The 81st Venice International Film Festival is around the corner and the whole lineup has been released. With Telluride and Toronto, the beginning of Oscar season kicks off as past winners (Poor Things, Roma, The Shape of Water) have gone on to Oscar success. Isabelle Huppert is this year’s Jury President with James Grey (Armageddon Time), Andrew Haigh (All Of Us Strangers), and Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso) also on the jury. Alfonso Cuaron is back to showcase his upcoming miniseries Disclaimer starring Cate Blanchett while Brady Corbett (Vox Lux) has his 3.5 hour Holocaust drama, The Brutalist. Here are other films to look for at La Biennale di Venezia.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
The opening film of the festival, Tim Burton finally has his sequel to his beloved 1988 film about the titular bio-exorcist (Michael Keaton) who runs afoul when called upon. This time, the Deetz family is back home in Winter River as the now-adult Lydia (Winona Ryder) is married and with her daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), who has her own encounter with Betelgeuse. Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, and Willem Dafoe join Ryder and Catherine O’Hara returning for the long-awaited followup, and hopefully we don’t have to wait another 36 years for a third film, if made.
Joker: Folie a Deux
After its shocking win of the Golden Lion five years ago, Todd Phillips brings the sequel back to Venice with Joaquin Phoenix as the titular character again and Lady Gaga playing Harley Quinn, going on their mad love affair to create havoc again in Gotham. This time, Phillips incorporates the musical genre with mostly existing songs but also including Hildur Guonadottir and her Oscar-winning score in the background. It will be a very different experience watching this film, but with the massive success of Philips’ previous film, Folie a Deux will still be a highly anticipated event.
Maria
After biopics on Jackie Kennedy and Princess Diana, director Pablo Larrain comes with the biopic of an opera legend, Maria Callas. Angelina Jolie plays Callas in her last years during retirement alone in her Paris apartment with only memories of her past glory, including her love affair with shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis. Steven Knight (Spencer, Peaky Blinders) re-teams with Larrain on picking out a chapter of a life filled with adoration and sadness at the end of what was a fairly short life.
Queer
Not long after his titilating tennis threesome Challengers, Luca Guadagnino has his followup about a drifter (Daniel Craig) who comes into town and becomes obsessed with another man (Drew Starkey). Set in 1940s Mexico, it’s a forbidden love tainted with drug use but fueled with sexual tension as with Challengers, with this film also being scripted by Justin Kuritzkes based on the novel by William S. Burroughs. Guadagnino has called Queer the most personal film he has ever done – and has soaked it up with “quite scandalous” sex scenes, which makes the anticipation spicier.
The Room Next Door
Pedro Almodovar comes with his long-awaited first English-speaking film (discounting short films) with Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton. It follows a similar story from past Almodovar films; a mother and her daughter have a distant relationship, in part because of the daughter’s relationship with another woman. It deals with two types of war: actual war in which the mother is a war correspondent, and the war of wills on the reality of love. John Turturro and Alessandro Nivola co-star in Almodovar’s latest melodrama about estranged links.
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