DISPATCH: RUMOURS Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Surreal political satire Rumours premiered at the Cannes Film Festival before travelling to TIFF and various festivals before landing in the UK’s capital this month at the BFI London Film Festival for a party hosted at Lasdun by Universal Pictures. Written and co-directed by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, it follows the seven leaders of the world’s wealthiest democracies at the annual G7 summit, where they attempt to draft a provisional statement regarding a global crisis. But as night falls and their staff disappear the leaders discover their own fallibility and lack of agency – unless it’s a quick romp in the woods. The cast is as international as the characters: Cate Blanchett plays the German Chancellor, Charles Dance is POTUS (with an English accent, because – why not?), Nikki Amuka-Bird essays the UK PM and Alicia Vikander is the President of the European Commission who finds something mindbending in the mist…
Blanchett, Dance, Amula-Bird and their directors celebrated the UK bow of the film at a party attended by friends and colleagues. Greg Williams captured the fun…
DISPATCH: GEORGE CLOONEY & BRAD PITT WOLFS Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
George Clooney and Brad Pitt have been working together since they first made Ocean’s Eleven in 2001 – sharing credits in the 23 years since on Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, Ocean’s Twelve and Thirteen and Burn After Reading. And the off-screen friends were looking for another opportunity to re-team when they were pitched Jon Watts’ original script, Wolfs. The story of two ‘lone wolf’ fixers who are assigned to the same clean-up job when a DA’s dalliance with a young man ends in accidental death, the comedy-actioner premiered at the Venice Film Festival to a standing ovation. Greg Williams traveled with the duo by boat as they attended a press conference and the premiere on Venice’s Lido.
‘We kind of figured there’s gotta be a good reason to get back in a film together, something we feel like we could build upon what we’ve done before,’ Pitt told journalists when he and Clooney discussed the project without their director who had caught Covid on the journey to the floating city. ‘But also, I gotta say, as I get older, working with the people that I just really enjoy spending time with has really become important to me.’
Pitt recalled that both he and Clooney immediately liked the first draft that Watts wrote and pitched to them, and was pleased that the verve of it was retained throughout production to filming in New York. ‘It’s never happened where someone presents you with an idea and you get a first draft of the script and that’s what you end up shooting.’
As grouchy hitmen, Clooney and Pitt banter and squabble throughout a long night where they try to unravel a conspiracy – and their teasing affection was on display when they sat down for their press conference and, later, boogied to Sade’s ‘Smooth Operator’ (a key track in the film) as the credits rolled in the Sala Grande. ‘There’s nothing good about it… It’s all a disaster,’ Clooney joked when asked about working with his 60-year-old friend. ‘He’s 74 and he’s lucky at this age to be still working!’
Wolfs is in select cinemas and available to stream on Apple TV+ now Read our review of Wolfshere
DISPATCH: JENNA ORTEGA BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
With the Venice Film Festival marking the move of summer into Autumn, it’s perhaps fitting that a Halloween movie opened the 81st festivities. Thirty five years after Beetlejuice was first released, its sequel reunited the original cast alongside Jenna Ortega on the Lido’s red carpet – something director Tim Burton had never envisaged for a film he admits he doesn’t quite understand the success of. A quirky horror comedy starring Michael Keaton as a potty-mouthed, green-haired ghost who haunts the Deetz family when they move into a new house, it was the film that made a star of Winona Ryder (aged 15 when she filmed) and cemented a decades-long collaborative process between Burton and his two leads.
In the years since, Beetlejuice has become a cult classic and after the success of other legacy sequels such as Top Gun Maverick and Ghostbusters: Afterlife it was only a matter of time before ‘The Juice’ returned to haunted audiences anew. And on a balmy August evening Greg Williams joined the cast pre-premiere at their Venetian hotel as the film received warm reviews from critics tickled by the return to practical effects, a Ryder-Keaton re-run, Ortega’s snarky charm and the daft fun of Burton’s distinct signature touch.
‘Over the past few years, I got a little bit disillusioned with the movie industry, I sort of lost myself,’ the director admitted to journalists earlier in the day. ‘For me, I realized the only way to be a success is that I have to love doing it. For this one, I just enjoyed and loved making it.’ For Burton that meant working with Ryder, Keaton and Catherine O’Hara again. Having worked with Burton on other projects, Ryder felt safe to step into a new story with the director again. ‘My love and trust for Tim runs so deep and there was a sense of a certain playfulness and readiness to try things,’ she said, confessing that one of her favourite things about returning to the role of Lydia Deetz – not a TV medium and mother to a teenage daughter – was staring into Keaton’s eyes again. ‘It had been such a special experience the first one and just to be able to come back to it was just a dream come true.’
Burton calls Beetlejuice Beetlejuice ‘a weird family movie’ that examines the rifts between parents and children as Lydia returns to her original haunted house after the death of her father. Her teen daughter, Astrid, may not believe her mum can see dead people but she soon changes her mind after a run-in with a ghost and the afterlife. Burton credits some of his creative rejuvenation to making the first season of Wednesday with Jenna Ortega so she seemed the natural choice for the role of Astrid. Ortega – whose red-carpet custom Dior dress nodded to Lydia’s wedding dress in the original film – has had a similar fast rise to fame as Ryder and the two women bonded immediately on set, not only as mother and daughter but as actors who have become emo icons of their generation. ‘The way Winona and I got on was quite weird,’ Ortega says. ‘It was like we could read each other’s minds a little bit.’ Ryder was, she says, immediately warm and welcoming. ‘It was at a time where my career was taking a different turn. I didn’t realize that I needed that from somebody who could relate, but I did.’
Also along for the ride are Willem Dafoe as an afterlife detective who used to be an actor on a TV cop show, Monica Bellucci as Delores, a long-dead vamp with unfinished business with Beetlejuice; and Justin Theroux as Lydia’s odious boyfriend and manager.
Burton also brought SFX guru Neil Scanlon onto the project to ensure that the low-fi, fast and fun ethos of the first film was resurrected – so just like the original, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice features tactile practical effects to add to the comedy and off-kilter vibe (the waiting room is rammed with ridiculous deaths via piranha, chimney, cats, sharks and hotdogs). The result, says Burton, is a movie very much in the spirit of the original and ‘a very simple emotional movie’ – one that gained a standing ovation post-premiere. ‘The Juice’ is very much loose.
DISPATCH: KEVIN COSTNER HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA – CHAPTER 2 Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Kevin Costner wasn’t meant to be in Venice. The original release plan for Chapter 2 of his sweeping Western series, Horizon: An American Saga meant that the actor/director would not have been able to attend the film festival in the floating city. But like all things Costner seems able to manifest, the release date changed and festival director Alberto Barbera asked the Californian to bring his epic oater to Venice where Costner was mobbed by fans during a standing ovation at the premiere.
‘It’s been a perfect experience, really,’ Costner tells Hollywood Authentic of the way things turned out, not least because he brought his 17 year-old son, Cayden, along for the ride. The four days the duo spent at the festival turned out to be a teaching moment about the nature of resilience and the ability to get things done despite roadblocks. ‘He’s seen me labour over the course of this movie. For his entire life he’s known that I’ve talked about this thing,’ Costner says of his son. ‘And then to see me not let go of the opportunity, and the hope of it, and to actually go out and make two of them – he was able to see the culmination of that. It’s a weird thing when you look at your dad, I think, and see suddenly this movie playing, and the people standing and clapping for it. I think, maybe, he saw something in not letting go of a dream, and that you keep pushing.’
It’s a drive and self belief that makes him something of a pioneer in the wild west that is the Hollywood studio system… ‘I don’t see that correlation because there’s people that hide behind corporation momentum, and look at numbers,’ he says. ‘They wouldn’t survive out in the West. That’s a whole other corporate mentality that allows you to be cutthroat.’ Costner, who plays lone gunslinger and cowboy Hayes Ellison in the films seems cut from the same cloth as his character; a resourceful man who has a definite destination in mind. ‘Maybe my individualism is what you’re looking at,’ Costner acquiesces, ‘and then I’m kind of a unicorn in my own business, by using my money. I don’t like doing that. I don’t want to do that. I don’t even know why I do that. But when I do, I do a lot of sharing of work that could be revisited and revisited. And I certainly think Horizon qualifies as that because I promise you: if you watch it a second and a third and a fourth time, you will see something new.’
Hollywood, and Costner’s fans, await to see if the unicorn manifests chapters three and four of his saga. Our bet is that he will…
Costner certainly has form in not letting go of dreams – his 1990 revisionist western Dances With Wolves was considered a folly by critics yet the actor pressed on and saw the film a crowning success which went on to win seven Oscars. The same is true of Horizon – a saga Costner has long imagined as an epic four-parter and put his own cash into when studios didn’t share his vision. He’s made two chapters of the tale with plans to continue filming three and four later this year. ‘I don’t fall out of love that easily,’ Costner laughs of his decades-long drive to make the movie he dreamt of. ‘I don’t pretend to be the last say on this subject. I don’t try to be a person who’s trying to reinvent the western. I just simply want to go at it historically, and apply human behaviour to the themes that I think tell the story.’
Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2 will be released later this year Read our review here
DISPATCH: KODI SMIT-MCPHEE DISCLAIMER Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
‘I should have stayed in my seat,’ Kodi Smit-Mcphee smiles when he recalls premiering Alfonso Cuarón’s new Apple+ limited series Disclaimer on the Venice Film Festival red carpet directly before the premiere of Maria, in which he also stars. In Disclaimer, based on Renee Knight‘s 2015 bestseller, Cate Blanchett plays an award-winning documentary filmmaker, Catherine Ravenscroft, who’s past comes back to haunt her when she receives a novel in the post. Told via three different perspectives and two different time periods, Smit-Mcphee plays the directionless son she shares with Sasha Baron Cohen. In Pablo Larrain’s biopic of Maria Callas starring Angelina Jolie, he appears as the personification of her sedative medication who manifests as a TV reporter questioning her in the week of her life. ‘’I’m literally named Mandrax, which is this suppressant kind of medication that she takes. It’s these therapeutic conversations that she’s ultimately having with her subconscious – but with me,’ he tells Hollywood Authentic when we sit down overlooking the Grand Canal in the St Regis Hotel. Both projects gave him the opportunity to work closely with powerhouse actors in Blanchett and Jolie. ‘It was great in the sense of just how generous and giving and safe and comforting these women are. I really feel like both took me under their wing, and made me feel welcomed and good. And a couple of Angelina’s sons were also on set. So I hung out with them quite a bit. They were really beautiful as well.’
Venice hosted two red carpets for the premiere of the seven-part Disclaimer – the cast photographed on both occasions by Greg Williams – and for Smit-Mcphee coming to Venice gave the actor the chance to spend time with co-stars he didn’t meet during filming as their characters’ timelines didn’t cross on-screen. He and Leila Geroge, who plays the younger Catherine, and Louis Partridge – who essays a young man who has a life-changing impact on her – compared notes on filming as Smit-Mcphee spent six months filming on sets in London (and adopting an English accent) while George and Partridge filmed for seven weeks in Italy.
For George the role required the actor to play two very different versions of the character as well as perform key explicit scenes with Partridge. The part required her to go to some dark place. ‘I use music quite a lot for when I have to shift into another place emotionally. Different playlists for different things, and that just immediately triggers something for me,’ she says. And the intimate scenes were an additional challenge. ‘It’s really important, of course, to have an intimacy coordinator so that everyone feels that there’s someone that they can go to, and feel safe. So there’s that side of it – the technical side of it. The other side of it is just getting to know [Partridge], and feeling safe with the person as a friend. We had so much time in Italy before we did those scenes. We’d go to each other’s trailers before we’d do something like that, and be like, ‘How are you feeling about the day?’ Communication and check-ins. And then just being able to let it go. Just leave it behind.’
‘It was kind of like a dance. It was all rehearsed,’ Partridge agrees. ‘And so, in some ways, it was more helpful to be in your own space, and occasionally checking in. Because we knew what we were about to do. And then, at the end of the day, we’d have a little dance, and shake it all off.’
Smit-Phee laughs that he enjoyed digging into playing a ‘grubby, homebody kind of teen’ as Blanchett and Baron Cohen’s son. As for working with Blanchett as his mum, he says: ‘Cate makes you question your abilities in the best way because she can go from this beautiful, light-hearted, joking fun in between takes. But then when she needs to go into something dark and heavier, it’s almost as if there’s a switch. But of course, there’s not a switch. It’s a great deal of work she does to develop these characters and get into these moments. But, my God, it looks like magic.’
The resulting work in Disclaimer is ‘so powerful’ and will prompt important conversation, says Partridge. He’s just completed work on Noah Baumbach’s new film and is currently filming Guinness, the story of the stout dynasty, playing Edward Guinness. ‘It’s brilliant, I’m loving it,’ he enthuses. ‘Do I get a lifetime’s supply of Guinness now? It wasn’t in my contract. That was a mistake, perhaps…’
Disclaimer premieres on Apple TV+ on 11 October Read our review of Disclaimerhere
DISPATCH: SOPHIE WILDE & HARRIS DICKINSON BABYGIRL Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
As she looks out of Venice’s Grand Canal wearing a 16Arlington dress teamed with Church brogues, actor Sophie Wilde contemplates her ‘surreal’ 13 months which started with the release of Australian horror hit Talk To Me in July 2023 and culminated with her attending the premiere of one of the buzziest movies at the city’s film festival this year, Babygirl. Wilde attended the red carpet in a Loewe custom look with archive Cartier jewellery from the year she was born. A special moment for the Sydney-bred actor who has been pinching herself since the rave reviews for Talk To Me. ‘We all knew we’d made something special, and that it was something that we were all super-proud of. But for it to have this international response was totally beyond our comprehension. It’s interesting that one project can really shift so many things in such a dramatic way. I’ve signed with US agents and interesting roles are coming my way. So it’s definitely been a shift.’
One of those roles is Babygirl. Telling the story of a CEO (Nicole Kidman) who embarks on an affair with her younger intern (Harris Dickinson) and explores the spectrum of female desire, the erotic drama sees Wilde play an executive assistant to Kidman. She is a key player in a chess game of power moves. ‘It’s definitely a very interesting conversation that Halina is playing with,’ Wilde says, ‘in the sense of women of different generations, and how they approach their womanhood. And their relationship to power and progression.’
Wilde was sent the script after impressing Reijn with her work in Talk To Me and was immediately hooked on the project after a meeting with the writer-director. ‘I think Halina’s a literal genius. She’s amazing,’ she ethuses. ‘She’s curated such an incredible film. I think what was interesting to me was the characters. They all felt incredibly infallible. There was a sense of moral ambiguity around everyone which I really liked. It was like, no one was right or wrong. It was just complex, like human beings are, and how relationships are.’
The gig also offered the opportunity to work with Kidman, who Wilde describes as ‘very much an Australian icon’ and a trailblazer for Antipodean talent breaking into Hollywood. ‘Watching someone like Nicole work is such a privilege. She’s honestly such a master of her craft, and such a powerhouse. I feel like I’ve very much grown up watching her films – Moulin Rouge is literally one of my favourite films. So it’s amazing to be able to work with someone who’s been such an inspiration. And to have someone of her calibre just there, supporting you, and backing you, and championing you – it’s really special.’ Babygirl is very much the kind of work Wilde wants to do going forward, she says. ‘There’s something so interesting about doing smaller, auteur-driven work that is very character-driven.’ Before she arrived in Venice Wilde finished shooting Watch Dogs, an adaptation of the video game which she describes as unlike anything she’s done before. And then there’s the possibility of her returning to Talk To Me 2. ‘We’ll have to wait and see,’ she teases. ‘All I know is that I find it exciting, that range of creative spaces you can enter.’
Babygirl is released in cinemas later this year Read our review of Babygirlhere
DISPATCH: DANIEL CRAIG QUEER Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Well before Bond, Daniel Craig impressed with his range and bold choices (which he then brought to the iconic franchise), but his raw, funny, vulnerable and ultimately transformative performance in Luca Guadagnino’s fever-dream adaptation of William S Burroughs’ autobiographical Beat generation novel is masterful and deserving of awards nominations.
Paying a boozy heroin addict in desperate love with a young man (Drew Starkey) in fifties South America – Queer impressed and shocked in equal measure when it premiered at Venice Film Festival in the main competition. Burroughs’ explicit book translates into a trippy, romantic voyage with erotic sex scenes in the hands of Challengers screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes and Guadagnino, showcasing Craig at the height of his powers as he cruises the streets of Mexico City and struggles with all of his character Lee’s addictions: love, lust, drugs, the search for a higher plane… With costumes by Loewe’s Jonathan Anderson, an anachronistically cool soundtrack (Prince, Nirvana, New Order) and gorgeous sets built in Rome’s famed Cinecittà Studios, Queer is a sensory delight that asks questions about love, life, death and everything in between. Little wonder it was snapped up for distribution by A24. ‘If I wasn’t in this movie and I saw this movie, I’d want to be in it,’ Craig says of the project. ‘It’s the kind of film I want to see, I want to make, I want to be out there.’
Though he’s known Guadagnino for years and wanted to work with him ‘for a long time’, Queer finally offered the opportunity for collaboration. Craig and Guadagnino worked together in the key casting of Starkey as former US-serviceman Allerton, the locus for Lee’s attention. They saw the Outer Banks actor early in the process and returned to him despite seeing hundreds of other potentials. Required to dance with each other throughout the film – physically during a trippy sequence in the Amazon, as well as emotionally and sexually – Starkey and Craig worked together for months before production on choreography and movement to nail the connection between the two men.
‘There’s nothing intimate about filming a sex scene on a movie set,’ Craig told journalists when he arrived on the Lido. ‘You’re in a room full of people watching you. We just wanted to make it as touching and as real, as natural, as we possibly could. Drew was a wonderful, beautiful, fantastic actor to work with, and we had a laugh. We tried to make it fun.’
The resulting scenes are striking as much for their eroticism as they are for their tenderness, with Craig bringing a moving sensitivity and humour to his portrayal of a man who is light years away from the assured swagger of James Bond – even if Guadagnino does have him sip a cheeky vodka martini (or two) during one drunken scene in a hat tip to his most recent role. ‘One of the characteristics of the great actors that you love and see onscreen and are affected by, I would say is the generosity of approach, the capacity of being very mortal onscreen,’ Guadagnino said at the Venice press conference. ‘Very few are, and very few iconic legendary actors allow that fragility to be seen, and one of them is Daniel.’
Queer is released in cinemas later this year Read our review here
DISPATCH: VICKY KRIEPS THE DEAD DON’T HURT Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Luxemburg actor Vicky Krieps is feeling buoyed after her jury time at Cannes Film Festival, in the Certain Regard section, where she saw a wide range of cinematic genres and voices. ‘Movies are probably one of the oldest international languages of exchange,’ she tells Hollywood Authentic. ‘A movie can be the voice for a country, a voice for a generation. A movie can be a voice for victims or marginalised people. And that was represented in the movies that I saw in my section. It gave me hope, and it was inspiring. With all the money and restrictions in the world, what can never be erased is the power of cinema, you know? The power and freedom of expression. And people somewhere in the world getting together, even if they don’t have money, and creating something that can cross every border.’
Krieps’ own output certainly falls into that category, having impressed critics and audiences alike in Phantom Thread, Bergman Island and Corsage – all of which debuted at Cannes Film Festival in the Palais where Greg Williams shot her before a screening of The Most Precious Of Cargoes. Her latest film, The Dead Don’t Hurt is slow-burn cinema that asks audiences to go on a journey, to live with characters through their highs and lows, to relate to the hardscrabble human pursuit of happiness and the act of forgiveness. Written, directed and led by Viggo Mortensen, it tracks a couple making their way together on the 1860s American frontier with Krieps playing Vivianne, an independent woman who decides to make her life with Danish immigrant, Holgar (Mortensen).
When casting the role Mortensen could only think of Krieps, likening her to an acting icon who received the honorary Palme D’or at the recent Cannes festival. ‘She reminded me of Meryl Streep the first time I saw her,’ he told the Academy in a recent interview. ‘She has a quality and ability to communicate so much, even in silence. It’s almost like her thoughts and feelings come through her skin. It’s remarkable what she can do. It’s a gift.’
Mortensen gave Krieps the space to fully inhabit and communicate a character in Vivienne as she meets Holgar in San Francisco and sets up a home with him in Elk Flats, Nevada, where he becomes sheriff. Vivianne tames the arid land in Elk Flats, but not necessarily the townsfolk, and a violent act changes her and Holgar’s destiny forever. A non-linear storyline sees Vivienne throughout key moments in her life – from childhood to death bed – and explores the particular emotional, moral and maternal strength of women living in an unforgiving environment. A non-traditional oater then, but not one that Krieps would call a ‘Feminist western’.
‘No, it’s not like that,’ Krieps says. ‘Viggo just made a very honest movie, it’s a humane film. It’s a tale about love and about humans, and he tried to make it his own way. And it’s a very personal film for him. It’s cinema that is not trying to impress. It’s not trying to shock. It’s not there to be a new invention of something new. This is the kind of cinema I do, and it’s the kind of cinema that I really live for. It’s not trying to say, ‘oh, we are feminists because that’s in fashion.’
Speaking of fashion, Krieps has endured corsets before – especially on the critically-acclaimed Corsage, playing Empress Elisabeth of Austria. And she was determined not to restrict herself again on this film, which lensed in Durango, Mexico in searing heat and required horseriding and the portrayal of manual work. ‘I immediately got rid of the corset!’ she laughs when recalling her meeting with the film’s costume designer. ‘I swore after Corsage I would not wear a corset again, just knowing what it does to you psychologically and physically. I wanted Vivienne to have a very normal movement – when you wear a corset, you can’t even run the way you would run. I think the historical shape is not important. What is important is that we make it look like it’s real, so that someone from today can relate to it, and is emotionally struck. On the weekend, we would take the horses, and ride up the canyon. I would be in a pair of trousers, and I could gallop, and I was free!’
Understanding the demands of location work on an independent period drama Mortensen told the cast and crew at the beginning of filming that he hoped ‘you will have a good time, but that the experience won’t punish you too much’. Did Krieps feel she had a good time or a punishing one? ‘It was a bit of both. The nature was pretty tough because we had a low budget, and that means that you’re always outside, standing most of the time either in the heat or in the cold. And all the time in the dust. So that was quite surprisingly hard, I have to say.’ The physical duress was not as challenging as the emotional though – with Vivienne experiencing the worst kind of brutality at the hands of men. ‘For me what was hard, to be honest, was the story – to open myself to this pain. I remember I went really deep. I’m just this way. I cannot just act, and then shake it off. It stayed with me for a few days. The role wasn’t a happy role, I have to say. But it was so wonderful to be in that landscape.’
The resulting film is one that Krieps feels encouraged by – that it exists in a world increasingly dominated by attention deficient streaming and algorithms. ‘We live in a time where sometimes I find it hard to keep up my hope for cinema because everything is switching to these huge platforms. They have so much money, and they have all the power in the world. So it becomes very, very difficult for independent movies to even exist.’
Krieps’ next two projects are part of that drive to make independent and challenging cinema – she’s just finished shooting Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother and an AI-scripted film based on Werner Herzog’s work, About A Hero. ‘I’m as curious as I could be about what [About A Hero] is going to be. And Father Mother Sister Brother was such fun to make. My group, my family part, was me, Cate Blanchett, and Charlotte Rampling. And it was just amazing to exchange, with these women, so much wisdom, so much experience, so much beauty and intelligence and sensitivity. It was a gift to work with these two women and with Jim, with his sensitivity. So I think it’s going to be a great film.’
The Dead Don’t Hurtis out in cinemas now About A Hero and Father Mother Brother Sister will be released TBC
CANNES DISPATCH 16 … Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
‘This movie is the celebration of the journey of my life,’ Neapolitan writer-director Paolo Sorrentino told the audience at the Cannes premiere of his latest, Parthenope, as he recalled the reception he’d had at the Riviera festival two decades earlier. In fact, his first time at the festival was 20 years to the day: The Consequences of Love premiered at Cannes in 2004 on 21 May, catapulting Sorrentino in cinema’s consciousness as a unique artist, and his career has been hand-in-hand with the festival ever since.
He won jury prizes in 2008 for Il Divo and 2011 for This Must Be the Place, as well as having seven of his works compete for the Palme d’Or and many play in competition. What better place then, to showcase his second love/hate letter to his hometown (after 2021’s Hand Of God) in Parthenope, the coming-of-age story of a beautiful young woman (Celeste Dalla Porta) finding her agency in 70s and 80s Capri and Naples?
Though the film focuses, in every way, on Porta’s Parthenope, Gary Oldman makes a powerful and haunting cameo as author John Cheever – a melancholic alcoholic who provides a salient chapter in the young woman’s life. Oldman makes no pretence of having ‘manifested’ the role, having been a fan of Sorrentino’s work and putting him at the top of his wish list to collaborate with.
‘When I heard about [Oldman being a fan] I immediately called him up,’ Sorrentino says. ‘I consider him a great actor so I was truly flattered.’ Oldman worked a handful of days on Capri essaying Cheever, and was joined on set by Greg Williams who captured photos of the production, including the film’s dreamlike poster image of Porta swimming like a mermaid through the azure waters surrounding the island. He also shot the cast and crew at the pre-premiere cocktails, red carpet and after party at Picasso’s former villa in Cannes – travelling with Sorrentino by car as his two-decade anniversary in the city unspooled in suitably celebratory fashion.
‘I’m very grateful and very excited to be here,’ he told Greg in his hotel room before his premiere. ‘For me, Cannes is cinema!’
Acquired by A24 before it premiered in Cannes, Parthenope is slated for a cinema release later this year when audiences off the Croisette will get a taste of Sorrentino’s latest intoxicating fever dream, a movie that is the closest thing to stepping into the crumbling alleys of Naples and perching on the sheer cliffs of Capri you can get without journeying there yourself…
Watch Travel with Sorrentino video here Read our review of Parthenope here
CANNES DISPATCH 15 … Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs by Greg Williams
In honor of Dame Donna Langley, Kering and the Festival de Cannes were pleased to welcome the members of the Festival jury as well as Julianne Moore, Justine Triet, Uma Thurman, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Salma Hayek Pinault, Michelle Yeoh, Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Jacques Audiard or Judith Godrèche on the occasion of the official Women In Motion Awards dinner.
Kering’s annual Women In Motion dinner kicked off again this year on a warm Sunday evening at Place de la Castre, a castle perched overlooking Cannes town and presided over by François-Henri Pinault, Chairman and CEO of Kering, Iris Knobloch, President of the Festival de Cannes, and Thierry Frémaux, General Delegate of the Festival de Cannes. This year the event celebrated the achievements of NBCUniversal Studio Group and Chief Content Officer, Dame Donna Langley, the first producer to receive the accolade in the Women In Motion nine year history for her trailblazing career – with Salma Hayek Pinault, in Gucci and Boucheron jewels, calling her a ‘visionary’.
The get-together attracted the toast of the festival, including Emilia Perez stars Zoe Saldana and Edgar Ramirez, both in Saint Laurent, as well as The Shrouds lead Diane Kruger (wearing Balenciaga). They were joined by South Korean star Han So Hee, legend Catherine Deneuve (in competition with Marcello Mio) plus jury president Greta Gerwig (in Gucci) and her jury members, Eva Green, Omar Sy and Lily Gladstone. Julianne Moore (in Bottega Veneta), Uma Thurman (opening her film Oh, Canada! at the festival), Michelle Yeoh (in Bottega Veneta), Isabelle Huppert (in Balenciaga and Boucheron) and director Justine Triet also attended along with The Apprentice actors Sebastian Stan and Maria Bakalova. French actress turned filmmaker Judith Godrèche was also part of festivities having opened the film festival with her powerful #MeToo short Moi Aussi, highlighting the number of women who have been victims of sexual assault.
The bash started with a cocktail hour before the ceremony where Langley and emerging talent recipient, director Amanda Nell Eu, received their accolades. Langley told the light-bedecked room that she had first attended Cannes as an executive on Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. She said ‘In roles like mine, we have the power and the opportunity to say “yes”, and “yeses” don’t come very often, but when they do come, they are so powerful.’
After the speeches, guests were served dinner created by Michelin-starred chef Virginie Giboire; to start – marinated John Dory, roast geranium and garden peas infused in almond milk followed by turbot, zucchini flowers and beurre blanc made with Noilly Prat. Dessert was a raspberry blossom yogurt and crunchy meringues with meadowsweet followed by dancing to a band who wandered through the tables playing their instruments…
Iris Knobloch (President of the Festival de Cannes)Dame Donna LangleyEva GreenLily GladstoneSalma Hayek Pinault and Karla Sofía GascónMaria BakalovaMarco Perego and Zoë SaldañaMichelle Yeoh
Find out more about Kering’s Women In Motion program here Salma Hayek Pinault wears Gucci and Boucheron jewels, François-Henri Pinault wears Balenciaga, Iris Knobloch wears Balenciaga, Dame Donna Langley wears Saint Laurent, Lily Gladstone wears Gucci, Karla Sofía Gascón wears Saint Laurent, Maria Bakalova wears Balenciaga, Zoë Saldaña wears Saint Laurent, Michelle Yeoh wears Bottega Veneta
