The 67th Venice International Film Festival opened Wednesday with “Black Swan” making its world premiere as the opening film in competition.
Directed by Darren Aronofsky (“The Wrestler”), the film stars Natalie Portman. She was one of the celebrities in attendance on the opening day of the festival, which runs through Sept. 11.
Other big names in Hollywood are also in Venice as the festival gets underway, including Jessica Alba and Quentin Tarantino. Alba is there to promote “Machete,” which also is making its world premiere as the opening day’s midnight film, but is not part of the competition. Tarantino is the president of the jury which will award the Golden Lion to the winner of the competition.
The New York City ballet scene is the setting for the psychological thriller, “Black Swan.” The film also stars Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, and Winona Ryder. Portman plays an up-and-coming ballerina poised to become the new prima ballerina as the aging star of the ballet prepares to retire.
Wrestling with ballet
Wrestling and ballet would seem to be polar opposites, but Aronofsky doesn’t see it that way.
“The more I looked into the world of ballet, I actually started to see all these similarities to the world of wrestling,” Aronofsky said at a festival news conference. “They both have these performers that use their bodies in sort of extremely, intense physical ways.”
Portman prepared rigorously for the demands of her role.
“Six months ahead of the film, I went into sort of hyper-training,” she said. “Five hours a day I was doing both ballet and cross-training, with swimming.”
Hatchet job?
“Machete” started out as a fake trailer. But audience reactions to it were so overwhelmingly enthusiastic, it became a feature-length film starring Alba as a Latina FBI agent fighting illegal immigration. Alba is half Latina.
Her co-star is Danny Trejo, a character actor perhaps best known for playing “Johnny 23” in “Con-Air.”
The festival has several viewing venues, the largest of which has 1,700 seats. The festival website offers hotel bookings with festival packages.
There are no non-stop flights from Chicago to Venice. Multiple carriers offer flights with one stop.
Comments
I see our new pub tool cut off most of poor Jessica's head! I'm trying to fix it.
Interesting, didn't know about the Venice film fest
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