Venice Film Festival to Screen ‘Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo — Extended Cut'?

There have been some controversial rumors stemming from the Venice Film Festival. The gist of it is that Venice boss Alberto Barbera has, supposedly, invited writer-director Abdelatif Kechiche to show an extended cut of his universally-hated Cannes competition entry “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo.” If this rumor is accurate, then this is straight-up trolling courtesy of Barbera and the Venice committee. Giving the spotlight to a film and a director which #MeToo activists have vehemently vilified as misogynous and outright sexist is risky enough, but add in the fact that Kechiche has been accused of sexual misconduct by an actress (Ophélie Bau) for this very movie and you the kind of scandale that would make Cannes proud. If anything, it’s as if Barbera and the Venice committee are trying to send a political message to activists trying to censor art (“We will not abide by your Robespierre-like terrorizing!”)

I do have to mention that #MeToo “villain,” Roman Polanski, is set to premiere his new film “An Officer and A Spy.” Polanski’s film will be part of a competition lineup which only includes two female-directed movies out of the 21 selected. People were complaining there were only 4 women competing for the Palme D’or this year at Cannes, well, Venice’s harsher treatment towards X-chromosomed filmmakers will, no doubt, be noted by some. Who cares, right?

Other potential controversies this year: A scheduled 16th anniversary screening of Gaspar Noe’s cult-classic “Irreversible,” a film in which a woman (played by Monica Bellucci) is graphically raped and beaten on-screen for close to ten minutes. There also still stands a good chance of seeing Woody Allen premiere his long-delayed “A Rainy Day in New York.”

Suffice to say, it seems like Barbera has pulled out all the stops this year to take away a little bit of the pressure Cannes boss Thierry Fremaux must have surely felt from American media members and their ever-increasing obsession with a movie’s progressive-cultural significance rather than its artistic and creative merits. .Venice has surely turned into the most important festival in the world to launch Oscar contenders but it does look like it will refuse to adhere to the “go-woke-or-go-broke” mentality of Tinseltown.