Hollywood stars head Venice film festival

HOLLYWOOD rolled out its big guns at the Venice International Film Festival yesterday as John Travolta and Denzel Washington showed off their latest movies.

Washington is plugging Jonathan Demme’s blockbuster The Manchurian Candidate, a remake of John Frenkenheimer’s 1962 classic about how money influences politics.

The taut psychological thriller, which stars Meryl Streep as a razor-tongued US senator, features Washington as a US army major suspicious of his experiences in Desert Storm.

Applauded by critics after its European premiere yesterday, it appeared to vindicate festival director Marco Muller’s decision to embrace Hollywood in preference to lower budget movies this year in a bid to appeal to younger audiences.

Demme denied the film had any particular political message in an election year. “I feel that Manchurian Candidate is first and foremost a thriller. I approached it with the idea I was going to try to shape the film like a film I did earlier, Silence of the Lambs.”

Streep said the film, released this summer in the US, “is being very well received at home, because it’s such a time that is politically very charged and people have all the issues where money influences politics on their minds.”

Travolta’s latest film A Love Song for Bobby Long is an altogether quieter affair, set against the sultry backdrop of New Orleans.

It features the star of Pulp Fiction slipping effortlessly into the character of an alcoholic, white-haired literature professor, complete with the classic drawl of America’s deep south.

This sentimental first feature by Shainee Gabel tells the story of a misfit teenager, played by Scarlett Johansson, who returns to New Orleans on her mother’s death to find Travolta, the bawdy drop-out professor of the title, and his protege-turned-biographer Lawson Pines, played by Gabriel Macht, living in her house.

The dialogue between Travolta’s character and Macht is peppered with literary quotations and allusions.

“A big influence on wanting to write the film is the city of New Orleans itself and the city of New Orleans is kind of a hotbed of writers, like William Faulkner to Tenessee Williams. It’s something very vibrant, vital, evocative about the city,” said Gabel.

Travolta, whose performance as a dying man has won rave reviews here, was taken by the script’s literary references.

“I grew up on Tennessee Williams in plays and on screen so when Shainee submitted the script to me it seemed almost a contemporary Tennessee Williams to me,” he said.

The story of a three people’s rediscovery of their past features a strong performance from Johansson, who already won the battle for Venice’s hearts and minds with her stunning performance.

“New Orleans is a character itself in the film. And it’s such a sexy, dirty hot place to be, that I think it influenced all of us pretty much,” said Johansson.

“It’s such a spiritual place that the eclipse the characters make in the film couldn’t really happen anywhere else, I think.”

Johansson, not yet 20, is also on the jury given the task of choosing the recipient of the Golden Lion, the festival’s best film of the 21 in competition.

A French film, 5 x 2 (Cinq fois deux) by Francois Ozon, put itself in contention when it was warmly received by critics at a preview.

Ozon’s film is about five moments in the life of a modern young couple - running from separation, back through a dinner with friends, the birth of their child, their marriage and their first meeting.