Polanski and Allen’s movie offerings come with the inevitable controversy stemming from historical sexual abuse charges – upheld in Polanski’s case, dismissed in Allen’s – against the two veteran filmmakers.
Allen’s first French language outing, Coup de Chance, will be likened to his 2005 hit Match Point, Barbera said.
His 50th film, it’s a contemporary romantic thriller that American journalist and gossip blogger Roger Friedman has described as “sensational”, and one of Allen’s ‘best films’.
Continuing the filmmaker’s decades-long stance of not wanting his films to compete at any film festivals, Coup de Chance will be playing out of competition.
Polanski’s The Palace is reportedly loaded with an abundance of weird imagery.
Among the 23 films contending for the Golden Lion, including six Italians, are Luc Besson’s Dogma; Bradley Cooper’s second directorial effort after A Star Is Born, Maestro, about legendary American composer and humanitarian Leonard Bernstein; Coppola’s take on Elvis Presley’s wife, Priscilla; The Killer, a new thriller by Fight Club director David Fincher with Michael Fassbender; Poor Things by Yorgos Lantimos with Emma Stone as a Frankenstein-like creature with insatiable sexual voracity; Pablo Lorrain’s El Conde featuring a vampire Pinochet; and Mann’s Ferrari, a biopic on the F1 legend with Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz.
L’ordine del tempo (The Order of Time) by 90-year-old Night Porter director Liliana Cavani will be out of competition, in the Fuori Concorso section.
Barbera said he hoped the Hollywood actors and writers strike would not prevent stars from appearing on the red carpet at the Lido.
ANSA
