The Venice Film Festival kicks off tomorrow and one of the most highly anticipated premieres is happening on Thursday – Pablo Larraín’s Maria, starring Angelina Jolie, will screen there before Telluride, and for months people have been saying that Angelina’s performance in the film could be nominated for an Oscar.
Vanity Fair published a big feature on Maria a few days ago with all kinds of information that seems perfectly set up for award season. Pablo had Angelina Jolie specifically in mind for the role because, of course, only she would understand the experience of a true diva; Angelina trained for six months, and apparently we’ll hear some of her singing in the film. Mostly though, since Maria is the final piece in Pablo’s trilogy that started with Jackie and then Spencer, this performance will be grounded in mood – this paragraph sums it up:
“A few weeks in, Larraín stopped giving Jolie instructions. The best direction was silence; the best note was no note. “It was so truthful, we just kept rolling and let her do her thing,” he says. “She can let you in when she wants, and she can create a distance where she wants. It’s a dance of vulnerability.”
Jackie and Spencer were showcase films for two actresses, Natalie Portman and Kristen Stewart, who went on to Oscar nominations. Clearly Pablo understands what it takes to provide a canvas on which these actors can bring so much dimension to these real-life and larger-than-life historical figures. It sounds like he’s created another opportunity for Angelina. He describes their partnership as a truly transformative artistic connection and Vanity Fair says that it “resulted in a defining, crowning, at times staggering performance”. The New York Film Festival will also be screening Maria later in September and their programme calls it “all-consuming performance at once poignant and imperious”.
We’ll see on Thursday if Maria and Angelina can live up to this hype. And how long before it secures US distribution. Right now Maria does not have a release date but that’s not unusual, especially not in these times as Sarah has written over and over again about the lack of support in the industry for small to mid-budget films. Consider that another one of Venice’s big buzz titles, Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, starring Daniel Craig, also doesn’t have US distribution yet. This is Luca Guadagnino! We all know his track record, so everyone seems to be watching and waiting.
Here's Angelina arriving in Venice today, very much in movie star mode. The short-sleeve trench coat is buttery and luxurious. Those may be best boots she’s worn in year. And this happened just as the Toronto International Film Festival announced today that she’s to receive the TIFF Tribute Award in Impact Media for her work as a philanthropist and humanitarian. She’ll be at TIFF in support of Without Blood, the film she directed starring Salma Hayek and Demián Bechir and much of their efforts in Toronto will also be for distribution, although of course, if Maria pops like it’s expected to pop in Venice, and she actually moves into position for a nomination, that will be the priority through the fall.
But the best news is that if she’s in Venice and TIFF was able to go ahead and announce her presence at the Tribute Awards on Sunday 8 September, it has to mean that Pax (who was in a serious accident a few weeks ago) is well enough for her to travel.
We're Squawking about this today. (App link here)
