Hugh Jackman in Venice, with The Son, a continuation of The Father

There aren’t many films left to see in the official competition for the Golden Lion, and finally another of the most anticipated films of this Show has been shown. Son is Florian Zeller’s second feature film as a director, after that The father.

And, having as an immediate background The fatherfor which Anthony Hopkins he won his second Oscar, among other accolades, expectations, which were great, well… Difficult to match not only from the plot, which in The Father entered the mind of Hopkins’ character, who had Alzheimer’s.

Not that the performance of Hugh Jackman failing to rise to the occasion as a parent of a teenage child with mental health problems. The original work closed a trilogy, which began with Mother. The film does not yet have a release date in Argentina, nor in Latin America.

And yes, Anthony Hopkins appears, almost like a cameo of sorts, as the father of Jackman’s character, who noted that “I was incredibly excited to work with Anthony, I have wanted it for years.”

“This is a crisis that affects the whole world and from which no one is immune,” said the actor who was Logan / Wolverine in the films of the X menand was also nominated for an Oscar, for The Miserables.

With a screenplay adapted this time by himself by Christopher Hampton, the one with The father it was co-written by Hampton and Zeller himself, and won an Oscar, the 53-year-old Australian interpreter is Peter, to whom life seems only to smile.

Successful professional, in private life he has a son with his new partner, much younger than him (Vanessa Kirby, who can move from work with Tom Cruise to a Mission Impossible to play Princess Margaret The crown), but Nicholas (Zen McGrath), the son he had with his first wife (Laura Dern), goes through a deep depression at the age of 17.

“To raise a child we need much more than a mother and a father. We need friends, support, both from family, from teachers, from society,” he said at a press conference. “It’s that in this film all the characters they love a lot, but that’s not enough. Because there’s a sense of shame, guilt in the face of a mental health problem, as well as a strong desire to fix things.”

Jackman said it is very important to be able to express our vulnerabilities, even to our children. “He can allow us to help people who have these problems,” and he also opened up saying that after making the film, he changed the way he treats his children. One is exactly the same age as Nicholas, 17. The other is older, 22 years old.

“You know, a father is terrified almost every day of the decisions he makes about his children, even making them a sandwich,” he said, decompressing the atmosphere in the press room.

Jackman read Zeller’s play, got his email address, and wrote him saying he was interested in playing Peter. They met via videoconference from Zoom, since he was around the year 2020, in full confinement for Covid-19, and it wasn’t even ten minutes before the playwright and now the director offered him the role.

“When I read Son I felt like a fire consuming me, a compulsion. It’s a scary feeling to realize that you are reading a role that is perfect for you at a particular time in your life. What terrified me the most – he was honest – was not understanding it. “

For his part, Zeller said that instead of the actions taking place in France, as in the play he wrote, he decided to shoot it in New York, but more so that he felt that the story could unfold at any time in the world. very cosmopolitan planet, where you may meet many people.

“What I didn’t want was to tell a French or American story, but that it could happen anywhere,” he confided. And she said that the ambiguity or vagueness about which, in particular, Nicholas’ problem was entirely on purpose, as she understands the difficulty people with mental health problems have in coming forward.

“Florian asked us to focus more on the unspoken and unconscious thoughts”, said in one of her few speeches Vanessa Kirby, who two years ago here in Venice won the Coppa Volpi as best female performer for the drama. fragments of a woman.

Another in the race

The other film that is competing for the Golden Lion, perhaps, perhaps, in one of those, embarrasses the Jury that makes up our compatriot Mariano Cohn.

And this Sant’Omerthe first fictional film by acclaimed documentary director Alice Diop, it tackles without snobbery the real and sordid case of a Senegalese woman who leaves her 15-month-old baby on a beach, only to be swept away by the tide.

The French director tackled the real case and focused on what happens in the judicial process in the city that gives the film its title. The stitches in structure and assembly, coming from the documentary, are evident in every scene, because Diop knows perfectly well what to cut, which shot to use to show Laurence’s weaknesses, contradictions and gestures, the fictitious name of his mother.

There is a hidden pregnancy of Laurence: she did not leave the house where her child lived with his father, who was married to another woman. And she herself had her baby right there – and the implications for another woman, who is only a few months pregnant, but doesn’t want to tell her mother, due to his difficult relationship with her.

Two intimate films in an Official Selection that heavily bet on family relationships in that edition.