Venice Film Festival: An Endless Love Affair with Fashion (But No Politics and Realism in Fashion Films…)

The first things you see as you get out of the Venice St Lucia railway station these days are the posters for the 13th Architecture Biennale and the 69th Venice International Film Festival. I must admit with some pleasure that the attempt of turning the former into another pretentious trendy event as it happened with the Art Biennale last year didn't work too well (if you take away the occasional high profile fashion blogger who must have ended up there by total accident…).

Coverage of the Film Festival by many fashion media has been instead sadly reduced to a “spot who looks cool on the red carpet” game.

Valentino managed to reunite fashion and architecture organising a party last week at the Hotel Cipriani allegedly marking the 69th edition of the Venice Film Festival, but actually celebrating the launch of a limited-edition eyewear line collection produced by Marchon and designed by the house's Creative Directors Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli (claiming that, since they get their inspirations from '60s Italian films and divas ranging from Silvana Mangano to Monica Vitti this was the perfect place where to launch the collection…).

Apart from actresses and celebrities, at the party there was also David Chipperfield, director of the 13th Architecture Biennale, and the architect behind Valentino's new store concept.

Not having managed to put her imprint on this year's Architecture Biennale, last week Miuccia Prada (who recently designed the costumes for Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, or rather adapted some of her previous Prada looks for the film…this will be another interesting issue to explore in future, how we moved from costume design to product placement to erasing the figure of the costume designer by adapting previous fashion collections…) presented during the Film Festival a collection of “Women’s Tales”, four short films by four international female directors originally shot for Miu Miu.

The films – “The Powder Room” by Zoe Cassavetes, “It’s Getting Late” by Massy Tadjedin, “Muta” by Lucrecia Martel and “The Woman Dress” by Giada Colagrande – are supposed to explore femininity, even though at times they look more like trendy and conceptual adverts for Miu Miu (definitely more conceptual and trendy than Prada's recent "anti-commercial") than proper films (obviously all the “costumes” in the films are by Miu Miu, but I have highlighted the difference between costumes and product placement a long time ago on this site…). One obvious feature that makes these four films more similar to adverts is the absence of dialogues that, sadly, almost end up hinting at an undesirable condition of silence in which too many women are nowadays relegated.

Probably the most disappointing thing about these films commissioned by Miu Miu is the fact that they seem to look at feminine rituals and gestures that pertain only to some women. All the women here are beautiful (even the three Moirai-like characters in "The Woman Dress") and wealthy and these tales – be they real, half real or totally surreal with a bit of a horror twist – are in total contrast with the aims and objectives of this year's Venice International Film Festival.

Rather than focusing on the glitz and blitz, this edition of the festival looks indeed at politics and the crisis (intended as "financial", but also as "social crisis"): politically engaged director Francesco Rosi (Salvatore Giuliano, Le mani sulla città (Hands over the City), Il caso Mattei (The Mattei Affair) and Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (Christ Stopped at Eboli)) was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement and there are quite a few films in and out of the main competition that look at deeper issues, including ethical problems (Bella Addormentata by Marco Bellocchio), the breakdown in human relations (Gli equilibristi by Ivano De Matteo), current cultural limitations (È stato il figlio by Daniele Ciprì), hope and perserverance (Wadjda by Haifaa Al Mansour) and major international issues (Winter of Discontent by Ibrahim El Batout).

In "Film and Fashion" land instead everything is perfect and everybody is beautiful and healthy, no woman has ever lost her job and no woman is ever married to a worker who has lost his job; nobody is worried about what their lovely kids will eat or about the price of the oil for the glamorous car they are driving, but the embellished frocks, lovely heels, expensive bags, oversized sunglasses look gorgeous taking centre stage.

You wonder why there are practically no contemporary "fashion films" in which history, politics and other more vitally important events are tackled or in which directors inject a little bit more realism. Yes, you're right, fashion is a fantasy, but I can assure you there is definitely more to being a woman than just a designer dress, a trendy bag and a pair of striking sunglasses.

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