Venicefrenia, Álex de la Iglesia’s latest film is one of his most solid works, a constant in crescendo that is weighed down by an ending that is far from what was expected.
Talk about the end of Alex de la Iglesia (The Community, Mutant Action, Sad Trumpet Ballad, The Bar, 30 Coins) is something quite common when writing about his cinema. His films are based on great ideas with a spectacular development that tend to deflate in their final stretch. Maybe your series, 30 Coins, be the one that best exemplifies this, with the first chapters that are among the best that a platform has given us that exudes as much quality as HBOHBO and the latter that seem to have been devised by a different person and that reveal problems in production.
Of his recent cinema, I have only been satisfied with the outcome of Sad Trumpet Ballad, which lived up to what I consider one of his best films. Sometimes the plot seems to get out of control, as in My big night, or deflate, as in The Witches of Zugarramurdi., which has, instead, one of his best first acts. In the case of Venicephrenia, the problem is that the third act that seems to be building from the first minute, never really comes. Perhaps it is a personal problem of expectations, but the great orgy of violence and death in the streets of Venice that I expected to find myself remains at all times as a promise, as if the whole film was a countdown towards that spectacular outcome and, just when it goes to arrive, finish. This is the only reason that has kept me from leaving the cinema delighted, because, otherwise, Veneciafrenia is a exquisite slasher with a twisted, grotesque and seductive aesthetic, with a death that has drawn enthusiastic applause in the stalls and a starting point of the most original and interesting.
Needless to say, the characters are perfectly portrayed from the script and fantastically performed by the leading actors. Ingrid Garcia Jonsson He dazzles with his leading role and fills it with nuances, Alberto Bang It is especially funny with a character who could have caused the viewer to be fed up, Silvia Alonso becomes the perfect adventure companion for Jonsson and I consume Fusco, who already ate the screen with each appearance of Angelo in 30 Coins, also wastes charisma in his game of masks and blood. It is precisely the latter who seems to be about to become Alex’s new fetish actor, because he seems born to get into the shoes of the villains that populate the director’s films.
The empathy generated by the group of tourists (which could have been unpleasant, like many of the victims of classic slashers, to whom Venicefrenia honors) makes that in crescendo of which I speak is constant and that their destinies matter to us. And the interpretation of the villain, dressed in his jester costume, committing his crimes in front of the screens of the telephones of a crowd of tourists who believe that everything is part of a series of street spectacles, leaves for the memory some images of enormous visual power . In fact, the motivations of the antagonist are clear, they do not seem straight out of the sleeve and even, to some extent, we can understand them. And that is why it is so angry that this plan that does not cease to be glimpsed throughout development, that promise of “This is now a slasher, but in the end it will be much more” do not explode. All the pieces work and fit together perfectly, but they leave a huge gap where the most interesting is missing.Venicefrenia is not without its faults. The problematic of its end can extend to questionable decisions in its structure.
It is difficult to talk about the assembly without knowing the material that reached the room. There is no doubt that Domingo Gonzalez, editor of the last stage of Álex de la Iglesia since The bar, is a virtuoso in his work, and sequences such as the frenzied party in a Venetian palace are good proof of this. In addition, it gives each character their space, perfectly building each moment. However, films belonging to the stage of Alexander Lazarus As an editor they have always been, as a whole, more satisfactory (The Community, 800 bullets, The Oxford Crimes, Trumpet’s Sad Ballad, among others). I think that Lázaro’s style matched very well with Álex de la Iglesia’s way of telling stories; they complemented each other and gave a chaotic consistency to better closed products.
Venicephrenia has some problems in its structure but, I insist, I do not know how many could have been avoided in editing and have been dragged from script and direction. Jonsson’s boyfriend’s trip is as artificial as it is unnecessary, since everything the character had to contribute was counted and his “farewell” is quite free, to influence something that had already been clear to us. On the other hand, although Domingo González manages that we continue without losing the different parallel arcs that develop when the characters separate, at other times ellipsis are produced that pose more questions than answers (and not the good ones). I think of the moment when the character of Silvia Alonso is helping two of her companions in the theater, with a rope, and in the following sequence she goes through the scaffolding of the theater, chasing the murderer for no reason. And, of course, there are the last minutes. Constructed as a preamble to what appears to be the final explosion, that promised climax is more present here than ever and suddenly, abruptly, ends. And it ends quickly, stealing any hint of space from the characters, with very easy and absurd solutions for some of them and with the feeling that someone has taken time and had to pick up the furniture and lower the blind quickly and running, without letting the customers finish what, until then, was an enthusiastic and very interesting conversation. There’s something about that ending that makes your first thought a “Well, well, it was not so bad” When, up to that point, it was a big deal and promised to become one of the director’s best films.
Perhaps a large part of Álex de la Iglesia’s cinema problems are also due to his virtues. The director, together with the scriptwriter Jorge Guerricaechevarría, They write from the deepest honesty and viscerality, letting themselves be carried away by stories that you can tell they love and that, perhaps, even surprise them. They seem like compass writers instead of a map, and that gives a freshness to everything that happens on screen within the reach of very few. However, that creative freedom that they squander and that makes their cinema unique, unrepeatable, is also their greatest burden: it gives the feeling that a plan is missing, that in the end we have scattered and we have run out of that plan. punch ending that would have catapulted the movie to a higher level.
However, it doesn’t matter. Or yes, but not so much. Because, despite this inconsistency, it is such a special cinema that, no matter how much the outcome remains at half gas, I will always be there, waiting for what new original idea Álex de la Iglesia has to offer. Everything that he leaves us on the way is worth more than the best of the endings.
Venicephrenia
Synopsis: In nature there is an indissoluble link between beauty and death. The human being, indebted to his environment, imitates what he observes. Like mosquitoes drawn to the brightest lighthouse, tourists are turning off the light in the most beautiful city on the planet. The agony of the past decades has sparked anger among Venetians. To stop the invasion, some have organized, unleashing their survival instincts. Our protagonists, a simple group of Spanish tourists, travel to Venice with the intention of having fun, oblivious to the problems that surround them. There they will be forced to fight to save their own lives.
Director (s): Alex de la Iglesia
Cast: Ingrid García Jonsson Silvia Alonso Goize Blanco Alberto Bang Cosimo Fusco Enrico Lo Verso Caterina Murino Nico Romero Armando de Razza Nicolás Illoro Alessandro Bressanello Diego Pagotto
Gender : Terror