Venice, Sept 4 (AFP/APP): After a critical mauling for Roman Polanski, another blacklisted director, Woody Allen, arrived at the Venice Film Festival on Monday with his 50th film.
Sofia Coppola is also returning to the Lido island with her biopic of Elvis Presley’s wife, “Priscilla”, more than a decade after she won festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion.
Allen arrived by gondola ahead of the premiere of “Coup de Chance” (“Stroke of Luck”), his first entirely in French — reflecting the fact that the 87-year-old director is now more popular in Europe than the United States.
He has been effectively blackballed by Hollywood since the MeToo movement due to allegations he molested his adopted daughter in the 1990s, which he says were fabricated by his ex-partner Mia Farrow.
The festival has drawn flak for including Allen and Polanski, who has a child sex conviction and faces other unresolved assault allegations, in its out-of-competition section.
It would be hard for Allen’s film to fare worse than Polanski’s slapstick comedy “The Palace”, which was torn to shreds by critics after its premiere on Saturday, almost universally considered the worst of his career.
Set in a fancy Swiss hotel at the turn of the century, and with jokes that include a dog humping a penguin, critics called “The Palace” a “laughless debacle” (Variety) and “soul-throttlingly crap” (The Telegraph).
“It beggars belief, but, at the age of 90, Polanski may have actually cancelled himself with a film that will probably never see the light of day in any English-speaking countries,” wrote Deadline.
“Coup de Chance” is an altogether more sophisticated affair that fits in the classic Allen mould — a light-hearted dissection of love and infidelity with a beautiful woman at its centre.
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