US films bring bleak brutality, black humour to Venice (News Feature)

By Peter Mayer Sep 3, 2009, 17:02 GMT

Venice, Italy - US films have made their first mark at this year's Venice Film Festival with The Road, a post-apocalyptic survivors' quest and Life During Wartime which looks at a dysfunctional suburban family.

'A beautiful love story, difficult to watch and difficult to tell,' The Road's star, Viggo Mortensen said Thursday at a press conference held in the Italian lagoon city.

Mortensen plays a father trying to maintain dignity for the sake of his young son, played by Kodi Smit McPhee, as together they move through a world left derelict following a mysterious cataclysm.

Journeying on foot towards a destination described only as 'the south,' and suffering from hunger and exhaustion, they have to contend with marauding gangs of cannibals.

Directed by John Hillcoat, The Road is based on the book of the same name written by Cormac McCarthy, the Pulitzer-Prize winning author whose No Country for Old Men was made into a film that won the 2007 Best Film Academy Award in the US.

Mortensen, Hillcoat and screenwriter Joe Penhall, all agreed the story forced them to confront their own real-life status as fathers.

'What do you do with children in the adult world? Do you protect them or do you try to steer them through?' Penhall asked.

Left alone with his son after the presumed death of his wife, played by Charlize Theron, Mortensen's character tries to teach the boy how to distinguish good from evil, while also warning him that he shouldn't trust anybody.

Ultimately his son is faced with a choice he alone can make.

Also confronted with choices, albeit in the mostly sunny settings of the suburbs of Florida, are the characters of Todd Solondz's Life During Wartime.

Florida somewhat resembles Singapore, 'a dictatorship with a Time Out magazine,' according to Solondz.

For the director, those who have chosen to reside in the south- eastern US state for the material comforts it offers may well have been tempted to trade in democratic rights in favour of 'pristine condominiums and great parking.'

The film, deals with several ill-fated love stories involving three Jewish sisters - ranging from one so tied to her cultural roots that she wants to be buried in Israel, to another who has a poster depicting a Palestinian child defying an Israeli tank.

In Life During Wartime, Solondz reprises some of the characters from his 1999 film, Happiness, describing it as a 'sequel or a variation of sorts.'

But the cast of actors has changed, and the director has chosen to alter several characters' ages while not doing so with others.

The film, through dialogue filled with bitterly comic one-liners, also deals with suicide and, like Happiness, paedophilia.

'I was not haunted by the characters,' said Solondz, explaining that he was looking to be moved by them and what they said was 'both funny and sad.'

The Venice Film Festival runs from September 2 to 12.