Venice Film Festival 2020: ‘The World to Come,' ‘Mainstream,' and ‘Dear Comrades'

Despite U.S. press being unable to attend this year’s 77th Venice Film Festival, there is still a ban in place for U.S. travelers to Europe, the plan was to go half-digital so that, stateside at least, film journalists could create coverage, not to mention, considerable buzz for not just the Biennale, but the film industry as a whole. I will be jotting down dispatches for the next few days as the films continue to be screened in Italy, here’s the first one.

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Mona Fastvold’s “The World to Come” is a sapphic romance that never veers towards melodrama. Vanessa Kirby (Tally) and Katherine Waterston (Abigail) give performances that aren’t showy, but exude a world of emotions — this is a film that heavily focuses on stares and unsaid words. It is successful because it avoids the trappings of the usual yearn-filled romance by deliberately underplaying its drama. From the first frame to last, it breezes past you with the feel of a poetic short story. There are no good or bad people in Fastvold’s film, just life itself. The respective male partners are flawed, but their actions are understandable, although one can make the case that Christopher Abbott, playing Kirby’s downtrodden husband, steps out of bounds numerous times, but Fastvold only hits at it, again, never showing anything our narrator isn’t seeing. It’s a purposely benign film, understandably so as it is told through the eyes of Abigail, a woman so dissatisfied by her marriage with hardworking, but depressed Dyer (Casey Affleck) that she would rather shut off all reality and just imagine a non-existent life with Tally. [B]

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An interesting idea gone haywire, “Mainstream” is director Gia Coppola’s social media satire, but instead of giving us an original perspective on the state of viral culture in 2020, we’re left with blanks. Nothing new is said in this remarkably trite examination of internet fame, but it does introduce us to Andrew Garfield’s “No One Special,” yes that’s his name, one of the most selfish, unlikable, and downright repulsive on-screen characters in quite some time. Maya Hawke’s Frankie quits her bartending job because she sees potential in this maniac, deciding to manage his image, and open a YouTube channel. For some reason, he becomes an overnight sensation thanks to his outrageously honest and eccentric personality. Is it such a surprise then that, as the film painstakingly chugs along, his narcissism grows larger with every video gone viral? Of course not. A monster is created and we would like nothing more than to have Coppola kill him off halfway through the movie. It never happens. We’re stuck with this douchebag for 90 minutes. [D]

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In “Dear Comrades” Andrei Konchalovsky (“Russian Train”) transports us to a bleak USSR, circa 1962, and the infamous massacre of protestors in Novocherkassk. It is told through the eyes of Lyuda (Yuliya Vysotskaya), a loyal member of the Communist Party, whose anti-establishment daughter joins a labor strike protest at the local factory only to disappear once the Bolshevik troops start firing. Where did she go? Is she dead? The discipline of Konchalovsky’s compositions here is second to none, as Lyuda searches to find her missing daughter, who she’s concerned may have been in one of the trucks of piled-up dead bodies she saw officials drive away with. Despite a sluggish first half (the setup consists of overlong scenes of government meetings), the film kicks into high gear once tragedy strikes and Lyuda’s starts to question her blind allegiance to party. The film turns out to be a moving indictment of political loyalty and the watershed propaganda of convincing yourself that you’re on the right side of history Despite a career of hits and misses (cue “Tango & Cash”) “Dear Comrades” is one of the best movies of Konchalovsky’s career. [B]