Finally Dawn

Venice Film Festival #7 – Sala Grande

I’m kind of in utter shock how poorly this has been received. Look, it’s no masterpiece but I genuinely had fun. This was camp in a way I’ve been craving for film to be. I feel like people often conflate camp and bad as the same thing, when there is a distinction, and making a film which is camp I feel like is impressive when it able to classify itself as camp and avoid falling to just being bad.

The first two thirds of the film are really great. Lily James plays the most over the top starlet who is so deluded in her own world of fame she had become a caricature of a human being. Her character’s acting is horrible but she’s so big that everyone around her puts her own a pedestal and it’s so fun to see how that delusion manifests itself in a person. What a genuinely good performance from James, her line reads are so scathing and is just a masterclass in understanding the tone of the film, when she isn’t in the film her presence being gone is clear.

Rebecca Antonaci is the main character and this being her first feature film I was blown away. Such restrained control she has over scenes and is a perfect foil for James. Joe Keery gives a good performance also, he is effortlessly charming and charismatic, however this film needed more Rachel Sennott (I mean this is a critique of all films). She ate her scenes that she had and was also just so perfect for the tone of the film.

As I mentioned the first two thirds of the film work, but it sadly just isn’t able to keep this momentum throughout the rest and ends quite poorly. It really blew me away how well the start flows from scene to scene but near the halfway point the film has a party scene that goes on far too long. The same could be said about the whole film. It needed to be shorter. Scenes drag sadly and don’t add much to the commentary it’s making.

What the film is saying on fame and class isn’t anything new, but it’s not what I came for the film for – this was the campiness. However, the longer it goes on the film feels that it is saying something profound, and I don’t think it is. What’s annoying is the campy tone also disappears so it does drag. I did think it was recovering itself by the end, but it instead has an ending that feels like it’s some symbolism on the ideas of the film which were just too simple