ITALY: Last minute preparations before Venice film festival opens with "Atonement", starring Keira Knightley

Last minute preparations before Venice film festival opens with "Atonement", starring Keira Knightley. Workers dusted the red carpet for the last time before a long parade of a-list stars begin their march at the Venice film festival. The festival opens on Wednesday (August 29) with "Atonement", an adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel about a girl who makes a false accusation with tragic results and tries to atone for her mistake. The movie is the first of 22 in the festival's main competition, and was screened to the press ahead of the glitzy red carpet gala premiere in the evening. For 11 days, the glamorous Lido waterfront will be the focus of hundreds of reporters, photographers, cameramen and critics there to watch films and follow the stars as they promote their pictures and party into the early hours. In "Atonement", up-and-coming British director Joe Wright reunites with actress Keira Knightley, who was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Elizabeth Bennet in "Pride and Prejudice", which they made together in 2005. This time the 22 year-old plays Cecilia Tallis, whose life is turned upside down when sister Briony blames her lover Robbie Turner (James McAvoy) for a crime he did not commit. Briony goes on to becomes a writer and seeks redemption in the real world and through a novel she knows will be her last. Faithful to the books' three-act structure, Briony is played as a 13-year-old girl by Saoirse Ronan, as a young nurse during World War Two by Romola Garai and as an ageing and ailing author by Vanessa Redgrave. The first act takes place in the grandeur of an English country home in the 1930s, where Turner is the housekeeper's son and where Briony lets her imagination run away with her. It moves to the grim battlefields of northern Europe in act two, where Wright seeks to recreate the chaos of the evacuation of Allied forces from Dunkirk through an ambitious single, steadicam shot. The third act is set in a hospital for wounded soldiers and the "postscript" in a television studio where an elderly Briony is interviewed about her novel. At a news conference on Wednesday Knightley said she had not read the novel when first approached for the part. "It had a lot to live up to simply because the script was the finest thing I had ever read and I thought this could be something special, then when I met Joe, then when I started working with Joe, sort of auditioning and things for the part, I really got an idea of how incredible this could be. When I found out Keira was doing it and I actually screen-tested with Keira, I thought if I don't get this part I am never reading the book because it will hurt too much," Knightley said. Actor James McAvoy said he was convinced by the script and the casting. "It had a lot to live up to simply because the script was the finest thing I had ever read and I thought this could be something special, then when I met Joe, then when I started working with Joe, sort of auditioning and things for the part, I really got an idea of how incredible this could be. When I found out Keira was doing it and I actually screen-tested with Keira, I thought if I don't get this part I am never reading the book because it will hurt too much," McAvoy said. Knightley also denied a recent newspaper report that a photograph of her used in a perfume advertisement had been touched up to exaggerate her curves, and said: "I haven't had curves added to my body for a perfume, I don't think, unless you have seen something that I haven't, I don't know , you know I think films particularly deal with fantasy, I think that it's very important, and actually what this film shows is the danger when the line between fiction and fact gets blurred. I think that people have to be very honest about fiction". Throughout the action, the sound of an old typewriter mingles with the score, reminding viewers that what they are watching may be part of the narrative or of Briony's fiction. The performances are reminiscent of old black-and-white films, with stylised gestures and clipped, British accents which Wright uses to communicate the social restrictions of the time. Asked about the way in which the film ended, Wright said: "(one of the difficult questions ) when we were adapting the book was would her literary success look like she hadn't paid for her crime. And hopefully we conveyed that literary success or kind of career success isn't necessarily the road to her redemption. Her art is her road to redemption, if she ever gets there". The Festival jury, including jury president Zhang Yimou, also arrived at the festival venue on Wednesday.

ITN Source | August 30, 2007

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