ITALY: Busy red carpet at Venice as two Asian films and one British movie premiere at the film festival

Directors and cast members of 'Kantoku Banzai', 'Lust, Caution' and 'Sleuth' get the red carpet treatment at the Venice Film Festival. It was a glamorous end to a busy day at the Venice Film Festival with three movies from acclaimed film-makers making their world premieres on Thursday (August 30). Japanese cult director Takeshi Kitano was the first to face the screaming fans, as he arrived for the official screening of 'Kantoku Banzai' (Glory to the Filmmaker!). Kitano, who won the Golden Lion in 1997 with 'Hana-Bi' ('Fireworks') pokes fun at himself and at the cinema industry at large with 'Kantoku Banzai', the surreal tale of a director who does not know which film to make. The film sees Kitano trying different genres to come up with a movie that would succeed better than his earlier films. Oscar winner Ang Lee, director of gay cowboy classic "Brokeback Mountain", followed Kitano with the world premiere of 'Lust, Caution', which sees the director return to the theme of forbidden love with a sexually explicit thriller set in the teeming streets of 1940s Shanghai. "Lust, Caution" is based on a short story by Eileen Chang, and follows a group of revolutionary students who hatch a plot to assassinate a powerful political figure who is collaborating with occupying forces during the Sino-Japanese war. First-time actress Tang Wei portrays the young woman who agrees to ensnare the sinister figure, played by one of Asia's biggest screen stars Tony Leung. Media attention ahead of the new movie's release this year will focus on the long, acrobatic and sometimes disturbing sex scenes between the main characters, which Lee hinted were real. "Lust, Caution" marks the Taiwan-born director's return to Chinese-language drama after several English films made in the West. East and West meet in "Lust, Caution", with a character visiting a cinema and watching a 1940s English-language classic and a poster for Alfred Hitchcock's 1941 thriller "Suspicion" appearing on the wall. Lee, who also made "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", said he had to expand on Chang's original story, which was only 28 pages long, for the plot of his two-and-a-half hour film. The story partly reflects Chang's real-life story, in that she fell in love with a man who was labelled a traitor for collaborating with the Japanese. In the United States, the film has been given an NC-17 rating, the Hollywood Reporter said, meaning no one under 17 will be admitted and limiting its box office potential. The last premiere on Thursday was for Kenneth Branagh's 'Sleuth', a rewrite of the 1972 thriller with Michael Caine starring as an older writer who enters a cat-and-mouse game with his wife's young lover, played by Jude Law. More than 30 years ago it was Caine who played the younger role now taken by Law in this two central character movie. Director Kenneth Branagh and the cast, presenting the film in Venice where it is one of 22 titles in the main competition, said he'd received a good response to the film. "It's been very very encouraging so far, I've been very excited by the reaction, yeah, very happy," Branagh said as he arrived for the premiere. In a reversal of roles, Caine takes on what had been Laurence Olivier's role as Andrew Wyke, an ageing and eccentric crime fiction author who invites his wife's lover, the penniless and charming actor Milo Tindle played by Law, to meet him at home. Faithful to its theatrical roots, the film is based on the witty dialogue between the two and is set entirely in Wyke's house. But this time Pinter drastically changed the interior from chintz curtains and flowery cushions to an ultra-modern decor of remotely-controlled doors, internal lifts and omnipresent surveillance cameras adding to a sense of paranoia.

ITN Source | September 6, 2007

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