- Title: ITALY: THE 54TH VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ENTERS ITS SECOND WEEK
- Date: 28th August 1997
- Summary: (AUGUST 31) (RTV - ACCESS ALL) PHOTO OPPORTUNITY WITH WESLEY SNIPES, DIRECTOR MIKE FIGGIS AND MING-NA WEN
- Embargoed: 12th September 1997 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: VENICE, ITALY
- Country: Italy
- Reuters ID: LVAEC0WPRBTXHU2Q9X6D15N32C4E
- Story Text: The 54th Venice International Film Festival has entered its second week with a little more glitz as some big name stars arrived at the canal city.
Alan Rickman, the acclaimed British actor who co-starred in last year's hit movie, "Michael Collins," made his directorial debut with "The Winter Guest".
The film, which was unveiled at a celebrity premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday (August 28), stars British Oscar-winner Emma Thompson and her mother Phyllida Law.
"The Winter Guest" is a drama of relationships set against a bleak Scottish winter, described by Rickman as "images of people slipping and falling." Thompson, who won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay for "Sense and Sensibility" and one for best actress in "Howards End", stars as Frances, a widowed photographer struggling to get come to terms with the death of her husband and nurse her mother Elspeth, who is suffering from Alzheimer's Disease.
Speaking at a news conference before the screening, Thompson descibed one scene from the film as being central to her character.
"When Francis takes the picture of her mother on the stone, it is the moment in which that awful tug of guilt is felt...she realises that she can't leave her and will have to stay at home and look after her," she said.
Phyllida Law, who has appeared alongside her daughter before in "Peter's Friends" and "Much Ado about Nothing", said she had drawn on her own experience with her sick mother for the role.
"I'd been nursing my mother for five years when I read the play and was coming near to going dotty myself," Law said.
"My experience comes from life," she added.
Law described the real-life mother-daughter relationship with Thompson during filming as "not easy, but not difficult... looking at someone you know very well you are unable to bluff." Thompson said she had been to see the play, written by Sharman MacDonald, who co-wrote the screenplay, three times and had encouraged Rickman to make the film.
Rickman, a classical actor turned Hollywood bad-boy in movies including "Die Hard", "Truly Madly Deeply" and "Robin Hood Prince of Thieves", put in a acclaimed performance as Eamon de Valera in "Michael Collins", last year's winner at Venice.
He said filming in Fife, Scotland last November and December in freezing conditions with scant light had been a challenge. "It was full of problems but it concentrated our minds." The conditions were so cold that Rickman suffered frostbite in his toes.
Thompson combatted the freezing temperatures by warming her boots in a microwave oven. Her mother, trying the same trick, managed to melt her socks.
"The Winter Guest" opens with a long, silent scene lasting several minutes as the camera follows Law, dressed as an old woman in a fur coat, on a walk across some rocks.
The scenery is bleak and cold, but there are flashes of heat, reflecting the emotional turmoil of the movie in which Thompson struggles beteween the desire to run away to Australia and the responsibility of staying to care for her mother.
"The Winter Guest" is the only British film of 18 movies competing for the top prize at Venice, the Golden Lion.
It took until day six before the festival achieved some of the sparkle of Cannes as big-name American film stars started to arrive.
Wesley Snipes and co-stars Ming-Na Wen and Kyle Maclachlan arrived at the lagoon city on Sunday (August 31) to promote their film "One Night Stand".
Directed by Mike Figgis, the film is a drama about the consequences of infidelity.
It tells the story of happily married Max (Wesley Snipes) who encounters Karen (Nastassja Kinsky) and has the tryst of the title.
The story develops when they meet again one year later and Max's wife, played by Ming-Na Wen and Karen's husband,played by Kyle Maclachlan, join them at a dinner.
The former lovers nervously keep up the cordial front of new acquaintances while their spouses bond. But the facade starts to crumble at the funeral of a friend, played by Robert Downey Jr, who drew Max to New York and the one night stand in the first place.
Figgis' previous credits include the 1995 hit "Leaving Las Vegas".
Adding to the celebrity count at Venice was Harrison Ford.
A crowd of photographers and screaming fans greeted the actor as he arrived at the Hotel Excelsior by water taxi on Monday (September 1).
Ford is in Venice to promote the American blockbuster Airforce One, directed by Wolfgang Petersen.
The film is showing in the "mezzanotte" section of the festival.
Ford plays the President of the United States who comes face to face with terrorists aboard the presidential aircraft, Airforce One.
The film opens in Britain next week.
The Golden Lion for best film will be awarded on Saturday (September 6) by a jury led by New Zealand-born director Jane Campion. Other celebrties due in Venice over the next few days include Slyvester Stallone and Nicole Kidman. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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