proof that fashion designers shouldn't go into filmmaking or that money, a charmingly beautiful actress and influential friends can maybe help you making an aesthetically perfect product, but not necessarily a solid one.
Those readers who are curious should maybe avoid watching the film and just opt for the trailer (saves time...); the most curious ones can instead try and maybe get explanations about this boring drugged up reverie by asking the Mulleavys sisters. The duo will discuss their careers and their vapid exploration of isolation and paranoia (read "Woodshock") next week (September 13, 2017 at 7:00pm) at the Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Music Center (129 West 67th Street) in New York.
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