Stars-Anti-Stars

You can slip on the red carpet, too. A reminder comes from Kim Novak, who today receives the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement: she once embodied stardom, only to later return it to sender by walking away from Hollywood. Hers was an unusual, interrupted career, one that marked the transition to a new kind of celebrity – less ethereal and more grounded, born of a cinema less tied to the Olympus of the Studios and more attuned to media spectacle. Novak’s ‘vertiginous’ life, explored in Alexandre O. Philippe’s essay film Kim Novak’s Vertigo (Out of Competition), now passes the torch to the stars of today’s Hollywood – children of franchises and platforms, bearers of audiences and catalysts of likes. Among them: Amanda Seyfried, Thomasin McKenzie, and Lewis Pullman, leads in Mona Fastvold’s The Testament of Ann Lee; and, of course, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, eagerly awaited alongside Emily Blunt in Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine, both films in Competition.
But perhaps the real surprise comes from the (as yet) unknown Muhammad Shofik Rias Uddin, the non-professional lead in Akio Fujimoto’s Lost Land – could he be the breakout outsider Venice audiences are always hoping for? Two highly anticipated Italian titles also debut: Marco Bellocchio’s series Portobello, starring our anti-star Fabrizio Gifuni, and Virgilio Villoresi’s experimental Orfeo, featuring the promising Luca Vergoni – the icy young actor who played Angelo Izzo in Stefano Mordini’s The Catholic School, screened in Venice in 2021.