Starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, the film received an 18-minute standing ovation when it premiered at Venice, the longest ever.
Almodovar is the subject of my latest book:
Gay Directors, Gay Films? By Emanuel Levy (Columbia University Press)
Almodovar is a darling of the festival circuit and was awarded a lifetime achievement award at Venice in 2019 for his bold and irreverent Spanish-language features.
He also won an Oscar in the best foreign language category for his 1999 film All About My Mother.
Now aged 74, he has decided to try his hand at English, focusing his lens on questions of life, death and friendship. After earning his prize, he said euthanasia should not be blocked by politics or religion.
He also thanked his two female stars for their performances. “This award really belongs to them, it’s a film about two women and the two women are Julianne and Tilda,” he said.
While “The Room Next Door” had been widely tipped to win, the runner-up Silver Lion award was a surprise, going to Italian director Maura Delpero for her drama set in the Italian Alps during World War Two–Vermiglio.
Australia’s Nicole Kidman won the best actress award for her risque role in the erotic Babygirl, where she plays a hard-nosed CEO, who jeopardizes her career and her family by having toxic affair with young, manipulative intern.
My book about Almodovar
Kidman was in Venice on Saturday, but did not attend the awards ceremony after learning that her mother had died unexpectedly.
The best director award went to American Brady Corbet for his 3-1/2 hour-long movie “The Brutalist”, which was shot on 70mm celluloid and recounts the epic tale of a Hungarian Holocaust survivor played by Adrien Brody, who seeks to rebuild his life in the US.
“We have the power to support each other and tell the Goliath corporations that try and push us around: ‘No, it’s three-and-a-half hours long and it’s on 70mm,” he told the auditorium on Saturday.
The festival marks the start of the awards season and throws up big favorites for the Oscars, with eight of the past 12 best director awards at the Oscars going to films that debuted at Venice.
The prize for best screenplay went to Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega for “I’m Still Here”, a film about Brazil’s military dictatorship, while the special jury award went to the abortion drama “April”, by Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili.
Among the movies that left Venice’s empty-handed were Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer,” with Daniel Craig playing a gay drug addict.
Pablo Larrain’s Maria Callas biopic “Maria”, starring Angelina Jolie as the celebrated Greek soprano, also won plaudits from the critics but did not get any awards.
The Venice jury this year was headed by French actress and Oscar nominee Isabelle Huppert.
