Strong female roles sparkle in Venice Film Festival's 1st competition day

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Strong female roles sparkle in Venice Film Festival's 1st competition day

By Marzia De Giuli, Federico Grandesso (Xinhua) 09:28, August 30, 2013

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Powerful stories of courageous women trying to fulfill dreams or face the demon were kindling the competition of the ongoing 70th Venice film Festival at the Lido island of the Italian water city on Thursday.

In Tracks by the American movie director John Curran, based on a best-seller by Robyn Davidson, a young girl travels on foot and mostly alone for 2700 km in the Australian desert from Alice Spring to the Indian Ocean.

During this journey which is a sort initiation, the protagonist is accompanied by four camels and a dog. Through the difficulties and the various characters she meets on her way, this young rebel keeps precious life rules from the aborigine population to the invasive press which is following her adventure.

For her, this travel seems to be an obligation, a pact she took with her father. She is a girl with many fragilities but who can get everything she wants because she knows clearly her objective.

She will have to negotiate with the press in order to get the money to do this journey but also always underline her independence and the red line not to cross also for her photographer-lover.

In the second movie competing among a total of 20 for the top Golden Lion prize, Via Castellana Bandiera, two women of different culture and age defy one another when they both refuse to give way after they enter the same narrow alley of Palermo, the city where the story takes place.

For Rosa and Samira, obstruction of the road becomes a matter of principle, even of life or death, in a dreamlike confrontation that starts in a hot Sunday afternoon and continues in the dark of the night.

Only in fighting an intimate duel that is part of every human being's "monstrosity," the two drivers go through a process of transformation, the movie's Italian director Emma Dante told a press conference after the screening.

Shut inside their cars, Rosa and Samira are finally forced to unconsciously make a point about their life and come to term with their humanity.

"All of these three women go beyond their limits, be it hunger and thirst or anger towards life," Andrea Giordano, a cinema critic and journalist of British Empire Magazine told Xinhua when commenting on those female figures.

"In the lifetime journey of such strong female characters, men play only a minimal role being almost invisible," he added.

The protagonist of Tracks comes from a family where the role of women is well defined. For this reason, the challenge for this young girl is not only with herself but also against the patriarchal traditions which resists only in the aborigine society.

A domineering attitude that usually belongs to the male species emerges instead from the main characters of Via Castellana Bandiera, who are either angry with life or feel they can no longer express themselves. Male neighborhood residents will have to give way in front of the archaic strength of feminine stubbornness.