Venice/Venice

If you have a little bit of free time, and you are wondering whether to watch Venice, Venice. I'll make it easy ... chewing your own toenails would be more fun and enlightening. If you need more convincing, read on, otherwise check out something else.

If only the director of Venice Venice were half as smart as he presents himself to be, perhaps then we would have a bearable movie worthy of our precious time. Wearing a floppy black hat to cover his balding scraggly head the director and star of this film leads us through his self congratulatory world of adoring women. There is the always loving ex-lover, the worldly Parisian, the young and bubblegummy Californian, and the ever loving secretary, desperately trying to capture the 'brilliant genius'. Through this game the director and star tries to weave strands of reality into the story allowing us to wonder whether the women really love him, or act only to love him. Previous to seeing this movie, I read Leonard Matlin review and I thought it a strong review, most likely and unwarranted one. Now I agree completely. Unless you like seeing women half the age of their love interest and obviously desperate for an acting job make complete fools of themselves as they desperately try to emote lust and desire, this film is a complete waste. Actually not a complete waste, this movie also has David Duchovny in a supporting role and it looks like he is as uncomfortable with his role as his character is. Most scenes have David squirming to get away from the camera, and carefully avoiding the audiences eyes. It is a sweet and charming performance. Too bad he had to share the film with such an obnoxious lout, whose lazy eyes and dopey california drawl leave much to be desired in what is clearly not acting. In the end this movie attempts something far more involved and interesting than possible in the hands of such a bumbling amateur.

After viewing such a movie I am only left with the following -- How on earth was this movie financed? Who in their right mind gives this man money to make movies? -- and finally -- If this movie was made with the director's money, and made essentially for himself, why does he think anyone else would want to see it?

I give it a solid 1. For Duchovny

This movie is completely unbearable due to the ubiquitous vanity of the writer/director/main actor (the only person able to successfully fill these positions simultaneously seems to be Woody Allen).

If you like movies about making movies please do yourself a favour and watch Fellini's "8 1/2" or Truffaut's "La nuit américaine" instead. If you like movies, where people mostly sit around and talk, I can highly recommend most of Eric Rohmer's work, he knows how to do it. But please stay away from this utterly revulsive piece of pseudo-intellectual garbage.

This is not such a bad movie, although I'm torn between hating it and liking it. The dialogues are obviously heavily influenced by Altman and Woody Allen, i.e. meant to sound spontaneous, realistic and witty, which is often a two-edged sword; this style makes the dialogues interesting to follow but makes the characters highly annoying, i.e. there's rarely anyone to sympathize with at all, and that is practically the case here, too. Woody Allen's movies also have this trait: irritating but interesting characters.

The story reveals a huge ego behind the script, much like with Allen's movies. Jaglom is a narcissist at best, and a deluded egomaniac at worst. His character (basically himself, or how he would like to see himself, but with a fictional name) is that of a renowned director (ego alert!) who visits a European festival (pretentiousness alert!), where he meets a fairly attractive female fan who wants to meet him (ego alert!). Male fantasy, anyone? Jaglom is not only the central character here, but he lives out his fantasies of being a major director, plus some female worship of His Highness, His Jaglomity, thrown in for good measure. Of course, Allen is just as bad, if not worse; in how many Allen movies does he go out with women who are approximately 10,000 times better-looking than him? (Numbers lose all meaning in this case.) The difference is, however, that Allen's movies are usually comedies which are usually funny, while Jaglom's "V/V" is basically a relationship movie with a smaller dose of humour.

I certainly wish I had seen this movie ten years ago. "Venice/Venice" raises interesting questions about movies and television versus real life. A reporter falls in love with a Director but struggles to separate her admiration of his work from the real person. Although I saw this movie because Duchovny was in it, his performance was not the highlight, although he had a couple of cute scenes in the second half of the film. One of the highlights are the clips shown throughout the movie of women commenting on their fantasies of characters played by Cary Grant and Gary Cooper. If it were filmed today, I bet some women would mention Duchovny as their romantic on-screen hero.

This movie was fascinating, if you have a chance to see it, do so.

Venice/Venice is about the blur between reality and fiction, which many artists seem to struggle with. Before I saw it, I read an interview with Jaglom where he said that this film was his homage to Fellini's 8 1/2. I'd say it owes more to some of Fellini's later works, like The Clowns and Intervista, which are a blend of fiction and documentary that many film buffs find hard to stomach. I don't-this kind of experimentation is the kind of work I crave. To see a film by my favorite living filmmaker where he pays tribute to the techniques of my favorite dead filmmaker was irresistible to me.

It's tempting because Jaglom casts himself in a primary role to think that he is the star of the film, but really, Venice/Venice belongs to Nelly Alard. She plays a character who is in love with the films of the director played by Jaglom, but learns soon enough that what she saw on film is not quite the real persona of the man behind them, and her disillusionment is the motor of the film.

Interspersed with the fictional segments are documentary-esque segments of women being interviewed about film and how the films they grew up watching shaped their perceptions of the world around them. Many, many times throughout the film, they said things that came straight from my own mouth, and it was a comfort to know that it wasn't just me who felt that way. Venice/Venice is Jaglom's love letter to the film medium, and how it changes those impacted by it, for good or for bad.

All the same, this film didn't hit me between the eyes and knock me out the way Jaglom's other works, especially Eating, did, and it runs just a tad bit too long for my tastes, but it's still a marvelous piece of work. And it's one that is going to leave me thinking for a long time after, and will, I think, grow on me.