Australian trek, Sicilian stand-off feature at Venice film fest opening

MONSTERS

Clooney and Bullock open 70th Venice Film Festival

The characters in "Via Castellana Bandiera", named after a street in Palermo, are also taking stock. Two women drivers, one from a local family, the other returning to the city with her lesbian lover, are brought face-to-face with pain and death when they cause an impromptu traffic jam.

Families up and down the shabby, narrow street place bets on which of the two women will back down as they glare at each other across their steering wheels, throw away food that is offered them and try to see who will give way.

In the process, they both see deeply into themselves, and realize dark secrets about their own natures, Dante said.

"It's like the Minotaur looking at his reflection in the mirror and seeing a monster ... there is a monster inside of all of us," said the director, filming her own first novel.

Attending the festival to receive a lifetime achievement award, veteran American director William Friedkin attacked the modern practice of watching films on smartphones and said young people in cinema should leave film school and ignore critics.

"Go out, get a small camera, make your film, edit it at home, put it on a website and do it yourself," said Friedkin, whose films include "The Exorcist" and "The French Connection", for which he won an Oscar.

"Nobody can teach you how to do cinema. It is something that you learn by doing and by seeing. Because cinema begets cinema."

The festival concludes on September 7 with the awards ceremony to announce the winners of the top prizes.

 

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