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James McAvoy and Keira Knightley in “Atonement”

“ATONEMENT” OPENS FESTIVAL WITH ELOQUENCE OF STYLES

“Atonement” is a novel in illusionary autobiographical style, written by the renowned Ian McEwan in 2002. With the well-achieved objective of confusing the mind of its readers, the book, now made film, leads one to wonder about the real existence of the character. A writer, who is haunted by jealousy and remorse, only writes her most important book, about regretting the mistakes she made, a little before her death. The novel is the way the character finds to expiate the remorse and guilt she had carried since childhood, for having unfairly accused her sister’s boyfriend of rape, in the heavenly sceneries of the Victorian castle in which her family used to live in 1935, in an England that already felt the signs of Second World War.

The beautiful and touching Joe Wright’s adaptation for the cinema made of ATONEMENT the right film to open the 64th Venice Festival. Its eloquences of style will mark the film, for the careful adaptation to the screen, for the equally elaborate direction (a long shot of the English troops in French territory pay the whole film off), the screenplay (by Christopher Hampton), art direction (by Sarah Greenwood), costumes (Jacqueline Durran) and for the exuberant and excellent interpretations by James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Ramola Garai and Saoirse Ronan. Plus the diva Vanessa Redgrave, who completely stands out as the writer in the dusk of life. ATONEMENT must have an excellent international career towards the Oscar. It is the very expected traditional cinema, which we rarely see with that many talents.

Out of competition, Venice exposes REC, by the Spanish Juame Balagueró and Paco Plaza, giving new originality to the infinity of variations of horror movies. In this case, the film only exists while a video camera, covering for a Spanish TV, is recording, with the rec command on. What starts as a sensationalist cover for a late night show, following a firefighters headquarters, ends with shocking extremes of violence and vampirism in a quiet apartment building being surrounded and isolated in quarantine.

English version: Laura Rebessi