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      ‘The Nun II’ Review: Back in the Habit

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      The latest installment in the “Conjuring” franchise continues a formula of frights with a splash of religious world building.Jump scares abound in “The Nun II,” a sequel to the 2018 film, which was itself a spinoff of the “Conjuring” franchise. It continues the misadventures of Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) and the demonic force Valak (Bonnie Aarons).This time, the call is coming from inside a house of religious education. While investigating a string of murders across Europe, Sister Irene posits that Maurice (Jonas Bloquet), or Frenchie, as he’s known — her farm boy companion from “The Nun” — may have become possessed by the demon force and, if so, is unknowingly harboring it at the Catholic boarding school in France where he now works. It’s up to Sister Irene and her new companion, a skeptical novitiate named Sister Debra (Storm Reid), to race over and stop the demon before it unleashes its full horrors.The pacing of the film, set in the 1950s and directed by Michael Chaves, is too neat: It runs like haunted clockwork, shoving characters down dark alleyways or abandoned chapels every five minutes with little justification. Scene after scene builds fear and tension, and then a monster appears, and then … not much else, in most cases.Not everything in “The Nun II” is centered on screams. There’s also a good deal of lore involving Saint Lucy, patron saint of the blind, plus a holy relic that might point to Sister Irene’s ancestral origin. Maybe this is the sort of intricate world building that avid watchers of the “Conjuring” movies are deeply invested in. Or maybe — if the gasps and guffaws I heard in my theater are any indication — audiences are mostly there to watch a headmistress being bludgeoned to death by a thurible.The Nun IIRated R for ecclesiastical violence. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Charles Busch, Drag Legend, Tells All in His New Memoir

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      “Leading Lady,” a mosaic of reminiscence and self-analysis, explores the ascent of a man who’s really good at playing women.Charles Busch, the celebrated male actress, Tony-nominated playwright and, most recently, exuberant memoirist, has been thinking that his bed might make a good stage. At his Greenwich Village duplex last month, he noted how the arched entrance to his blindingly white boudoir resembles a proscenium.The room is in the style of 1940s-vintage Dorothy Draper, an interior decorator known for her Modern Baroque sensibility. It is the sort of place, Busch observed, that you could imagine Gene Tierney bedding down as the chic advertising executive (and presumed murder victim) in the glamorous 1944 film noir “Laura.”The show Busch would like to perform here, though, would be a production of Lucille Fletcher’s radio play “Sorry, Wrong Number,” in which a high-strung, bedridden rich woman overhears her own murder being plotted via a crossed telephone connection. The role was memorably played by Barbara Stanwyck in the 1948 film.“I really should do it before I’m too old,” said Busch, who was then a few weeks shy of 69. With brushed-back, graying hair and a mandarin-collared shirt and trousers (drag is for the stage), he resembled a discreetly bohemian college professor.He figured an audience of 12 could be squeezed into the hallway. Busch himself, presumably in a luxe peignoir, would be waiting “in the bed, like Jessica Chastain,” who sat onstage in a wordless prologue in the recent Broadway revival of “A Doll’s House.”In his 2010 show “The Divine Sister,” Busch (here with Amy Rutberg) delivered a twisted tale of the secret lives of nuns.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBusch, too, would be in character from the get-go, “eating chocolates and being neurotic.” He plucked at the air with impatient, fidgeting fingers. Suddenly a doomed, desperate invalid woman seemed to loom before me. I felt dizzy, caught between a shiver and a giggle.I had arrived just 10 minutes earlier chez Busch, whose “Leading Lady: A Memoir of a Most Unusual Boy” comes out on Tuesday. But already much of the essence of this man who plays women had been established: the encyclopedic frame of reference, the conjuring of a sparklingly sophisticated Manhattan, the summoning of a decades-spanning parade of actresses and, above all, the giddy Judy-and-Mickey-style excitement of putting on a show.These elements are much in evidence in “Leading Lady,” a book that brings to mind “Act One” — Moss Hart’s classic account of a sentimental education in the theater — but with a lot more wigs and costume changes, as well as a blithe detour working as a rent boy for nine months. And, of course, a different roster of famous names as supporting players, who here include Liza Minnelli, Carol Channing, Angela Lansbury and Kim Novak.Though the book was 14 years in the making (“I wrote many plays in between, darling”), autobiography would seem to come naturally to a man who says, “While I am living an experience, I am turning it into narrative.” Assembled as a time-scrambling mosaic of reminiscence and self-analysis, “Leading Lady” chronicles the ascent of a motherless boy who discovered that he was really good onstage only when he put on women’s clothes.“When I play a male role, I’m fine,” he said, “but there’s somebody else who could do it better. But as far as being a male actress, I have a pretty healthy ego.”The late-career films of Lana Turner, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis and Susan Hayward inspired Busch’s role as a faded screen diva with murder on her mind in “Die Mommie Die!”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBusch’s crowded résumé includes screenplays (his movie with Carl Andress, “The Sixth Reel,” in which he appears in and out of drag, will be screened in New York this month), national cabaret tours and the authorship of a hit Broadway comedy, “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife.”But as the memoir’s title suggests, Busch is above all a leading lady. His self-starring plays — inspired by the female-centric melodramas of vintage Hollywood — usually find him elaborately bewigged and begowned, cherry picking gestures and inflections from the likes of Stanwyck, Jean Harlow, Rosalind Russell and Joan Crawford. These traits coalesce into a single, swirlingly allusive portrait, usually of a strong, fabulously dressed woman in jeopardy.John Epperson, Busch’s longtime friend and, as the great Lypsinka, his peer in the downtown cross-dressing pantheon, sees both their work as part of a tradition of live performance that dates to drag antecedents like Charles Ludlam, the founder of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, which presciently blurred the lines between both genres and genders. It was a sensibility taking fresh forms in East Village bars four decades ago like the Pyramid Club and the Limbo Lounge, the birthplace of Busch’s breakout work, “Vampire Lesbians of Sodom.” “As someone once said to me, ‘Observe the absurdities in the culture,’” Epperson said. “I think I was already doing that! And that’s what he does, too, in his own angled way.”Staged Off Broadway with minimal budgets and maximal inventiveness, Busch’s plays have usually been everything their redolent titles promise — “Vampire Lesbians” (which had a five-year Off Broadway run in the mid-1980s), “The Lady in Question,” “Die Mommie Die!,” “The Divine Sister” and, most recently, “The Confession of Lily Dare,” which ran in New York shortly before the pandemic.“The Confession of Lily Dare,” a 2020 show, found Busch evoking Helen Hayes, Ruth Chatterton and other stars of pre-Code mother-love weepies.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAt first, they’re just a hoot. Shaped by a mix of sincere affection and amused distance, they echo the experience of watching the films that inspired them. It’s an approach that has allowed Busch to maintain a singular position in the increasingly crowded world of drag, which has become both the stuff of prime-time entertainment (see: “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and its progeny) and a political lightning rod. With its gleeful emphasis on the extravagantly made-over self, drag would seem to be a perfect fun house mirror for a culture ever more obsessed with the illusions — and truths — of self-presentation.At the same time, men dressing as women now routinely evokes fire-breathing outrage from American conservatives. “That’s all just a snare and a delusion,” Busch said of the right-wing attacks on cross-dressing. “It’s like ‘Footloose’ or something,” he added, referring to the 1984 film about a small town that prohibits teenagers from dancing. “It would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous.”For years, Busch bristled at being called a drag queen; in early interviews, he insisted that performing as a woman was purely an artistic choice. It is a stance that now embarrasses him. “If you base your entire creative life around female imagery, it has to come from somewhere profound,” he said.From the moment he first donned drag for a play about Siamese twins he wrote while a student at Northwestern University, he realized that a female persona allowed him a confidence and expressiveness he lacked performing as a man. Today, he is happy to be called a “godmother of drag.” Reached on tour in California, two notable stars from “RuPaul’s Drag Race” confirmed Busch’s claim to that title.BenDeLaCreme said Busch’s performances were “like this distillation of our collective queer conscious.” Jinkx Monsoon, who met Busch for lunch, found him to possess “all the grandeur and sparkle of an opera diva, the self-awareness of a vaudeville clown and the grace of a first lady giving a tour of the White House.” The actor Doug Plaut, who worked with Busch on “The Sixth Reel,” views him as a surrogate mother, as well as “the most fascinating person who has ever lived.”Busch burst onto the New York theater scene in the mid-1980s with the long-running Off Broadway hit “Vampire Lesbians of Sodom.”Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic, via Getty ImagesBusch’s own mother died of a heart attack just down the street from their home in Hartsdale, N.Y., when Busch was 7, and her absence pervades “Leading Lady.” His father, who owned a record store, was affable but inattentive, and Busch’s maternal aunt, Lillian Blum, a smart, arts-loving widow who lived in Manhattan, stepped into the vacuum.She was in essence “both my mother and my father,” he said his therapist pointed out. Busch sees her as the true hero of his book. She died in 1999.Busch was also very close to his sister Margaret, who was three years older. “We were like empaths,” he said. “We were both really good mimics. And she was the most feminine, fragile little thing, but her Jimmy Cagney had as much nuance as my Greer Garson.” She died of heart disease on July 13, and when I visited Busch a few weeks later, he was still raw from the loss.He choked up talking about the comedian Joan Rivers, the most dominant of the mother figures he’s been drawn to throughout his adult life. “After she died, I was kind of sniffing around a bunch of older ladies, thinking I’d find another one,” he said. “But you can’t replace people.”Busch is working on a show about the playwright Henrik Ibsen’s widow, who is “sexually awakened by a sailor.”Justin Kaneps for The New York TimesHe did seem a bit washed-out that day, especially amid the vibrant portraits of him throughout the Chinese-red living room to which we had adjourned. These included Busch à la Dietrich, on a sofa cushion; Busch as Sarah Bernhardt in moody black and white; Busch as a springy human exclamation point per the theater illustrator Al Hirschfeld; and a host of diversely made-up busts Busch created from his own face mask.It felt like the natural setting for someone who habitually shifts among different selves. As we talked, his voice most often brought to mind not his beloved movie goddesses but the aw-shucks wholesomeness of the boy-next-door matinee idol Van Johnson or a young Jimmy Stewart.The women would surface, though, in bursts of ripe annotation — the breathless booming of Bette Davis, the stateliness of Norma Shearer or the “deadpan look that’s slightly mad” that shows up, he said, in every performance by Vivien Leigh, his favorite actress.He’s thinking of at last incorporating the patrician tones of Katharine Hepburn, circa “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” into his next production, “Ibsen’s Ghost: An Irresponsible Biographical Fantasy.” It’s about the epochal dramatist Henrik Ibsen’s widow, who is “sexually awakened by a sailor,” and is scheduled to arrive in New York early next year.“It may be my farewell performance,” he said solemnly. I reminded him that he had said the same thing about “Lily Dare” a few years ago.“Yes, that was going to be my farewell performance,” he agreed, a bit testy. “But I don’t know.” He then landed the requisite one-liner with a dry Eve Arden drawl: “I don’t have enough hobbies.” More

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      Mattel’s Windfall From ‘Barbie’

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      The company’s approach has paid off to a degree that even the C.E.O. could hardly have believed possible.When Ynon Kreiz arrived at Mattel in April 2018, the newly installed chief executive had one mantra when it came to a feature film starring Barbie, a project he really wanted to get off the ground: He didn’t care if the movie sold a single additional doll.But “Barbie” the film had to be good and a cultural event. It had to be different. It had to break molds.And if that meant turning the chief executive of Mattel — i.e., himself — into the object of comic ridicule in the portrayal of the chief executive character in the film (“vain and foolish to the nth degree,” as The Guardian put it), then so be it.That approach has paid off to a degree that even Mr. Kreiz could hardly have believed possible. “Barbie” is close to grossing $1.4 billion and passed one of the “Harry Potter” movies as the top-grossing Warner Bros. film of all time. It could end up near the $2 billion mark. (The record-holder is 2009’s “Avatar,” at $2.9 billion.)How Mattel pulled off a feat that had eluded the company for years was the subject of recent interviews with Mr. Kreiz; Robbie Brenner, Mattel’s executive producer of films; spokespeople for Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig, the film’s star and its writer-director; and others familiar with the doll’s sometimes tortuous path to the big screen.Mattel and Warner have jealously guarded their financial arrangements. But people with knowledge of their agreement said Mattel earned 5 percent of the box office revenue, as well as a percentage of eventual profits as a producer of the movie and additional payments as owner of the Barbie intellectual property rights. At $2 billion in box office revenue, that amounts to $100 million. In addition, there are sales of merchandise connected to the movie as well as an expected boost in sales of dolls.Representatives for Mattel and Warner declined to comment on the financial arrangements, though the company’s chief financial officer said at a conference on Thursday that the company would make about $125 million in total billings from the film.Even though Barbie results weren’t reflected in Mattel’s latest earnings, released July 26, all anyone wanted to talk about at the earnings call was “Barbie.” Mr. Kreiz hailed the film as a “milestone moment” in the company’s strategy to “capture the value of its I.P.” and demonstrate its ability to attract and team up with top creative talent — a cornerstone of its ambitious slate of more toy-themed movies.After the first “Barbie” trailer — showing a hyper-blond, Day-Glo-clad Ms. Robbie and Ryan Gosling skating along Venice Beach — went viral in December, anticipation started building. Mattel stock has been on a tear. It has gained 33 percent, from $16.24 on Dec. 19 to this week’s $21.55. The S&P 500 rose 16 percent over the same period.Wall Street has been reluctant to give much credit to one hit, on the theory that such success is hard to replicate. (“Barbie” has had no discernible impact on Warner Bros. Discovery’s stock price.)But for Mattel, the positive impact of “Barbie” goes far beyond just one film. The company’s yearslong strategy to become a major film producer, using its vast storehouse of toys as intellectual property, had been met in Hollywood with skepticism, if not outright mockery. A-list talent wasn’t lining up to direct a plush purple dinosaur like Barney. But now the perception that Mattel’s leadership is willing to trust and support an unorthodox creative team that delivered both a box office bonanza and a possible awards contender has radically altered that.And Mattel’s surprising willingness to make fun of itself was one of the elements that mostly delighted critics and added to the buzz that roped in many more moviegoers than the “Barbie” fan base.That Mr. Kreiz was willing to laugh at his own caricature came as something as a surprise to some acquaintances and former colleagues. An Israeli military veteran with dual Israeli and British citizenship, a former professional wind surfer, an avid kite surfer and a fitness buff, with more than a passing resemblance to a younger Arnold Schwarzenegger, the 58-year-old Mr. Kreiz comes across as more of a square-jawed G.I. Joe action hero than a Barbie fan with a sense of humor.Mr. Kreiz’s entire career was in media and entertainment, not retail. His longtime mentor, the Power Rangers entrepreneur and billionaire Haim Saban, hired him fresh out of the University of California, Los Angeles, to launch Fox Kids Europe, a joint venture with Fox. He later ran Maker Studios, a YouTube aggregator, which Disney acquired in 2014. Mr. Kreiz left in 2016, and Maker was folded into the Disney Digital Network in 2017.That “Barbie” even got made was no small feat. It had languished at Sony for years, with Mattel routinely renewing the option, as various writers struggled to adapt the doll for the big screen. Although one of the most popular toys ever, Barbie was the subject of intense controversy, seen both as a symbol of female empowerment and as an impossible standard of beauty and femininity. The only feasible approach seemed a parody. The comedian Amy Schumer was once slated for the part. But scripts came and went.Ynon Kreiz, the chief executive of Mattel, and Robbie Brenner, a producer of “Barbie.”Rozette Halvorson for The New York TimesWeeks after becoming chief executive in 2018, Mr. Kreiz refused to renew the Sony option, according to multiple people interviewed for this article. He called Ms. Robbie’s agent and asked for a meeting. Ms. Robbie was among the most sought-after young actresses in Hollywood, fresh from acclaimed performances in diverse roles — as the ill-fated ice skater Tonya Harding in “I, Tonya”; in Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street”; and as a fixture in Warner’s DC Comics universe as Harley Quinn, the Joker’s former girlfriend. And while no human could replicate Barbie’s exaggerated dimensions, Ms. Robbie came reasonably close, while also radiating wholesome beauty.Ms. Robbie was simultaneously reaching out to Mattel and Mr. Kreiz after learning that the “Barbie” option hadn’t been renewed. She was looking for a potential franchise to take to Warner, where her production company, LuckyChap, had a first-look deal. But she wasn’t looking to star in the film herself.Over breakfast at the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel, the plush entertainment and celebrity hangout not far from Mattel’s less glamorous El Segundo headquarters, Mr. Kreiz shared his vision: He didn’t want to make movies in order just to sell toys. He wanted something fresh, unconventional, bold.“Our vision for Barbie was someone with a strong voice, a clear message, with cultural resonance that would make a societal impact,” he said, recalling his message.Mr. Kreiz’s obvious enthusiasm and determination, and his pitch for creative integrity make him hard to resist, as Ms. Brenner, a producer, discovered when he recruited her to run the newly created Mattel film division during another meal at the Polo Lounge. Ms. Brenner, a respected producer and an Academy Award nominee for “Dallas Buyers Club,” was attracted to his idea for the movie. In Mr. Kreiz’s vision, Mattel would be as much a movie company as a toy company. The two bonded after he asked her who should play Barbie, and she, too, volunteered Ms. Robbie.At their first meeting, Ms. Robbie suggested Ms. Gerwig for the director. The two were friends and had talked about working together. Mr. Kreiz loved the idea in part because it was so unexpected — Ms. Gerwig had directed and written acclaimed but offbeat independent films like “Frances Ha,” “Lady Bird” and a new take on the classic “Little Women,” but no big-budget fare.“Lady Bird” was one of Ms. Brenner’s favorite movies. But would Ms. Gerwig consider such a mass-market, commercial proposal?Ms. Gerwig, it turned out, had played with Barbie dolls and loved them. She even had old photos of herself playing with Barbie. Ms. Brenner met with Ms. Gerwig and her partner, Noah Baumbach, also an acclaimed screenwriter and director, at an editing facility in New York. They kicked around a few ideas, but nothing concrete emerged. Anything seemed possible.A deal was struck, and Warner signed on as co-producer. Once Ms. Gerwig was on board, Ms. Robbie agreed to star.At which point Ms. Gerwig and Mr. Baumbach retreated. “I know it’s not conventional and not what you’re used to, but we have to go into a room for a few months. That’s how we work and want to do it,” as Ms. Gerwig put it, Mr. Kreiz recalled.The script for “Barbie” — starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling and directed by Greta Gerwig — “was like going on this crazy ride,” Ms. Brenner said.Warner Bros.When the script did land in Ms. Brenner’s email, it was 147 pages — the length of a Quentin Tarantino film, epic by Hollywood standards. She closed her office door and started reading. “It was like going on this crazy ride,” she recalled. It broke rules, including the so-called fourth wall, addressing the audience directly. It poked fun at Mattel.New to the company, Ms. Brenner didn’t know if this would prove too much for Mattel executives. But she believed it was a great script.Ms. Brenner’s first call was to Mr. Kreiz. “I’ve read a lot of scripts, and this is so different,” she told him. “It’s special. You don’t get this feeling many times in an entire career.”Mr. Kreiz read the script twice, back to back. “It was deep, provoking, unconventional and imaginative,” he said. “It was everything I was hoping it would be.”Ms. Brenner was pleasantly surprised. “Ynon is a very confident person,” she said. “He can laugh at himself.”At one point Mr. Kreiz flew to London, where “Barbie” sets were being built at Warner’s studio outside the city. He and Ms. Gerwig spent a half-hour discussing the perfect shade of pink.Mr. Kreiz and Ms. Brenner knew they had a potential hit. “It was our secret that we couldn’t talk about,” Ms. Brenner recalled.The original budget target of $80 million jumped above $120 million once Ms. Gerwig was signed. But even that wouldn’t realize the director’s full vision for the film. For Warner executives it was a struggle to find what are known as “comps,” similar films that had grossed enough to justify such an outlay.Would “Barbie” be another “Charlie’s Angels” from 2019 — which was budgeted at $55 million but grossed only $73 million and, after marketing costs, lost money? Or another “Wonder Woman” from 2017, budgeted at over $100 million, with a worldwide gross of $822 million?Eventually the budget hit $141 million and, with some reshoots, ultimately topped $150 million.On opening night, July 21, Mr. Kreiz took his 19-year-old daughter to the Regal cinema complex at Union Square in Manhattan. As they neared the theater, droves of moviegoers — and not just young girls — were heading to it in pink outfits. Five screenings were in progress. All were sold out.Mr. Kreiz and his daughter dropped in and out to gauge audience reactions. People laughed, applauded and in a few cases shed tears.Of course the success of “Barbie” has drastically raised the bar — and expectations — for Mattel’s movies in development, starting with “Masters of the Universe,” written and directed by the brothers Adam and Aaron Nee. Twelve more films are in various stages of development, including a “Hot Wheels” produced by J.J. Abrams, also at Warner. Some of these may need to be rethought.And there will no doubt be “Barbie” sequels, perhaps even a James Bond-like franchise, which would be Mr. Kreiz’s ultimate fantasy (although he said it was too soon to discuss any such plans).Mr. Kreiz acknowledged that in a notoriously fickle and unpredictable business, future success is hardly assured. But “Barbie” has given Mattel momentum — the beginning of what he calls “a multiyear franchise management strategy.” More

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      At Venice Film Festival, Trapped Women and Controlling Men

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      This year’s lineup includes films from Sofia Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos and Bradley Cooper in which female characters squirm under the thumbs of egocentric men.The press room at the Venice Film Festival has to be the most beautiful film festival press room in the world. Taking over the third floor of the imposing Palazzo del Casinò, the main atrium is a gargantuan, triple-height space carpeted in soft cream, with columns clad in marble extending up past Murano glass chandeliers, and floor-to-ceiling windows hung with gold-sheened drapes giving way to a sparkling blue sea. On a clear day — which it almost always is — you imagine that, were it not for the curvature of the earth, you could see forever. Or at least to Croatia.It is an eternal contradiction that this lofty space should be peopled with dozens of perspiring journalists hunched over their laptops, hammering away at their keyboards like birds beating their wings against the bars of a particularly gilded cage. Or maybe such dark thoughts in a such a light-filled structure — designed by the architect Eugenio Miozzi in 1938 to embody the monumentalist fantasy of Mussolini’s fascist regime — are a symptom of a festival lineup that, this year, features a profusion of stories about women similarly chafing against the restrictive, but often luxurious, enclosures built by controlling men.Some of these men were towering real-life figures. Penélope Cruz turns in the standout performance in Michael Mann’s “Ferrari” as the long-suffering wife of the Italian motoring magnate (Adam Driver), and Carey Mulligan does much the same as Leonard Bernstein’s wife Felicia in “Maestro,” directed by and starring Bradley Cooper. In both these cases — and arguably to the detriment of both well-made but strangely evanescent films — the portrayal of genius pales in comparison to the portrait of a woman who supported and nurtured that genius, even when it threatened to engulf her. in “Ferrari,” Penélope Cruz plays Laura Ferrari, the wife of the Italian car mogul Enzo Ferrari.Lorenzo SistiOf two memorable scenes in “Maestro,” only one — Bernstein’s performance of Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony at Ely Cathedral in 1973 — is about his music. The other is a lacerating domestic argument in the couple’s bedroom, during which, in every shaking nerve, Mulligan embodies the resentment of a bright, ambitious woman whose devotion to and indulgence of her famous spouse has cost her so much of herself.The life-draining capacity of egocentric men is even more strikingly literalized in Pablo Larraín’s mordant, monochrome “El Conde,” in which the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (Jaime Vadell) is recreated as a 250-year-old vampire. In Larraín’s scabrous, grisly alternate history, Pinochet is a decrepit immortal, drowning in self-pity since faking his death to evade justice. And Pinochet’s wife Lucía (Gloria Münchmeyer) is imagined as his equal, or even his better, in sheer perversity; much of the misery the terrorized nation experienced under the dictator is suggested to have been at her behest.But although that gives Lucía, who constantly petitions her husband to bite her so that she too can live out her depravities forever, a degree of apparent agency, that is robbed from her in one brief scene where “The Count,” as he likes to be called, casually trades her off to his obsequious Renfield-style butler (Alfredo Castro). The Count is then free to pursue an affair with a nun, including fantasy play that involves her dressing up as Marie Antoinette. (The Count has been obsessed with the ill-fated Queen of France ever since, in one of the film’s most provocatively gruesome early scenes, he licked the guillotine blade that severed her slender neck.)Marie Antoinette is perhaps the ultimate emblem of decorative married womanhood. And of course, she was the title star of a previous film from Sofia Coppola, whose Venice-competing “Priscilla” is yet another tale of a woman’s tentatively self-engineered escape from the influence of a dominant man.Jacob Elordi and Cailee Spaeny as Elvis and Priscilla Presley in “Priscilla.”Philippe Le SourdBased on, and clearly in deep sympathy with, Priscilla Presley’s memoir “Elvis and Me,” the film follows the famous couple’s relationship, from their first meeting when then-Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny) was just 14 years old and living on a U.S. Army base in Germany, to the moment, almost a decade-and-a-half later, when Priscilla Presley drove through the gates of Graceland for the last time as the house’s mistress.This is unmistakably a Sofia Coppola movie, in its luxuriant feel for fabrics and facades, but as in “Marie Antoinette,” here the surfaces become the substance. It is a story about how, especially to a naïve teenager, the trappings of an outwardly tantalizing lifestyle can be sprung upon you like a trap.During their first tearful goodbye in Germany, Elvis (Jacob Elordi) makes the schoolgirl Priscilla promise to “stay exactly the way you are.” But the banner film investigating the icky desire on the part of some men to keep their womenfolk infantilized is Yorgos Lanthimos’ joyously macabre “Poor Things.” The biggest hit of Venice so far, it is deeply — if twistedly, and often hilariously — concerned with the idea of female emancipation, as Bella, played by a riveting, inventive and highly physical Emma Stone, shucks off the psychological bondage first of her adoptive father (Willem Dafoe) and then of her caddish, pompous lover (Mark Ruffalo).Even the film’s hyperreal aesthetic, in which Lisbon and London are depicted by intricate, steampunky set-builds with lurid computer generated skies and seas, reinforce the concept: The film’s self-consciously airless and artificial universe makes the vigor of Bella’s adventures in sex and self-discovery all the more striking.In “Poor Things,” Emma Stone plays Bella, a woman trying to unburden herself from both her adoptive father and her vain lover.Yorgos Lanthimos/Searchlight PicturesThere are still more women trapped under the thumbs of domineering men dotted throughout the lineup, most notably in two black comedies that both feature contract killers (another feature of Venice 2023, if you also take David Fincher’s “The Killer,” Harmony Korine’s “Aggro Dr1ft” and the Liam Neeson thriller “In the Land of Saints and Sinners” into further account).Richard Linklater’s “Hit Man” stars and is co-written by Glen Powell, who deserves to leap up to major-league stardom on the back of this effervescently amoral exaggeration of a real-life story: Gary, a diffident English professor who moonlights as a fake hit man, finds love getting in the way of his mission when an abused wife, Madison (Adria Arjona), tries to enlist his services. She is driven to it as a means to escape. But the murder-solicitation in Woody Allen’s French-language “Coup de Chance,” is far less morally defensible, prompted by jealousy and again, a loss of control, as the possessive rich-guy Jean (Melvil Poupaud), discovers that his young, vivacious wife (Lou De Laâge) has taken a lover.“Coup de Chance” is, in some respects a return to form for Allen, even if one suspects that some of its breeziness is down to the attractive cast compensating for the staleness of Allen’s recent English-language quippery by mercifully speaking in French. (Native French speakers of my acquaintance tell me that the dialogue, to their ears, sounds similarly unnatural.)But it does feel more current than most of Allen’s recent output, not least in how it syncs up neatly with this Venice edition’s chief preoccupations: hit men and trapped women, and all the poor things who find themselves in plush Central Park or central Paris apartments, in press room palaces or fantastical Lisbon hotels, surrounded by luxury, but longing to be free. More

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      ‘The First Year’ Review: Allende’s Rule in Chile

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      The French-language version of a 1971 documentary by Patricio Guzmán is an extraordinary document of a nation in transition.A few years before Patricio Guzmán directed his tripartite masterpiece, “The Battle of Chile,” about the events leading to the C.I.A.-backed military coup that toppled the socialist government of President Salvador Allende in 1973, the Chilean filmmaker made “The First Year”: an account of the inaugural 12 months of Allende’s rule. Guzmán traveled through Chile, interviewing the working class about Allende’s socialist policies and accumulating a crackling portrait of hope and incipient change.The French filmmaker Chris Marker saw the documentary in 1971 and decided to help show it in France, enlisting numerous actors, including Delphine Seyrig, to dub the Spanish dialogue in French. That version, arriving this week in a sparkling restoration at Anthology Film Archives, is a remarkable document not only of a fleeting moment of historical promise, but also of an earnest gesture of international solidarity.Guzmán’s documentary is a people’s microhistory of a nation in transition. He talks to Indigenous peasants about Allende’s land-redistribution programs, miners and factory workers about the nationalization of resources that were being exploited by American business, fishermen about policies designed to liberate them from predatory middlemen. Guzmán’s camera is dynamic, probing faces and gazes with curiosity, and his interviewees are forthright. The film throbs with jubilant energy, culminating with Fidel Castro’s visit to Chile in 1971.To this capsule of a time and place, Marker adds framing context for a French audience, summarizing the colonial history of Chile in a pithy prologue. This sense of a dual perspective permeates the film: The faint audio of the Spanish interviews mingles with the French dub, like a whispered dialogue, simultaneously local and global in its address.The First YearNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Joyce Carol Oates’ Review: What’s She Thinking?

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      This generic documentary, subtitled “A Body in the Service of Mind,” is so fixated on canonizing its subject that it skirts around what makes her so intriguing: her peculiar and provocative ideas.It’s a modern-day tragedy that some people may know the writer Joyce Carol Oates primarily for her online presence — on social media, she has posted a picture of her foot oozing with blisters, and regularly voiced inflammatory opinions. It’s odd — and oddly fascinating — behavior for such a literary heavyweight, one whose six decades of novels, short stories, essays and more have triggered fascinating debates about the intersection of violence, sexuality, race and womanhood (among other dark, distinctly American subjects).There’s much to chew on about the writer, now 85. Too bad the documentary “Joyce Carol Oates: A Body in the Service of Mind” only nibbles. Directed by Stig Björkman and narrated by Laura Dern, this documentary is so fixated on enshrining Oates within the canon of American literary giants that it skirts around the peculiarity and provocation of her ideas.Björkman offers something like a glorified Wikipedia article. He identifies key moments in Oates’s life (her marriages, her upbringing in rural New York) and too cleanly links them to the books that came out of them. For instance, “Them,” Oates’s 1969 masterwork, is explained as merely a reaction to the 1967 riots in Detroit. What’s more, Björkman is uninterested in showcasing the beauty of Oates’s prose or her often risqué interests — Oates’s Marilyn Monroe novel, “Blonde,” becomes a neutered feminist statement piece rather than the abject tale of mythmaking that it is.An extended interview with Oates is woven throughout, though the tight-lipped writer doesn’t care for confessions. If Björkman’s breakdown is annoyingly textbook, he at least allows us to bask in the writer’s uncanny presence. We look at Oates, her pursed lips and slightly dazed eyes, and can’t help but ask: What is she thinking?Joyce Carol Oates: A Body in the Service of MindNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘Amerikatsi’ Review: From America to Soviet Armenia

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      The actor-director Michael Goorjian explores the urge to reconnect with one’s roots in this movie about an American who moves to Soviet Armenia.In the late 1940s, the Soviet Union invited Armenians living abroad to resettle in Soviet Armenia. In “Amerikatsi,” the actor-director Michael Goorjian imagines one such journey and finds an unusual way to express the aching urge to reconnect with one’s roots.Goorjian plays Charlie, a naïve, bumbling American who returns to Armenia years after being spirited away as a boy during the genocide. Despite befriending a Soviet official’s wife (Nelli Uvarova), he gets thrown in jail as a suspicious interloper. Charlie languishes behind prison walls, and is mocked and beaten by guards. As awful as that sounds, the film’s tone stays on the light side, even hokey, warmed by Charlie’s hopes.Charlie finds an escape from despair by gazing into an apartment visible from his barred windows. He realizes that the man he’s watching, a bearish, temperamental painter named Tigran (Hovik Keuchkerian), is a guard in the prison’s watchtower and turns out to be Armenian. So Charlie takes to eating his meager meals at his window, following along with Tigran’s marital woes, dinner toasts, and attempts at painting.The setup eloquently symbolizes the predicament of many who, like Charlie, left their homelands very young. His heart beats Armenian even if he speaks English, yet a nagging distance wards off total belonging. But he schemes indirect ways to communicate with the guard and finds a kindred spirit.It’s an intriguing scenario, though not always played out skillfully. For better and worse, we feel Charlie’s confinement fully, as he watches another’s life go by and yearns for a proper home of his own.AmerikatsiNot rated. In Armenian, English and Russian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Rotting in the Sun’ Review: Instagram, Real

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      Sebastián Silva’s satirical thriller blurs the line between reality and illusion that fuels social media.In his new movie, the Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Silva plays a version of himself locked in a self-loathing spiral. Mired in a creative pit, Sebastián is snorting drugs in his Mexico City apartment, reading E.M. Cioran’s “The Trouble With Being Born” and doing web searches for “suicide by Pentobarbital.” In need of a change, he travels to a bacchanalian gay beach, where he meets the writer and Instagram influencer Jordan Firstman (also playing a refracted version of himself). It’s not long before the ebulliently opportunistic Jordan pitches a show: “‘Curb Your Enthusiasm,’ but positive.” Eventually, Sebastián invites him to his place in the city for some writing sessions.The movie’s title works in both a literal and a metaphorical way. The first involves a spoiler, so let’s just say that a major twist redirects the story just before the halfway mark.The metaphorical interpretation captures — often graphically — mechanically hedonistic lives dominated by an insatiable need for instant gratification and almost entirely filtered through social media. “Rotting in the Sun” is sharpest when exploring the two men’s love-loathe connection because Silva threads a provocatively fuzzy line between fascination for and irritation with Jordan and, by extension, Firstman himself. Reflecting that push-pull, he invites Sebastián to “come meet my friends — you’ll hate them.”But the movie loses both focus and edge when it switches to a low-boil showdown between Jordan and Sebastián’s housekeeper, Señora Vero (a great turn from the Silva regular Catalina Saavedra, who starred in his breakout film, “The Maid”). By the end, it’s the film’s point that has turned murky.Rotting in the SunNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. In theaters. More