When I went to Venice, I discovered that my dream had become—incredibly but quite simply—my address.

—Marcel Proust

Letter from the Hotel Excelsior

Dear Wags,

Proust puts sensible people to sleep, but Proust was right about his dream city. Venice, though smothered by tourism and largely depopulated of bonafide Venetians, is magical. This explains why the Venice Film Festival, the world’s oldest, is on a roll. Venice is compact and highly photogenic. Plus, George Clooney has a villa up the road. These ingredients have combined to revive its importance in awards season. Never mind that the extravaganza was cooked up by Mussolini.

Much credit is given to Alberto Barbera, who first took over the operation in 1999, when the festival, like its host city, seemed to be sinking into oblivion. Italy being Italy, Sr. Barbera was tossed from his job by hacks in the Berlusconi administration. But he returned in 2012 and effectively restored the event to prominence by luring Hollywood types to the Lido. Since then, Venice has eclipsed Cannes as an Oscar springboard—we know that because Barbera keeps telling everybody in his charming Piedmontese accent.

Shall we run down the stats again? Since 2022, pictures that debuted at Venice have won 14 Oscars, while Cannes films have won five. Four out of the past 10 best picture winners had their premieres in the Queen of the Adriatic. Gravity, Birdman, The Favourite, Spotlight, La La Land, The Shape of Water, A Star is Born, Joker, Nomadland, Dune, and Poor Things all screened in Venice.

That’s quite a run, and it isn’t just because the French are ornery, the Italians are not, and Barbera is very good at wooing studio bigwigs. The festival channeled millions from its backer, the Venice Biennale, into upgrading infrastructure. Watching movies in Venice was once like taking a rickety Italian train in the heat of August. Now it’s more like gliding over the Alps in a cushy Swiss number: The ride is smooth and air-conditioned. Most importantly, Venice is not Toronto. No stop on the festival circuit can compete with its backdrop.

Hollywood is a deeply sentimental place. It needs to believe it’s still the glamorous hub of cultural fascination, not some airless facsimile of tech. If it becomes just another dreary industry commodifying distractions, the party is truly over. Venice is determined to sell an old and beloved story.

Thanks to the strikes, last year’s event was a desultory affair. Now star power is back on the lagoon. We kicked off with Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which mostly pleased critics—at least as an inventive homage to the 1988 original. It will do well, though it does nothing to cure the industry of terminal nostalgia. While we fan ourselves and drink an Aperol spritz, here’s what else we’re looking forward to.

Yours Ever,

Marcello Rubini

Maria

You’ll know the early 2000s are over when people stop wondering if Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt can share the same city. Jolie arrived in Venice today to debut her Maria Callas biopic, directed by Pablo Larraín. Pitt comes to town later, for Wolfs, his buddy comedy with George Clooney, which no longer has a theatrical release date (it’s going straight to Apple+). In any case, her film is a tale of the Greek American diva at the end of her life. Netflix grabbed U.S. rights, which may mean they have maximal ambitions for it. Word from tonight’s premiere is that it’s a lush but frosty treatment of an operatic life. —Sarah Brown

Queer

Oh, William S. Burroughs. Some people can’t get enough of the decadent author of Naked Lunch. Most of them are college sophomores, but that’s OK. Luca Guadagnino adapts the writer’s confessional novella, a sequel to 1953’s Junkie. In a casting jolt, Daniel Craig plays the Burroughs character, a writer who falls for a younger man (Drew Starkey) in Mexico City. Jason Schwartzman and Lesley Manville round out the cast. This is a Best Actor hopeful.— M.R.

The Room Next Door

Wag Supremo Pedro Almodovar shifts continents and languages in this New England-set drama starring Tilda Swinton as a journalist navigating both a difficult relationship with her daughter and a ruptured friendship with a novelist played by Julianne Moore. Almodovar says this is a bookend to his 2021 picture Parallel Mothers, another exploration of female relationships that starred Penelope Cruz. —S.B.

Joker: Folie à Deux.

We did not join in the lavish praise for Todd Phillips’s Joker, not because we didn’t appreciate the skill it took to realize but because it was so unrelentingly bleak. The sequel adds Lady Gaga to the mix as the