Poor Things comedy wins top prize at Venice Festival

Poor Issues, a gothic sex-charged comedy directed by Greece’s Yorgos Lanthimos, has gained the distinguished Golden Lion award on the Venice Movie Competition.

Starring Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo, the British-made movie wowed festival-goers with its zany story of a girl reanimated after dying by a mad physician who replaces her mind with that of her unborn child.

Childlike however with an grownup’s physique, Stone’s character Bella Baxter grows more and more impartial and excited by her sexual experimentations as she undertakes a voyage of self-discovery by way of a surreal model of nineteenth century Europe.

“The central character is Bella Baxter, an unimaginable creature, and she or he wouldn’t exist with out Emma Stone, one other unimaginable creature,” stated Lanthimos, whose earlier movies embody The Favorite and The Lobster.

Venice marks the beginning of the awards season and usually throws up large favourites for the Oscars, with eight of the previous 11 finest director awards going to movies that debuted right here.

The highest performing awards on the competition went to 2 US stars – Cailee Spaeny, who performed the previous spouse of Elvis Presley within the biopic Priscilla, and Peter Sarsgaard, who featured within the gritty household drama Reminiscence.

The runner-up Silver Lion award went to Evil Does Not Exist, an enigmatic, rural drama directed by Japan’s Ryusuke Hamaguchi – the one Asian entry among the many 23 movies competing for the principle prize.

Saturday’s ceremony wrapped up the 11-day film marathon, which drew an array of high movies to Venice, however far fewer stars than regular as a long-running Hollywood actors’ strike prevented many A-listers from coming to advertise their work.

Actors and writers are demanding that streaming websites and movie studios enhance their contracts and impose curbs on using synthetic intelligence.

Gathering his award, Sarsgaard stated AI needed to be curbed, warning that the problem had implications that went far past Hollywood.

“This holy expertise of being a human will likely be handed over to the machines and the eight billionaires who personal them. So if we lose that battle within the strike, our trade would be the first of many to fall,” he stated.

Amongst different prizes handed out in Venice was a particular Jury’s Award for Inexperienced Border, a harrowing movie about migrants trapped on the Polish-Belarus border, directed by Poland’s Agnieszka Holland.

Finest director went to Italy’s Matteo Garrone for Me Captain, one other gripping migrant film, which follows two youngsters from Senegal as they cross Africa hoping to achieve Europe.

The younger star of the movie, Seydou Sarr, gained the award for finest rising actor or actress.

Finest screenplay went to Guillermo Calderon and Pablo Larrain for the script of El Conde, a satirical movie about Chilean dictator Basic Augusto Pinochet.