If you’re sick of blockbusters and have a bad taste in your mouth from the umpteenth rash of announcements out of Comic-Con—hey, we get it—get ready to rejoice. This onslaught is almost over, and a new one is brewing—the fall film festival barrage. The Venice Film Festival announced its staggeringly good line-up today, the Toronto International Film Festival is later this week, and the New York Film Festival and Telluride Film Festival will soon follow. What this means—outside of the upcoming first word on probably 150+ anticipated films—is a first look at all of them with new images and clips.
So let’s focus on two premieres at the Venice Film Festival that just happen to be A24 films. The cool indie studio is definitely getting prepared for Venice. Today, A24 unleashed the trailer for Ti West’s “Pearl,” the prequel to his “X” indie horror, released earlier this year in March. More importantly, “Pearl” is also making its debut at the Venice Film Festival in late August.
So, to follow that up, A24’s given us the one-two punch of two more Venice Film Festival pictures set to make their debut at the Lido: “The Whale” and “The Eternal Daughter.”
Darren Aronofsky directs “The Whale,” the filmmaker behind “Requiem for A Dream” and “Black Swan,” and it’s his first film since 2017’s “Mother!” starring Jennifer Lawrence. “The Whale” sounds like a gear shift for Aronofsky and potentially more low-key. Starring Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Hong Chau, Samantha Morton, and Ty Simpkins, “The Whale” is based on a play by Samuel D. Hunter.
It focuses on a reclusive English teacher (Fraser) suffering from severe obesity who attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter (Sadie Sink from “Stranger Things”) for one last chance at redemption. While Fraser is much heftier in real life than in his leading man days, to play a 600lb man, the actor underwent a lot of “a lot of make-up and prosthetics,” according to an interview he gave Newsweek last year.
Matthew Libatique is Aronofsky’s DP again on the film, and the music will be done by Rob Simonsen, who did some terrific work in films like “Foxcatcher” and “The Spectacular Now.”
A24’s third film appearing in Venice is “The Eternal Daughter.” Directed by English filmmaker Joanna Hogg, the visionary behind the two recent “The Souvenir” films co-signed and executive produced by Martin Scorsese, her follow-up stars Tilda Swinton, who appeared in both those films. While much less about “The Eternal Daughter” has been known for months, we do know it’s a ghost story.
According to a recent synopsis, it’s about a middle-aged daughter and her elderly mother who must confront long-buried secrets when they return to their former family home, a once-grand manor that has become a nearly vacant hotel brimming with mystery. Carly-Sophia Davies, Joseph Mydell, Alfie Sankey-Green co-star, and Scorsese is on board as an exec producer again.
The 79th Venice International Film Festival runs from August 31 to September 10, 2022, so prepare for the onslaught of good things we should be seeing and hearing about all these movies soon.