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From Argento to Romero and Gordon: Thriller’s Biggest Names Come to Courmayeur |
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| 04/12/2007 |
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The newest edition of the Courmayeur Noir in Festival opens, as is tradition, under fresh snows and at the foot of Mont Blanc, with Film Noir, an animated film that is highly refined and highly faithful to the noir genre, by mysterious directing duo D. Jud Jones and Risto Topaloski; and closes with horror master Stuart Gordon’s Stuck, not yet released in the US.
Opening day’s two features – Film Noir and Hitman by Xavier Gens (discovered by French studio EuropaCorp) – represent the almost diametrical extremes of creativity and technology applied to the genre. The former is a sophisticated re-interpretation of the universes of Dashiell Hammett (Continental Op) and James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential) made in Serbia with an original and profoundly European style. A man with amnesia wakes up under the Hollywood sign, with Los Angeles at his feet, to discover he’s implicated in the murder of a policeman. A private detective not prone to half measures, he hunts down the truth and his identity, taking on both the police and the criminal underworld.
Hitman was inspired by a successful videogame and transposes its ambiences in a breath-taking adventure spanning all four corners of the globe. The film centers on Agent A47, a ruthless hitman programmed to kill, in search of his past and the true intentions of his contractors. A hyper-technological cousin of Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne, Timothy Olyphant (the bad guy from Live Free or Die Hard) is a disturbing and romantic presence onscreen.
It is interesting to note that the main characters of both of the festival’s opening films share a loss of memory and that their creators were inspired by visual universes different from classic cinema, then transposing the adopted language into a kaleidoscope of typically cinematic colors and sounds. While Hitman will be distributed by 20th Century Fox shortly after its US release, Film Noir is an Italian premiere, in search of local distribution after playing successfully on the festival circuit (it won the animated competition at Annecy, among others).
Thus, these are the first two titles that the jury – composed of Dario Argento (president), Paolo Briguglia, Sabrina Impacciatore, Jeff Lindsay (the author of the series Dexter and the novels from which the character was taken) and Michèle Maheux (managing director of the Toronto Film Festival) – will see before selecting the festival’s three official prize-winners at the awards ceremony on the evening of Sunday, December 9.
“Several years ago we were called a ‘charming festival,’” say the three artistic directors, “and now we’ve been listed among the 50 un-missable festivals worldwide. We’re pleased with these compliments, which attest to and award the seriousness of our choices, the beauty of the festival’s home, and the variety of offerings from among film, literature, comic strips, television, history and current events. But we believe that there is still room for growth and improvement. Moreover, only in 2008 will we become ‘of age’ and the strength of this year’s program renders us optimistic. We are already working on new initiatives, such as the section Non aprite quelle porte, in collaboration with MINI and targeted at adolescents, which will be inaugurate this year with the help of Victoria Cabello; along with the experience of the online novel, started up with Colorado, which is entitled Progetto Tribù and will be accompanied to Courmayeur by a mysterious actress of Italian cinema.”
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