Manganerds and Italy in Venice: Spirals, Echoes and Comic Nerds

Sometimes you don't even need to know why people do certain things. It can be enough if they do something with so much dedication that you watch them with enthusiasm. In the Venice competition these are Fujino and Kyomoto, two Manganerds who start drawing in elementary school and don't stop. “Look Back” is the name of the film by Hirokazu Koreeda, which adapts a material based on a webcomic and which was already adapted as an anime in 2024.

Fujino draws manga strips for the school newspaper and is admired by his classmates for it. Kyomoto also draws strips for the newspaper, but is never seen at school. When Fujino's classmates notice that Kyomoto's drawings appear more professional, Fujino obsessively begins to teach himself drawing techniques from textbooks. At the end of elementary school, Fujino is asked by the teacher to bring home Kyomoto's graduation certificate. There the two meet for the first time. And realize that they admire each other. They decide to draw a manga together.

What sounds like pretty nerdy material becomes a touching coming-of-age story in the hands of Koreeda with his unerring eye for how children see the world. It may help that his two main characters, which is not the norm for comic artists, are two girls. Their friendship develops with an unconditionality that is taken for granted.

The fact that at some point, after there has been a break in the friends' story, the fantasy takes over doesn't detract from the appeal. In addition, there are always images that are reminiscent of manga in their painterly quality, such as that of a snowy winter landscape through which the child protagonists trudge, sinking in snow up to their knees.

It can only be said to a limited extent that people are equally moved by the Italian entries in the competition. In “The Echo Chamber,” director Andrea Pallaoro lets music producer Leo (Luca Marinelli) and physical therapist Anne (Alicia Vikander) enter into a relationship that has more to do with absence than presence. Everything is very pregnant with meaning, including the songs that Leo records with the diva Ava (Susan Sarandon) for a kind of musical testament. The music is as effortlessly charged as the many allusions to echoes in the film. The script was written by Bernardo Bertolucci, the last one completed before his death, but that didn't stop him from choosing a rarely crazy ending.

Paolo Strippoli is similarly driven by the desire for symbolism in his horror drama “L’estranea” about a rich family in Bari. Jasmine Trinca plays Anna, the mother of the family, who one day visits her daughter Alice (Romana Maggiore Vergana) in her apartment in Rome to tell her about her family's secrets. Anna blames a mysterious stranger (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) for all of her misfortunes. Lots of screaming, noise, somewhat unsavory images, plus lots of images of spirals that are supposed to drag you down. And a lot of emptiness.

Then rather Nanni Moretti's relationship-mad self-love, who also lets the actress Jasmine Trinca, this time a little more advantageously cast, meet Louis Garrel in "Succederà questa notte", so that both of them miss each other for years as a couple that was actually intended for each other. It starts better than it ends, but compared to the other Italian contributions it's definitely attractive.