Right, so even though I actually got there last Saturday night, this is about the films and for me at Venice this year Day One was last Sunday. I'd had someone wonderfully procure the tickets I asked for (although unable to score free tickets to Up, despite queueing for 2 hours 
) and it meant just the two outings (as while I paid for a double bill including Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story, I had zero intention of staying to watch it). It is 805 miles from Venice to Birmingham and as a result I shall be judging how worth my overall trip was in terms of mileage 
FILM - Insolacao (Sunstroke), DIRECTOR - Daniela Thomas & Felipe Hirsch,
COUNTRY - Brazil, SECTION - Horizons
Why I wanted to see it? - Daniela Thomas, having done very nice work with Walter Salles down the years.
Impressions :
Occasionally in cinema a film comes around where the feeling that the audience experiences is mirrored by the message of the film. I call it "Catch-22-style filmmaking" and it has seen films like I'm Not There result in a film which is first and foremost like its subject. Insolacao follows a group of people and their loves/existances following a meeting with a poetic, bearded drifter. It drags horrendously and is so poorly paced it bogs down the various narratives.
After a while the horror dawned on me that it might just have taken my coming all the way to Venice to walk out of a film for the first time. "Happily" though around about the hour mark the film finally begins to make its point: a character giving a monologue saying that one day he wanted to kill himself, no reason, no big drama, he just wanted it all to end. This is where the Catch-22 effect kicks in: that book was about how war was boring and repetetive and pointless and the author made the book that way too to ram the point home. Here this film is about someone wanting to kill themselves and in the process it makes the audience feel that too because the film is so turgidly dull and annoyingly frustrating that shares in Gillette bound to go through the roof in the aftermath of mass-seppuku.
Some of the acting is quite good, especially the girl playing the confused slut, but for long periods it just isn't enough to retain an interest in what's going on. Neither do the characters as presented and it results in an extremely poor, borderline-unwatchable effort which suggests that Daniela Thomas is far better off when riding Walter Salles's coattails.
Number of Miles worth travelling to see : 1.
FILM - White Material, DIRECTOR - Claire Denis,
COUNTRY - France, SECTION - In Competition
Why I wanted to see it? - Isabelle Huppert, in spite of my reservations about Denis' "talents".
Impressions :
So after Insolacao things literally couldn't have been worse so despite my not being a fan of Denis at all, I had been taught patience earlier in the day and gave this a lot of good will as a result. It follows Isabelle Huppert, who is a French coffee-farmer in Africa who is being urged to leave due to the decreasing stability of law and order in the area.
We see a fire in a building with a white and black man locked inside, then have Huppert hitching a lift on the road, followed by flashbacks once she's in the van. The flashbacks were a little confusing, I thought they were being told from Huppert after the fire, but it turns out it's immediately before and that muddies the water. Dramatically it's not as satisfying and the narrative is more than a tad choppy.
The film lives and dies on Huppert's performance and it's very good. It seems an obvious statement but her screen presence is incredible and she holds it all together brilliantly with some beautifully nuanced body language. The characterisation isn't that deep though as her farmer staying despite everyone telling her it's not safe isn't given much background and doesn't have much motivation fleshed out (as even her character in Home had, implying she broke down anywhere else). That Huppert makes it work in spite of that is a testament to her skills as an actress rather than Denis' as a dramatist.
The cinematography is very rough and ready, especially in the first 20 minutes or so. The editing doesn't aid things as it follows the structure of the script, but there is a gorgeous modern score which adds greatly to the mood and atmosphere of the piece. So in the end, quite good, but it may just be because I watched something truly hideous before.
Number of Miles worth travelling to see : 50 (running total = 51)
Will be updating these daily, more tomorrow (well, it's 12.45pm, so ... later today 
).