Gore-Filled Films Open Venice Festival

The 58th edition of the world’s oldest film festival got off to a blood-spattered start this week. Then came the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

Day One of the Venice Film Festival included South Korean director Kim Ki-Duk’s latest gore-fest, “Address Unknown” (Soochwieen Boolmyung),and “Dust,” which is billed as a Balkan western.

Many festival veterans believed “Address Unknown” might be better left unseen. The same director was in Venice last year with “The Isle,” a bit of sadomasochism so shocking that a few viewers fainted.

In “Address Unknown,” he goes even further. One of the characters is a butcher who specializes in dogs, and what the humans do to one another is better left unsaid.

The honor of opening the festival went to “Dust,” by Macedonian director Milcho Manchevski, who won a Golden Lion here seven years ago with his debut film, “Before the Rain,” and promptly sank from sight.

His shoot-’em-up, cut-’em-up, string-’em-up comeback was less than triumphant. The dean of Italian movie critics, Tullio Kezich, complained bitterly in the newspaper Corriere della Sera that it was “certainly unpleasant to see the festival inaugurated, with trumpets and drums, with a really bad film.”

The movie, a Cain-Abel tale set in Macedonia at the beginning of the 20th century and, in the framing narrative, modern-day New York, stars Joseph Fiennes.

Both directors and some commentators have defended the level of violence in these films as valid reflections of the histories and cultures they depict.

“Film is one of the best ways to transform the violence of the world into myth,” Manchevski said in an interview, invoking the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman.

Two other early offerings--”Y Tu Mama Tambien” (And Your Mother, Too) by Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron and one of the only U.S. movies competing for a Golden Lion prize, Larry Clark’s “Bully”--offered lots of explicit teen sex but had little else in common.

Venice critics generally were favorable to the Mexican film but divided on “Bully.”

The festival ends on Sept. 8.