VENICE — Forget the classic Frankenstein films, where the monster had a flat head, neck bolts, and heavy boots.

The new adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein, directed by Mexico’s Guillermo del Toro, portrays a sad, sensitive creature craving affection and knowledge, and instead confronted by anger and hatred.

“A lot of the interpretations of the creature visually are almost like accident victims, and I wanted beauty,” Mr. Del Toro told reporters on Saturday ahead of the premiere of his latest film at the Venice Film Festival.

Mr. Del Toro directs from his own screenplay, telling the story of Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), an arrogant scientist who assembles a creature from body parts and brings to life an indestructible, gentle giant (Jacob Elordi).

The movie shows the danger of misusing modern technologies, but Mr. Del Toro, whose feature The Shape of Water took top honors at Venice in 2017, said he was not thinking about artificial intelligence when he wrote the script.

“Artificial intelligence I’m not afraid of. I’m afraid of natural stupidity, which is much more abundant,” he said. “We live in a time of terror and intimidation, certainly. And the answer, which art is part of, is love.”

Unlike many directors, Mr. Del Toro largely shunned computerized special effects and instead built lavish sets for his team of actors, which also included Christoph Waltz, Mia Goth, and Felix Kammerer.

“If you put them (actors) in a real lab with real windows, with real height, with real giant batteries, they are reacting to another actor,” he said.

“CGI is for losers,” Mr. Waltz added to laughs.

‘BROKEN HEART’
Mr. Del Toro, known for blending fantasy and horror in films such as Pan’s Labyrinth, said he had been obsessed with Mary Shelley’s novel, first published in 1818, since he was a boy and had always wanted to create his own film version.

“What I didn’t want is for you to feel that you were watching a classic interpreted with reverence, but with urgency and something alive now,” he said of the humane retelling of the horror saga, with the scientist emerging as the true monster.

“How do you live with a broken heart, and what do you do with a broken heart? Often cruelty happens out of broken hearts,” Mr. Isaac said of his character.

The picture is one of three films US streamer Netflix is showcasing at Venice. The other two are Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite and Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly.

It is expected to get a limited release in cinemas in October before going behind the Netflix paywall in November.

Mr. Del Toro said he wanted it to get as wide a cinema release as possible, but was excited by Netflix’s huge potential audience.

“I mean, look at my size. I always want more of everything,” the rotund director joked, before adding: “To me, the battle we are going to fight in telling stories is on two fronts, obviously the size of the screen, but the size of the ideas is very important.”

Frankenstein is one of 21 films competing for the prestigious Golden Lion prize, which will be awarded on Sept. 6. — Reuters

VENICE — Jude Law said on Sunday he did not fear reprisals for playing Russian President Vladimir Putin in The Wizard of the Kremlin, a new film premiering at the Venice Film Festival that offers a chilling, fictionalized look at Mr. Putin’s rise to power.

The Wizard of the Kremlin, directed by France’s Olivier Assayas and also starring Paul Dano, shows Mr. Putin ruthlessly disposing of people who cross his path.

Asked by reporters if he was worried about possible retaliation for taking on the role, Mr. Law said: “I hope not naively, but… I didn’t fear repercussions.”

The British actor added that the film recounted Mr. Putin’s single-minded ascendancy “with nuance and consideration. We weren’t looking for controversy for controversy’s sake.”

Based on a best-selling novel by Giuliano da Empoli, the movie imagines the life of Vadim Baranov, a shadowy Kremlin insider who rises from artist to television producer before becoming a spin doctor to a young Mr. Putin.

From his office in the Kremlin, he crafts narratives that blur truth and propaganda, faith and manipulation, renouncing his values to serve his master who is determined to restore Russia to greatness after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

‘SCARY AND DANGEROUS SITUATION’
Mr. Law said he shunned a strict impersonation of Mr. Putin, but nonetheless tried to capture the essence of the man. “It’s amazing what a great wig can do,” he joked.

“The tricky side was that the public face (of Putin) that we see gives very little away… I felt that conflict of trying to show very little, but feel an awful lot and portray an awful lot from within,” he said.

Mr. Assayas, best known for films such as Carlos (2010) and Personal Shopper (2016), said his latest movie resonated beyond Russia.

“We made a movie about what politics has become and the very scary and dangerous situation we all feel we are in,” he said.

“We took the case of Vladimir Putin, but it applies to many authoritarian leaders. Politics has changed in a major way during our lifetimes, and what’s going on right now is terrifying,” he added.

American actor Jeffrey Wright, who plays a US writer in the movie, said he hoped it would get widely seen in his home country, which he feared might shed its ideals and aspirations.

“If that is lost as it is now, then we become the thing we see in this film,” he said.

Mr. Dano, who plays the main protagonist Baranov, said the project avoided simple moral labels.

“If you were to just label a character bad, it would be a massive oversimplification,” he said. “Asking why, and looking into the gray, even if it’s scary, is better than letting us go further and further into black and white.”

The Wizard of the Kremlin is one of 21 films competing for the prestigious Golden Lion prize, which will be awarded on Sept. 6. — Reuters

VENICE — The life and career of British singer-songwriter Marianne Faithfull are reappraised at the Venice Film Festival in Broken English, a movie that mixes documentary and fiction in an effort to redress her often distorted public image.

“Marianne was an artist’s artist… but public perception had been frozen and been stuck. And I think that were it left to AI (artificial intelligence), broken data is just going to stay broken,” said Jane Pollard who co-directed with fellow British filmmaker Iain Forsyth.

Often remembered as simply the former girlfriend of Mick Jagger, despite having released over 30 albums in her own right, Ms. Faithfull is portrayed through a series of interviews conducted in the years leading up to her death at 78 last January.

“When Marianne died so many of the obituaries that ran were headlined ‘Mick Jagger’s ex-girlfriend dies’ … And you kind of think, would you want to be defined for a lifetime by a fairly fleeting relationship that you had in your youth?” Mr. Forsyth told Reuters.

Placed within the setting of the fictional Ministry of Not Forgetting, the film also makes heavy use of archive material, including interviews with journalists who home in on Ms. Faithfull’s rock-and-roll escapades and drug addiction in London’s swinging ’60s rather than her creative work.

“Why have a Ministry of Not Forgetting? Well, because there are many artists whose legacies if left to the algorithms of AI will be misrepresentative of the truth,” said Ms. Pollard ahead of the film’s premiere on Saturday.

“I hope (our film) can begin a conversation and begin a process of reevaluation, both of Marianne as an artist, but also how we consider particularly female artists in the media, which in 50 years has really not changed that much.” Mr. Forsyth added.

Named after Ms. Faithfull’s comeback album released in 1979 after spending two years living on the streets of London, Broken English features actors Tilda Swinton as the ministry overseer and George MacKay in the role of record keeper and interviewer.

Ms. Faithfull, who suffered a severe bout of COVID-19 in her latter years, gives her final musical performance in the film, singing “Misunderstanding” from her 2018 album Negative Capability with backing from Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.

“The physical feat of it with COVID having ravaged her body and not feeling comfortable to talk for long without oxygen, to take it away and to sing was incredibly moving,” Mr. MacKay said.

Ms. Faithfull died during the production but the directors said the finished work reflected 99% of their intended vision.

Broken English is playing out of competition at Venice, meaning it is not in the running for the prestigious Golden Lion award that will be handed out on Sept. 6. — Reuters