Venice Film Festival (7): Humans, children!

Festival directors like to talk about “curating”. But the reality is probably more that such a competition depends on many factors that nobody can control. Shooting plans, for example, a lengthy production, sometimes moody studios or diva-like directors who prefer to wait for Cannes. From a curatorial point of view, this year’s Venice competition would have to be described as the only chaos – unless big names are the only criterion.

But sometimes you notice a creative will in the program – even if it’s when scheduling. Or is it only to be understood as an aid to the film critics, who look for common threads in the program every day, that on Wednesday two French films about parents who are unable to cope with their roles can be seen in the competition? Whereby the similarities between Florian Zeller’s “The Son” and Alice Diop’s “Saint Omer” basically exhaust themselves in their theme. Zeller comes from the theater, Diop from the documentary film: you can see both in their productions.

Love alone is not enough

For Zeller, it’s the premiere at an A festival after his debut The Father, which immediately put the celebrated playwright on Hollywood’s radar. Hugh Jackman and Vanessa Kirby play Peter and Beth, who have just welcomed their first child, in The Son. Problems are caused by Peter’s teenage son from his first marriage to Kate (Laura Dern), whom he left for the younger woman. After the separation, Nicholas increasingly withdraws from the world, has depressive phases and upsets those around him with erratic mood swings. Peter begins to reflect on his loveless relationship with his own father (Anthony Hopkins), just as his new family threatens to collapse under the pressure.

Zeller bases his films on the screenplay. Like the dementia drama “The Father”, he surrounds “The Son” with a kind of mystery narrative that is only marginally interested in the boy’s illness and perceptions. Zeller consistently takes the perspective of adults, also in film, who are too busy with themselves to be able to understand their increasingly desperate son beyond the parental sense of responsibility. It is the psychiatrist who debunks this narcissism: “Love alone is not enough.”

The sentence also sounds – with completely different connotations – in Diop’s court drama “Saint Omer”, in which the young Frenchwoman Laurence (Guslagie Malanda) from Senegal is accused of killing her baby. The author Rama (Kayije Kagame) attends the trial for a “Medea” project, but realizes in the course of the trial that she has more in common with the accused than just the color of her skin. (Without exception, the judiciary in the film is white.) Laurence does not correspond at all to Rama’s idea, nor to that of the court: she studied Wittgenstein and speaks excellent French.

Diop’s strict staging with long close-ups, the opposite of Zeller’s fluid style, comes from the essay film. The central question is also of a more philosophical nature. Diop leaves no doubt about Laurence’s deed, she is interested in the circumstances. Can a mother love her child and still kill him? The court setting and the witness statements provide an insight into the life that the Senegalese woman led in France. The process gives her a voice for the first time. But “Saint Omer” is not only a film about Laurence, but also about a country.