The 82nd Venice Film Festival has yielded at least one standout, unanimously liked by critics and audiences, turning it into the hottest ticket for an event that also welcomes public ticket-buyers: Park Chan-wook’s “No Other Choice,” which Neon already has for stateside release.
The South Korean “Old Boy” and “The Handmaiden” filmmaker has never been nominated for an Oscar, but this exuberantly well-directed satire starring Lee Byung-hun as a literal paper-pusher pushed to the murderous brink by a depressed job market is a timely, invigorating catch for Venice. Man-soo (Lee) is laid off from his job, and sets about killing off the competition to make himself the only standing specialist in his field.
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Led by filmmaker Alexander Payne and including master, decorated directors like Romania’s Cristian Mungiu and Iran’s Mohammad Rasoulof, the jury will no question award “No Other Choice” a prize. Whether that’s the Golden Lion for best film, best director Park, or best actor Lee is anyone’s guess, but it’s almost certain to be one of them. IndieWire also earlier declared “No Other Choice” an Academy Awards contender; Neon, though, has a very busy international slate with Cannes winners “It Was Just an Accident,” “Sentimental Value,” “The Secret Agent,” and “Sirat,” which could all be in the running for the Best International Feature shortlist.
But back to Venice: Netflix has premiered two out of its three festival titles so far, Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly” and Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein.” Jacob Elordi has earned strong critical notices for his physically transformative portrayal of Victor Frankenstein’s monster; critics, meanwhile, like George Clooney’s turn as a famous Hollywood actor at the end of his tether well enough in Baumbach’s comedy. But critical reaction has been split on the latter, which is more sentimental and misty-eyed than Baumbach’s past films. In other words, if you’re a “Margot at the Wedding” fan, this one’s not for you, but word has been high back in Colorado in Telluride.
Head juror Payne is close with Clooney after directing him to an Oscar nomination in “The Descendants,” but Adam Sandler is the standout (and with the narrative backing him) in the movie as Clooney’s manager. I could imagine the Venice jury going the unexpected route — remember when Lucrecia Martel’s jury awarded “Joker” the Golden Lion? — and honoring Sandler.
Of the Netflix offerings so far, Aussie leading man Elordi, who has steadily been building a great career out of “Euphoria” and since, feels like a worthy contender for a Venice acting prize, too. Del Toro, meanwhile, won the Golden Lion in 2017 for “The Shape of Water”; Venice is a hospitable environment to the beloved Mexican filmmaker, whose new film has its range of ardent fans and admirers even if some reviews are less keen on his latest, high-budget gothic vision.
Swept aside due to its position as the first screening of the festival after Paolo Sorrentino’s muted opener “La Grazia,” László Nemes’ post-World-War-II, “Come and See”-esque coming-of-ager “Orphan” hasn’t elicited much chatter. It’s a skillfully shot and disturbing portrait of Budapest 1957 about a young boy meeting the surly man who claims to be his long-lost father. Nemes hasn’t hit the zeitgeist since his 2015 perspectival Holocaust survival drama, “Son of Saul,” which won the Best International Feature Oscar.
The war in Gaza has been a focus of this year’s festival between protests and press-conference remarks; that Nemes spoke out against Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar speech for “The Zone of Interest” addressing the Israel-Palestine conflict last year has left some unable to separate art from artist at this juncture, but the jury’s job is to look at the films on their own terms.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ sci-fi satire “Bugonia,” starring Emma Stone as a CEO executive kidnapped by conspiracist Jesse Plemons because he thinks she’s an alien, made a strong early impression on the festival. But Lanthimos won the Golden Lion for “Poor Things” in 2023; as much as the jury shouldn’t be biased toward past wins, I don’t see this extraterrestrial-among-us hostage thriller taking the top prize.
Olivier Assayas’ “The Wizard of Kremlin,” with Paul Dano as a fictional kingmaker to Jude Law’s Vladimir Putin, premiered on Sunday and has earned tepid reviews. Homegrown Italian filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi’s black-and-white documentary “Below the Clouds,” a portrait of Neapolitan everyday-ers under Mount Vesuvius, could stand to earn some kind of filmmaking prize for its ruminative black-and-white cinematography and patient editing. That the Biennale is more generous toward including documentaries in competition than, say, Cannes, is starting to amount to something. Laura Poitras’ “All the Beauty in the Bloodshed,” after all, won the Golden Lion in 2022; her piercing journalism portrait “Cover-Up” played out of competition here.
There’s still much to come, from “The Brutalist” Oscar nominee Mona Fastvold’s historical musical drama “The Testament of Ann Lee” (which Brady Corbet co-wrote and produced, as Fastvold did 2024 Venice winner “The Brutalist”) to Benny Safdie’s A24 solo directing outing “The Smashing Machine” and Kathryn Bigelow’s Netflix thriller “A House of Dynamite.” Tonight, Jim Jarmusch’s latest, “Father Mother Sister Brother” will premiere. But right now, the easiest mark if you’re predicting a Venice award winner is, full stop, Park Chan-wook’s “No Other Choice.”
Stay tuned for updates in this post as more Venice contenders shake out.
