‘True Things’: A Sexy Romantic Drama With No Sparks Due To Its Bland Characters [Venice Review]

Filming a teen drama means a lot of love scenes — which could lead to real-life romances. During the Monday, September 13, episode of the “Drama Queens” podcast, hosts Hilarie Burton, Sophia Bush and Joy Lenz answered a fan question about whether it was tough to separate personal feelings from character feelings while filming One Tree Hill.

Jamie Dornan steps out for an in discussion panel at the Variety Studio presented by Canada Goose with Kenneth Branagh during the 2021 Toronto Film Festival in Toronto, Canada on Sunday afternoon (September 12).

In shades of the gunmetal gray that has become the grading palette of choice for Serious Historical Epics — possible because arterial blood spray shows up so nice and red against it —Ridley Scott‘s starry, surprisingly engaging “Rashomon“-inflected “The Last Duel” opens on the wintry December day of the duel in question.

Stéphane Brizé’s “Another World” could make for a worthy conclusion to an unofficial trilogy on contemporary economic relations, following the French filmmaker’s recent efforts “The Measure of a Man” and “At War.” Each work deploys the empathy machine of cinema to demonstrate the brokenness of a system powered by a dehumanizing focus on profits over all else, albeit leveling that critique from a different vantage point at each step along the way.

The talent and influence of Italian composer Ennio Morricone, who died in 2020 aged 91, is undeniable. Synonymous with Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns and the instantly-recognizable “wah-wah-wow” theme-tune to “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,” the extent of his output was phenomenal at over 500 film scores.

“I do consider myself a feminist,” said Ben Affleck to the Venice Film Festival press corps this afternoon. The actor was in town with to talk about his latest pic The Last Duel, along with co-stars Matt Damon and Jodie Comer, director Ridley Scott and co-writer Nicole Holofcener about the 14th century title, based on the book by Eric Jager, which is screening out of competition at the festival tonight.

Quentin Tarantino never met a camera or microphone he didn’t love, and in Luca Rea’s documentary “Django & Django,” they love him right back. The title is a bit of a misnomer – it’s not really about Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 spaghetti western “Django” nor Tarantino’s 2012 “Django Unchained” that paid reverent homage.

Where to begin with “Freaks Out,” a Nazisploitation fantasy caper with circus trappings and a tin-ear for taste. The puzzling thing about Italian director Gabriele Mainetti’s feature set in 1943 in German-occupied Rome is that, rather than embracing tastelessness a la John Waters, it guns for earnestness despite not having a thoughtful bone in its body.

A devastating portrayal of how personal trauma and social alienation can lead to national tragedy, “You Resemble Me” attempts to look beyond the sensationalized headlines to find the humanity in Hasna Aït Boulahcen. As a journalist for Vice, director Dina Amer reported on the Paris terrorist attacks in 2015 and was on the scene when the attack’s mastermind, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, died with Hasna in an explosion as police closed in.

Like finding a grubby, balled-up bill in your spangly g-string and uncrumpling it to discover doughy old Ben Franklin staring benignly back at you, Ana Lily Amirpour‘s third feature is a sweet, scuzzy surprise made all the sweeter/scuzzier because you don’t know quite what you did to deserve it.

Anyone familiar with the work of Mexican director Michel Franco, whether they be admirers or detractors, can attest to the “this is not going to end well” sentiment his sordid cinematic provocations instill. With a pensive angle, “Sundown” – a reteaming between the filmmaker and his “Chronic” star Tim Roth – upholds that tension of expecting the worst to come the characters’ way.

A journey of discovery rooted in questions about faith, fate, and mortality, “Miracle” offers up revelations like slow drips from a faucet, building to a staggering conclusion that synthesizes all of the film’s narrative ingredients. Part two of director Bogdan George Apetri’s Romanian trilogy, the film is self-contained as a piece, yet features characters from 2020’s “Unidentified” along the edges, expanding the tapestry of this world while germinating an entirely new story.

“The Peacock’s Paradise” is one of the worst types of films to watch and review. Ineffectual in its style, but inoffensive in its content and execution, Laura Bispuri’s most recent directorial effort fails to move beyond the rudimentary elements that comprise the average movie.

A poetic meditation on film, history, and loss, “Three Minutes – A Lengthening” gives a glimpse into a lost world and then unpacks just how much can be learned from that brief fragment. While on a grand tour of Europe in 1938, David Kurtz, a Polish-American man, traveled to Nasielsk, the town of his birth, and brought with him a 16mm camera filled with Kodachrome, a novelty at the time.

Guess it had to happen sometime, but it’s a shame that the previously-thought-to-be inexhaustible energy resource of Edgar Wright’s omnivorous, giddy cinephilia should finally be showing signs running out right now, just when a jaded, weary, pandemic-drab world could use it most.

“Why does it take so long to break up? Why does no one talk about the fact that [divorce] is endless trauma?” Jessica Chastain asks in a heartbreaking moment from HBO’s devastating marital and breakup mini-series “Scenes From A Marriage.” A modern adaptation of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman’s brutally emotionally honest 1970s series, now written, directed, and executive produced by Israeli filmmaker Hagai Levi, (“Our Boys,” “The Affair,” and “In Treatment”), this new HBO version is intimate,

Beginning with a dizzying one-shot that follows Judith – or is it Margot? – around a high-end clothing store before a fainting spell upends her shopping trip, Antoine Barraud’s “Madeleine Collins” is a laser-focused character study that literalizes a double-life, following Judith (a calculated Virginie Efira) as she attempts to balance seemingly having two husbands, two sets of children, two complete lives.

There are shades of Ruben Ostlund’s “The Square”, if it were remade to target the film world, in Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat’s crowd-pleasing Spanish comedy “Official Competition” starring Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas. Controlled pacing, visual punchlines, and an insider knowledge of the varied pretensions within filmmaking make this a consistently amusing – if never downright hilarious – vehicle for the well-honed comic sides of two of Spain’s most famous exports.

Ruth Wilson puts in a riveting performance in Venice Film Festival Horizons entry True Things, an impressive follow up to director Harry Wootliff’s debut Only You. Wilson and Jude Law are also among the producers for this intense story, based on the novel True Things About Me by Deborah Kay Davies.