Bor, which film that is being shot in Venice can we not miss?
‘That is blonde, by Andrew Dominic. He previously directed The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert FordOne of the best westerns ever made in my opinion. Now he ventures into a portrait of Marilyn Monroe, based on Joyce Carol Oates’ novel of the same name. That rather controversial book is also called a biography of Monroe, but it is not: fact and fiction are mixed up. This is also the case in Dominik’s film.
So see this film, soon to be shown on Netflix, as a fictional look at the life of Marilyn Monroe, and as a horrifying fairy tale about how the American entertainment industry treated, and perhaps still does, young women. A good movie to attack Hollywood with.
‘Beforehand, of course, the question was: who is going to play Marilyn Monroe? Over the years, several actresses were named for that role, eventually it became Cuban Ana de Armas. She previously appeared in the Bond film No Time to Die a great role as a spy, where I thought: as far as I’m concerned she should have played the whole movie. She does have a rather bold Cuban accent in most of the roles, it will be interesting to see how she portrays Monroe. By the way, I like that you wouldn’t cast De Armas directly as Monroe based on appearance and origin; the acting is supposed to make viewers believe she’s Monroe.”
Which film should we also not miss?
‘tar, absolutely, starring Cate Blanchett. An interesting film that deals with this time in all kinds of ways, from gender inequality to cancel culture. Blanchett plays a top conductor of a renowned German orchestra, renowned in Chile, who is at the peak of her fame, but then thunders out of her ivory tower. Everything goes wrong, because she may not have behaved too correctly and abused her position.
‘But tar is also, I thought, a very nice portrait of the closed environment in which such a top conductor operates. First and foremost, the conductor is surrounded by a clique of quite docile, but also idiosyncratic musicians. They know one thing for sure: the conductor’s will is always law. They still allow the conductor to commit certain violations. A pretty wondrous and unhealthy hierarchy: the submissive people contribute to that weird bubble in which their leader, Lydia Tár, finds herself.
‘As a viewer you can therefore imagine afterwards how you change if you are at the top long enough, and that the tendency to behave like a dictator is fed by the circumstances in which you find yourself as a conductor. And well, Cate Blanchett is also phenomenal as Tár. It seems very strange to me if she doesn’t get an Oscar nomination for this.’
Finally, do you have a last title that surprised you and that you want to recommend?
‘Yes, Athens by Romain Gavras, just like blonde a Netflix film, which can be seen from September 23. Ladj Ly, writer of this film, previously directed the banlieu film Les Miserables. Athens depicts an uprising in the French suburbs as a kind of Greek war, the police against the young.
“It’s all about the opening scene, a minute-long scene filmed as one continuous shot in which Gavras films such a neighborhood uprising like a war movie. Unbelievable, you don’t know what you see. So much happens: you see bullets, police vans, an entire neighborhood that is barricaded as if it were a medieval fortress. The camera zooms through that violence, there is so much movement and dynamics. You really wonder: how do they do that? Anyone who sees this, including people at home on the couch, will be amazed.’