Rihanna dresses up her baby bump in a soft peach dress while arriving at the Off-White Womenswear Fall/Winter 2022/2023 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on Monday afternoon (February 28) in Paris, France.
12.02.2022 - 05:51 / variety.com
Jessica Kiang Freezing winter in a place designed for frolicsome summer can be a doleful time. A case in point: the empty hotels, shuttered waterparks and endless fog banks of the Italian beach town that gives Ulrich Seidl’s challenging but riveting Berlin competition film its name.
Along with the hazy gray shoreline and lonely iced-over thoroughfares, they’re the visual markers of a low season in which the “low” refers as much to mood as occupancy rates, though for the city’s tourist industry, it’s a gloom that will lift with the coming of spring. For Seidl’s film, a shiveringly precise slow burn that continues to burrow new tunnels in the mind long after it ends, no such renewal is in the cards.
In “Rimini,” low season can always get lower. The brilliantly named Richie Bravo (Austrian actor Michael Thomas giving such an astoundingly deep-dive performance it barely feels like performance at all) is a washed-up singer whose own high season is long behind him.
Living alone in a rundown Rimini villa decorated outside in peeling paint and inside with beer bottles and posters of a thinner, younger Richie in his salad days, he supplements the meager income accrued from infrequent, sparsely-attended hotel club nights by sleeping with women from the audience for money. That these women are no longer in the first blush of youth does not seem to trouble Richie that much; he may be essentially a gigolo but he does, in his way, invest himself fully in the work.
Rihanna dresses up her baby bump in a soft peach dress while arriving at the Off-White Womenswear Fall/Winter 2022/2023 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on Monday afternoon (February 28) in Paris, France.
Amelia Hamlin, 20, is a Versace girl! The California-born model sizzled in a Barbie pink latex dress by the designer as she headed to their Milan Fashion Week show in Italy on Friday, Feb. 25. Amelia took to Instagram to show off the look as she posed in the back of a vehicle, looking like a total 2000s babe. “hi,” she wrote with several heart emojis, as well as a flower and purse. She added tags for the brand and Donatella Versace, also shouting out Pat McGrath for her glam.
Anne Hathaway is stepping out for the night!
Anne Hathaway is paying a visit.
Here’s another walking-and-talking film from festival favorite Hong Sang-soo, encapsulating a sliver of Korean life with his customary elusive delicacy. Shot largely in creamy black and white, Berlin competition entry The Novelist’s Film centers on the meeting between two artists who, for different reasons, have simply stopped working.
Marta Balaga Danish helmer Lone Scherfig is already developing the second season of “The Shift”, she revealed on Monday during an online Berlinale Series Market talk “From Film to Series.”Set in a maternity ward and starring Sofie Gråbøl and Pål Sverre Hagen, it’s the first series as a showrunner for Scherfig, who in 2019 opened Berlinale with “The Kindness of Strangers” and won a Silver Bear for “Italian for Beginners.”“It’s a tribute to the people who work in the healthcare system under extreme pressure, to the care and the love they show, even despite tough working conditions,” she said. “The Shift” is produced by Creative Alliance, with Beta Film handling the sales.
Zara and Mike Tindall have been celebrating Valentine's Day in Italy.The former rugby player, 43, posted a sweet snap of the couple on Instagram as they enjoyed a romantic dinner ahead of the Six Nations match between England and Italy on Sunday 13 February. Mike, who recently shared rare details about the royal family's WhatsApp group, was in Rome for work.
Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentMemento International has closed major sales on Ursula Meier’s Berlin contender “The Line,” and “Boy from Heaven” by Tarik Saleh, the Swedish-Egyptian helmer of “The Nile Hilton Incident.” A religious and political thriller, “Boy From Heaven” is set in Cairo, in a Koranic school following the collapse of a grand imam which marks the start of a ruthless battle for influence.The movie is headlined by Tawfeek Barhom and Fares Fares, who previously starred in “The Nile Hilton Incident.” Saleh’s Stockholm-based outfit Atmo is producing the movie with Memento. Memento International has sold the film to Benelux (Cineart), Spain (La Aventura), Italy (Movies Inspired), Greece (Cinobo), Hungary (Vertigo) and Middle East (Falcon). Other territories in negotiation.
Strictly Come Dancing bosses are reportedly planning to replace long-serving judge Bruno Tonioli with Anton Du Beke. The 55-year-old took over from the Italian dancer, 66, in 2021, after he was forced to remain in the US due to the Covid pandemic and commitments to Dancing With The Stars. Anton was a firm fan favourite during last year’s series – which saw actress Rose Ayling-Eliis crowned winner – and now, producers are planning to make his transition from the dance floor to the podium permanent, according to The Sun.
Bruno Tonioli's role as Strictly judge could be officially axed as he could be permanently replaced by Anton Du Beke.
There’s bleak, there’s despairing, and then there is Ulrich Seidl, Austrian chronicler of the marginal, the miserable and plain mad. If there are Nazis still worshipping Hitler in some rural basement, Seidl will dig them out. Closet religious fanatics, marriages mired in cruelty, depraved things respectable people do on holiday that nobody at home will know about: Ulrich Seidl sets them out for all to see. Perhaps the Rimini director/co-writer is not so much bleak as relentlessly clear-eyed.
Dario Argento’s Berlin Film Festival Special Gala entry Dark Glasses plays out almost like a parody of his earlier work. Co-written with Franco Ferrini, it’s a lurid giallo about a killer slaughtering women in contemporary Rome. It lacks the suspense and style of Argento’s work in the 70s and 80s, while repeating various themes.
Tom Holland hangs out with director Francesco Totti for an interview in Rome, Italy on Thursday afternoon (February 10).