A 270-pound Brendan Fraser and Penelope Cruz, on a stellar Sunday in Venice

This Sunday, September 4th, the Historical Regatta takes place, paralyzing Venice. It takes place on the first Sunday of September every year and always coincides with the only Sunday of venice party.

The vaporetti, the public transport boats, are canceled three hours before the start of the regatta, with the decorated boats of the sixteenth century, the gondoliers in period costume, with the families rowing and descending along the Grand Canal and the four regattas whose finish line is in front of Palazzo Foscari.

And on this part of the Venice Lagoon, which separates Venice from the Lido, it is a Sunday of competitions, but to be seen in the cinema and in the stars. It’s a stellar Sunday in Venice.

It is so Penelope Cruzwho last year won the Coppa Volpi as best actress for parallel mothersby Pedro Almodóvar, with The immenseby the Italian Emanuele Crialese, and Brendan Fraserwith his 250 kilogram character inside The whalefrom here always pampered Darren Aronofsky (the black Swan).

Can you shoot a movie without practically leaving an apartment? What if the place is gloomy? What if the protagonist weighs 270 kilos? What if he was played by Brendan Fraser?

Under the subtle title of The whale (The whale) director Darren Aronofsky brought the actor he was George of the jungle and it glowed The Mummynow as an English teacher teaching online (yes, camera off), having heart failure.

Charlie doesn’t stop eating from the pain of losing what he considers the love of his life, a student he had an affair with after leaving his wife and daughter who was a child. Now, Charlie tries to make contact with Ellie, his daughter, embodied by the star of strange thingsSadie Sink.

Sometimes controversial, Fraser will likely hear his name in the next award season nominations for this Aronofsky film, which for 5 years (with Mother!) did not film, and that brought here, among others, the black Swan.

At the press conference, Fraser said that because of how much he weighed, he had to “learn to move in a new way … I built muscles I didn’t know I had,” he said.

“I even felt dizzy at the end of the day when all my braces were removed,” he continued, comparing it to when he got off the speedboat in Venice. “That rippled feeling. I understand those whose bodies are similar. You have to be an incredibly strong person, mentally and physically, to inhabit that physical being. “

In addition to a prosthetic suit, CGI visual effects were used in several scenes in post-production to show Charlie.

female born director

Penélope Cruz, we said, returns to the Lido after winning the award last year, when he was also competing for official competition, from today the jury here Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat. Clara is a Spaniard who married an Italian, lives in Italy and has three children. The eldest, the adolescent Adriana, feels like a man.

In The Immensity, as a mother, she is exceptional: she plays with her children to set the table, takes off her shoes in the street to run and shout with Adri. She also claims that her her husband sleeps with all the women she wants, but it’s the 70s and Adri’s sexual definition, who adores Raffaella Carra, is central here.

More than what the actress said Returnat the press conference it was Crialese who attracted the attention of the press, declaring “I was born biologically as a woman”.

“In the world we specify between women and men … I am what I am and I keep both polarities in me. I will never be like another man. I was born biologically as a woman, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t hold much of myself. of the woman, who I think is also the best part of me, “he was honest.

Crialese’s film, shot in Argentina New worldin 2005, with Charlotte Gainsbourg and Vincenzo Amato (here, her husband, a certain archetypal macho and moody character) is politically correct, but the lack of emotion takes away its strength and meaning.

The third film in competition was The children of the autresby Rebecca Zlotowski, who won the BAFICI Great Central, and played by Virginie Efira, the actress who served on the jury last year. Here is Rachel, a school teacher who throws herself into everything, everything. She defends a student so that she doesn’t miss school, and also with her new partner (Roschdy Zem), who has a four-year-old daughter and an ex (Chiara Mastrioianni).

She adapts to whatever she can in her new relationship, but when her needs to be a mother are in danger, she reevaluates everything, but more as a response than as a protagonist of her decision.

One of those films that may not be in competition and no one would be too sorry about it. That’s right, period.

Already on Saturday, after the Argentines did not want to leave the Great Hall, Sigourney Weaver handed over the Golden Lion to the ever-active Paul Schrader on the run. Weaver praised the writer of Taxi driver Y Wild bullby Scorsese, and which he directed, among others American gigolo.

and it was designed master gardener (Master Gardener), in which the actress Alien and Avatar plays the owner of a mansion whose gardens are managed by the character played by Joel Edgerton. Out of competition, he is a minor Schrader, compared to everything that the director of Days of Fury has been able to give away until a few years ago.