Is Venice still vibrating from all the rounds of applause?
It’s become customary for audiences at the festival’s premieres to clap and cheer for a seeming eternity after the credits roll. (Often to the visible discomfort of the actors and filmmakers, who look like they don’t know what to do with themselves when the hurrahs rage into double digits.) Call it a Champagne (or Aperol spritz — we’re in Italy, after all) problem for stars John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell and director Martin McDonagh, whose dark comedy “Wild Horse Nine” was embraced with a rousing 13-minute standing ovation inside the Lido’s famed Palazzo del Cinema. But that didn’t turn out to be the festival’s biggest reception — later in the week, Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem received 15.5 minutes of applause for their marriage-in-crisis drama “Bunker, and on Thursday, Gaza documentary “NAZA” was greeted with a massive 24.5 minutes, the longest of any recorded ovation at a major film festival.
And for all the complaints that Hollywood has basically abandoned film festivals, there was no shortage of celebrities to elicit big reactions from crowds. Robert Pattinson (“Primetime”), Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem (“Bunker”) and Oasis’ Liam and Noel Gallagher (“Don’t Look Back in Anger”) were among the boldface names hoping to turn festival kudos into awards chatter or box office plaudits.
