Martin Scorsese, James Gray, Alfonso Cuarón and David Cronenberg are among directors chiming in on this freewheeling two-part conversation, along with actors Debra Winger and Margot Robbie.
There’s a wonderful montage of shots and scenes from across Bernardo Bertolucci’s storied 50-year directing career that dances through time, through eyes, faces, places and shifting themes, near the end of Luca Guadagnino’s unapologetically digressive labor-of-love documentary about the legendary Italian filmmaker, Joie de Vivre. That sequence, bursting with vitality, lushly textured visuals and provocative images, feels like a reward for staying the course with this sprawling two-part director’s cut, which runs an epic seven hours and 25 minutes. At its best, the film shows a similar spirit of curiosity and passion, but there’s a great 4-hour doc inside here trying to claw its way out.
What kind of life this extended conversation might have after its Venice premiere is an intriguing question, though the most obvious guess would be a streaming sale, broken into four or more parts. Museum film departments seem also likely to bite.
No one will be able to drink in all this abundance of Lucalucci and come away unconvinced about Guadagnino’s profound esteem and affection for the man and his movies, even if he defies expectations by declining to make it a comprehensive survey. What, you would have needed 11 hours for that?
