The Odd Couples: Venice Film Festival’s Hidden Rhymes and Secret Kinships

Despite the tireless efforts of critics and commentators to unearth it, the fil rouge said to link all the films at a festival is more often the result of coincidence than of design. Can a single event—no matter how expansive or cosmopolitan, like the Venice Film Festival—truly offer a snapshot of the state of global cinema? For the author of this piece, the answer is a firm no. And yet, amid the sprawling programme that unfolded this year on the Lido, the writer couldn’t help but detect hidden kinships and secret rhymes between films that appeared, at first glance, entirely unrelated. What follows, then, is a parade of odd couples—unlikely pairings that emerged over the course of the 82nd Venice Film Festival.

Catch Me If You Dare

Curiously enough, Bugonia by Yorgos Lanthimos and Dead Man’s Wire by Gus Van Sant both revolve around an abduction. Even more curiously, both films lead the viewer to empathize more with the kidnapper than with the one who is kidnapped. The two “victims” are, after all, strikingly similar figures—embodiments of a cannibalistic, domineering neoliberalism. Whether in the meticulously reconstructed 1970s of Van Sant or in the grotesque future imagined by Lanthimos, their moral bankruptcy is unmistakable.

Populist cinema? Perhaps—but with a crucial distinction: Dead Man’s Wire envisions a resolution to class struggle through empathy, while Bugonia embraces a radically nihilistic vision. Van Sant’s humanism versus Lanthimos’s cosmic pessimism.

Creators and Creatures

Guillermo Del Toro has long professed his boundless love for monsters, outcasts, and society’s misfits. But more than a meditation on otherness, his Frankenstein ends up circling another of the Mexican director’s enduring obsessions: the reflection of the father figure, the wound of abandonment, and the deeply human need to belong as someone’s child. In Venice, Del Toro has been harshly criticized for the synthetic texture of his imagery—flattened by deliberate use of CGI and uncannily reminiscent of some AI-generated visual monsters. But aren’t these precisely “Frankenstein-images“?

And if cinema is nothing but a postmodern exercise—a game of destruction and reassembly—one cannot help but think of Posty Ponciroli’s elevated action movie Motor City. With its unmistakably ‘70s vibe and its archetypal characters, the film all but eliminates dialogue, favouring instead a series of slow-motion sequences loaded with spectacular visual flair. Watching Motor City is like sitting through an endlessly extended trailer—the pure distillation of an old-fashioned imagery.

“I just wanted to be a director”

Bravo Bene! (Un film fatto per Bene) by Franco Maresco and Divine Comedy (Komedie Elahi) by Ali Asgari are two very different films, in many respects. Bravo Bene!, a behind-the-scenes look at a movie that was never made, blends black-and-white with color, film with digital, fiction with documentary, unfolding in a fragmented and chaotic style reminiscent of Situationist gestures. Divine Comedy, the autobiographical story of a director who cannot screen his film in his native Iran, adopts a more classical and controlled structure, its narrative progressing through restrained fixed shots and refined tableaux vivants.

Yet, despite these vast differences, Maresco and Asgari ultimately reflect on the same painful questions: What does it mean to be a filmmaker? How does one survive the dull stubbornness of power? In both cases, the answer involves (also) a heavy dose of self-irony—a precious antidote against the stereotyped portrayal of the intellectual as an untouchable genius.

Chaos in a Chamber Play

A House of Dynamite is a high-octane thriller that brilliantly captures the essence of post-9/11 American paranoia. Its screenplay operates with the precision of a finely tuned clockwork, while Kathryn Bigelow’s masterful direction elevates the film to moments of striking spectacle, despite being confined to just a few indoor settings.

Another space saturated with heavily intense tension is the control room of the Red Crescent, where the entirety of The Voice of Hind Rajab (Ṣawt al-Hind Rajab) is set. With this violent and sometimes reckless work, Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania shatters every taboo surrounding the portrayal of death, propelled by the urgent imperative of her political message.

Paradoxically, the two films that most eloquently speak to the contemporary in this Venetian lineup are surprisingly “stagnant” and seemingly theatrical works. Cinema works in mysterious ways.

Maria Sole Colombo
Edited by Robert Horton
© FIPRESCI 2025