Audrey Diwan’s L’Événement wins the Gold­en Lion at Venice 2021

It can be grat­ing read­ing a film fes­ti­val round up piece in which some priv­i­leged so-and-so wax­es lyri­cal about what a great time he/​she had main­lin­ing movies in some sun­ny clime or oth­er. So if you’ve made it this far, know that this is writ­ten in the spir­it of infor­ma­tion and enter­tain­ment, and in the hope that you’ll add some of the film titles men­tioned here­in to what­ev­er tool you use to tab­u­late future view­ing engagements.

Despite a dig­i­tal tick­et­ing sys­tem that was devel­oped by Beelzebub’s own vile hellspawn, the 2021 Venice Film Fes­ti­val was a bit of a banger all told. Not soured at all by the fact that your trusty scribe returned home with a dose of Covid-19. There were, to my knowl­edge, no hor­ren­dous pub­lic bel­lyflops, but there were a fair few small­er titles that man­aged to lift their head above the para­pet of flash­bulbs, red car­pet glam­our and A‑list glitterati.

One such film was Audrey Diwan’s L’Événement which yomped to vic­to­ry by claim­ing the Gold­en Lion, which was award­ed unan­i­mous­ly by Bong Joon-ho’s jury. The film, about a teenag­er search­ing des­per­ate­ly for an abor­tion in 1960s France, is an incred­i­ble achieve­ment, ful­ly deserv­ing of its acco­lades and will now hope­ful­ly be off on a long and wind­ing run through fes­ti­vals and cin­e­mas – hope­ful­ly some of which will be in locales with restric­tive abor­tion laws.

The sec­ond place award went to a film that could not be more dif­fer­ent: Pao­lo Sorrentino’s dewy-eyed teen remem­brance The Hand of God which sees the Ital­ian show­man embrac­ing his sen­ti­men­tal side, with very mixed results. Pené­lope Cruz had two aces in her hand this year when it came to scor­ing sil­ver­ware: as a high­ly-strung, frizzy-haired movie direc­tor in Gastón Duprat and Mar­i­ano Cohn hilar­i­ous Offi­cial Com­pe­ti­tion; and as a new moth­er in an emo­tion­al tan­gle in Pedro Almodovar’s immac­u­late Par­al­lel Moth­ers. And she deserved­ly won for the latter.

The best actor gong went to John Arcil­la, star of Erik Matti’s On the Job: The Miss­ing Eight, which your hum­ble reporter was not able to see this year hav­ing left the Lido a few days before the com­pe­ti­tion wrapped up. Direc­tor seemed like a fait accom­pli for Jane Cam­pi­on, whose melan­cholic fron­tier west­ern The Pow­er of the Dog has been craft­ed with extra­or­di­nary care and atten­tion – she even gets a very good per­for­mance out of Bene­dict Cumberbatch.

One of the most pleas­ant sur­pris­es of the fes­ti­val was Mag­gie Gyllenhaal’s debut as writer and direc­tor – her engross­ing adap­ta­tion of Ele­na Ferrante’s nov­el The Lost Daugh­ter. And it also goes some way to affirm how great Pené­lope Cruz was this year, that she some­how man­aged to trump Olivia Colman’s turn as tac­i­turn aca­d­e­m­ic slum­ming on a Greek island and being forced to recall her tumul­tuous years as a moth­er of two pre-teens. Gyl­len­haal scored the best screen­play award.

The Spe­cial Jury Prize went to one of the most bold and unique films of this year’s com­pe­ti­tion, the gob­s­mack­ing­ly great Il Buco by the Ital­ian direc­tor Michelan­ge­lo Fram­marti­no. It’s a doc­u­ment of a spelunk­ing mis­sion from the 1960s and, how­ev­er much you think about it, it’s just impos­si­ble to work out how this film was made.

Bravi to the jury: a crack­ing set of awards this year. And that now makes two major Euro­pean fes­ti­vals giv­ing awards to films about women’s bod­ies (with Cannes award­ing Julia Ducournau’s Titane the Palme d’Or).