In Venice, a predominantly American Mostra

The Venice Film Festival, the cinema section of the Contemporary Art Biennale, is celebrating its 90th birthday this year. Demonstration of unparalleled longevity, and therefore strength, for one of the only major international events not to have closed shop during the health crisis – its 2020 and 2021 editions having taken place, under close surveillance.

Sa 79^e version, which opened on Wednesday August 31 with the presentation of an Honorary Golden Lion to the French Catherine Deneuve and a video address by the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, therefore marks a return to normal, with its hordes festival-goers, all origins combined, as well as a pre-pandemic configuration, where most restrictions have been lifted.

One of the rare achievements of the Covid-19 period to have imposed itself, the online ticket reservation platform, dedicated to making admission to the hall more fluid, in the general opinion quite illegible, so as not to say outdated, replayed the same gag as in Cannes in May, by a computer crash at startup – this having the gift of making the festival-goer feverish.

Benefiting from an impregnable window of opportunity for the return to school and the opening of the cinematographic season, Venice has always been able to count on a strong American presence, which is confirmed once again this year, with no less than eleven feature films distributed between the competition and the non-competition, and the areopagus of stars who, accompanying them, pass on the red carpet (Adam Driver, Ana de Armas, Cate Blanchett, Brendan Fraser, in addition to Julianne Moore in the role of president of the jury).

Less versed than France in protectionism towards the national park of cinemas, the event is not reluctant to welcome Netflix productions, this year four in number in the very exposed ranks of the competition. It is moreover to one of them, White Noiseof the American Noah Baumbach, that returned the run place of the film of opening.

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Until then, Baumbach was known as a worthy representative of a New York cinema depicting the sentimental pangs of the educated classes on the side of impoverished youth (Frances Ha2012), then maturity in crisis (Marriage Story2019). White Noise marks a clear change of regime, first of all because it ventures to put into images the novel of the same name published in 1985 by Don DeLillo (Background noise in French), deemed unsuitable.

In the mid-1980s, in a Midwestern college town, a blended family – a Hitler historian father (Adam Driver), a yoga teacher mother (Greta Gerwig) and their four children from different beds – are thrown onto the roads by a toxic explosion that occurred in the perimeter of their home. On their return, all certainties have wavered, following which the parents develop an addiction to a placebo drug, provided by an obscure charlatan. And this is how a supposedly enlightened home gradually becomes a nest of superstitions.

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