Venice 2025: Clooney in full ego-trip and Emma Stone still demented in Lanthimos
The star of Ocean’s Eleven plays an actor in crisis in the bland Jay Kelly of Noah Baumbach, while Emma Stone has fun like crazy in the Bugonia political fable.
George Clooney is a guest washed actor in an Italian film festival. No, this is not a derogatory comment on our part on the arrival of the sixties in the Venice Mostra to present Jay Kellythe new film by Noah BaumbachIt is literally The pitch of said film: Jay Kelly (Clooney, therefore), legend of the seventh art at the height of his glory, is invited by a Transalpine festival (in Turin, and not in Venice) to receive a prize celebrating his career. But the acrobat is tired, life on the shooting sets prevented him from taking care of his daughters (now large), he is haunted by a feeling of imposture dating from his years of learning, he exhausts his entourage (including Adam Sandler, excellent as a nizan agent) with his whims of a spoiled child, and poster of Paul Newman on the wall of his box seems to be the opportunity For him to take stock of his existence.
From the opening sequence and its nostalgic twilight scent, showing the shooting of the last plan of what could well be the last film by Jay Kelly, Noah Baumbach is under the joint patronages of the Robert Altman of The Player and truffaut of American nightbefore sending during the rest of the movie many reverencious winks to the Fellini de 8 ½passed to the Woody-Allenian reel of Stardust Memories. The irony that wants this umpteenth lamento on the death of a certain idea of cinema and the star-system is done in a Netflix film (which Baumambach has not left since The Meyerowitz Stories) will of course escape anyone.
Jay Kelly Put on Truffaldian pearls on films that are more harmonious than life, on the big actors who merge so much with their roles that they forget to live, and on the charm of “real people” as opposed to the above-ground fauna of the rich and famous (astounding scene where Jay Kelly rediscovers the simple pleasures of existence because he travels in a train in second class). The narrative gimmicks that Baumbach and his co-series here, actress Emily Mortimer (who also plays in the film), seemed to us completely wrung, like these scenes where Jay Kelly is mentally propelled in key moments of his life, of which he becomes the spectator …
Baumbach’s film is entirely built on the mirror effect between the character and his interpreter, between Kelly and Clooney, but most of the time delights in a snoring sentimentalism. Between two regulatory self -deprecation sequences (many jokes about the very sophisticated way in which Clooney dyes his hair), he draws up a statue disproportionate to the glory of his actor, compared without much distance to Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Mastroianni, just that. The most embarrassing scene being the one where Clooney cries in front of an assembly of extracts from his films – and not necessarily the most famous. You will really have to be a hardcore fan of The American, The Good German or Dupes games To shed a tear with him at that time.
Zinzin variation on invaders
Emma Stone takes much more risks in Bugone’s one’sof Yorgos Lanthimos (real ‘that she never leaves after Favorite, Poor creatures et Kinds of Kindness), even if, at home, “extreme” or uncomfortable roles are about to become routine. Bugonia is the remake of a South Korean film completely barjo, not very well known but adored by those who saw it (truly cult, therefore), Save the Green Planet !directed by Jang Joon-Hwan in 2003. A hallucinated madness on a somewhat lost beekeeper who removes a CEO because he is convinced that he is a bellicose alien, also responsible for the disease from which his mother suffers. Which was about twenty years ago a pitch of sf azimuated, variation zinzin on The invaders mixing thriller and torture-porn, becomes under the eye of Lanthimos and the pen of Will Tracy (screenwriter of the Menu) A political and eminently contemporary fable on conspiracy, cultural wars and misdeeds of Big Pharma.
Look like a sketch of Kinds of Kindness (but much better than any sketch of Kinds of Kindness), the film re -uses two of the pillars of the troop of Lanthimos, Jesse Plemons, in the role of the ravableman, and Emma Stone, therefore, who plays business chef in the robotic approach, and that we see once again here in all her states, shaved skull, coated with various substances, tortured on Green Day, singing Chappell Roan, With flexibility insane to use its self-defense lessons. The little tone of cool misanthropy of Lanthimos and the Stridentian spaters-bourgeois of its staging always embarrass to the surroundings, but difficult to deny that the film is highly entertaining. It is the third feature film of the director who arrives at us in barely two years, the Lanthimos machine runs at full speed, to the point that its strings are likely to become more and more clarifying, and that its electroshocs seem to be sworn in a little too mechanical. Why does it turn so much? As a quote from Truffaut heard in Jay Kellyexplaining the reason why some filmmakers want to chain films without catching their breath: “Sometimes it’s the quantity that impresses.”
Jay Kellyfrom Noah Baumbach, with George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern… on December 5 on Netflix.
Bugoniafrom Yorgos Lanthimos, with Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Alicia Silverstone… on November 26 at the cinema.
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