Feature: 4 Italian films at Venice Int'l Film Festival draw mixed reactions

Italy had as many as four films among the 21 competing for the Golden Lion at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival, but many viewers gave them a tepid welcome.

Italian actress Valeria Golino took the best actress prize as the festival closed at the Lido of Venice on Saturday night for her role in the film Per Amor Vostro (For your Love) by Giuseppe Gaudino.

Golino, 49, plays the role of an indolent woman who stopped seeing what was really happening in her family 20 years ago and prefers not to take sides, for the love of her three sons and her family.

Eventually, after years of insecurity, when she is finally able to get a stable job, she begins to free herself from this condition and even from her husband, whom she finally decides to leave.

Three other Italian films competed in the festival, drawing mixed reactions.

L'Attesa (The Wait) by Piero Messina, set in an old villa in the beautiful countryside of Sicily island in southern Italy, tells a story of a woman emerging from a sudden bereavement, who spends her days in solitude.

And all of a sudden Jeanne appears, a young woman who claims to be the girlfriend of Anna's son. Anna was unaware of Jeanne's existence and is unable to reveal a truth that for her cannot be spoken.

"I saw L'Attesa but unfortunately I did not like it. I found that the plot was too meagre and focused on two characters who did not really interact between them," Cristina Chiariti, a young cinema passionate, told Xinhua.

Chiariti said she was disappointed by the Italian films competing at the festival. "I was looking forward to watching the Italian films, but they were a negative surprise for me. I usually love Italian films, I do not know what happened here at the festival," she said.

In her view, The Bigger Splash by Italian Luca Guadagnino was not a good film. "I found that some parts of it has nothing to do with the main storyline, it was quite confusing," she noted.

In The Bigger Splash, a rock legend is having a holiday on an island with her partner, when an old flame unexpectedly arrives with his daughter and interrupts their happiness. Love, beauty, desire and sexuality are leading elements in the the film.

Another viewer, Sharla Ault, said she found the same film "disturbing." "I cannot tell whether I liked it or not, but it was quite an emotionally strong film, so I was hit. From this point of view, I think the director has reached his objective," she told Xinhua after watching the film.

Guadagnino told journalists at the festival that negative comments are part of the festival's nature. "Anyone can express negative views in the way he or she thinks it is right to do," he said noting that in the end it will be only the market to determine whether a film is successful or not.

Sangue del mio Sangue (Blood of my Blood) by Italian director Marco Bellocchio, a two-part film starting with the 17th-century story of a fallen nun and shifting to the same convent-prison locale today, was also a film which triggered mixed reactions.

"I found it embarrassing, an unsuccessful experiment. Bellocchio tried to put together two parts which in fact appeared very far one from each other. This is unacceptable from a director who has been making film for decades," said Tommaso Faoro, a member of a local cinema circle.

The festival's director Alberto Barbera acknowledged that, generally speaking, cinema is facing some problems in Italy. However, he stressed, the presence of so many films at the festival, including ones by young directors, was an important sign of vitality and hope for the future. Endit