Locarno opens with gifted woman

The International Film Festival of Locarno begins today, August 6, with actress Scarlett Johansson projected with all the splendour of a desirable and sexy woman on the giant 300m2 screen, set up in Piazza Grande, in front of over 8,000 spectators.

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It's summer in Europe and Locarno thermometers will be marking 25 degrees, when the night starts falling at 21:30 and a breeze blows fresh air from Lake Maggiore, at which point the director Carlo Chatrian shall present French filmmaker Luc Besson, shortly before lights out and the science-fiction film Lucy is projected.Luc Besson does not have anything to do with Le Grand Bleu, but does with his other film, Nikita.

The opening film of the Locarno Festival has special effects and is fast, showing a normal woman who becomes endowed with extraordinary powers. Typically, the drugs dealer dies when the drugs stored in his stomach burst through their plastic container but in Luc Besson film, the effect is to turn Lucy into a being with extra-normal talents.

The film Lucy is being shown in France, so it is therefore not a debut, and this is a big change that has come into the Locarno Film Festival, where the Piazza Grande is now considered as the meeting point with the general public, while for movie buffs there is a wide choice of films in closed cinemas.

Carlo Chatrian is therefore in the opposite position of the former director of Locarno, the half-Brazilian Marco Mueller, who was also director of the Venice Film Festival and is now of the Rome Festival. Marco would not change and only showed new films, while one of the first directors, David Streif, liked to bring to screen the movies which won awards at Cannes and Berlin.

Adrenaline, summer heat, exciting woman, desire, fear, fright, all gathered together to crown with success the opening of the Locarno Festival, now also with an open window to the stars and icons, which will be led to an impromptu meeting with their admirers.

So while many will be watching the films in the international competition, the Brazilian and Argentine ones, for example, others will be in open meetings of the Forum asking questions to Roman Polanski, Mia Farrow, Agnes Varda, Juliette Binoche and even Rita Pavone. Or Melanie Griffith, Rachel McDonald and Garreth Brown. 

The Brazilian film in the competition August Winds will be shown on August 8 and Gabriel Mascaro will meet the critics at noon this Friday.

Rui Martins

Translated from the Portuguese version of Pravda.Ru

By Natália Santos