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Timothee chalamet in denis villeneuve’s ‘dune’: film review | venice 2021.

Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi classic gets epic screen treatment, with an all-star cast that also features Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Jason Momoa and Zendaya.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Unless you’re sufficiently up on Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi classic to know your Sardaukars from your Bene Gesserit, your crysknife from your hunter-seeker, chances are you’ll be glazing over not too far into Dune . Or wishing that House Atreides and House Harkonnen would kick off a vogue ball.

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Venue : Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition) Release date : Friday, Oct. 22 Cast : Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Zendaya, Jason Momoa Director : Denis Villeneuve Screenwriters : Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, Eric Roth

Decades after Alejandro Jodorowsky’s aborted 1970s attempt to bring Dune to the screen and David Lynch’s baffling 1984 version — which was memorable mostly for putting Sting in a winged metal diaper — Villeneuve’s film at least gets closer to the elusive goal than its predecessors. It has a reasonable semblance of narrative coherence, even if a glossary would be helpful to keep track of the Imperium’s various planets, dynastic Houses, mystical sects, desert tribes and their respective power players.

What the film doesn’t do is shape Herbert’s intricate world-building into satisfyingly digestible form. The history and complex societal structure that are integral to the author’s vision are condensed into a blur, cramping the mythology. The layers of political, religious, ecological and technological allegory that give the novel such exalted status get mulched in the screenplay by Jon Spaihts, Villeneuve and Eric Roth into an uninvolving trade war, with the blobby Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) ordering a genocide to secure a monopoly of the addictive Spice found only in the desert wastelands of the planet Arrakis.

That drug looks like a glitter bomb set off in the sand in the dreamlike visions of Paul Atreides (Chalamet) that punctuate the action with numbing regularity. The mind-expanding substance’s benefits to health, longevity and knowledge place it in high demand, as we learn during an exposition dump disguised as Paul’s study time. Those visions also feature Chani ( Zendaya ), a member of the Fremen civilization that lives on Arrakis; she haunts Paul throughout in a spiritual connection, but doesn’t show up physically until the final scenes, just in time to say, “This is only the beginning.” Never a good sign at the end of a two-and-a-half-hour movie that has long since been sagging under its dense thicket of plot.

It’s the year 10191, and House Harkonnen has been in charge of harvesting Spice for some time, ravaging the land and inflicting cruelty on the Fremen. But the emperor abruptly pulls them out and puts Paul’s father, Duke Leto ( Oscar Isaac ), in control, giving House Atreides exclusive stewardship over Arrakis. Leto and his concubine Jessica ( Rebecca Ferguson ), Paul’s mother, both see the vulnerability in their elevation, even if the Duke hopes to forge an alliance with the Fremen and bring peace. For reasons that the film hurries through with too much haste to clarify, the stage is set for war nonetheless, and Leto calls the reluctant Paul to power as the future of House Atreides.

Part hero’s journey and part survival story, the film keeps throwing arcane details at you, which might thrill the Herbert geeks but will have most everyone else zoning out. Villeneuve is a smart director who honed his chops on brainy sci-fi with Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 . For sheer monolithic scale, visual imagination and visceral soundscape alone, a number of the set pieces are arresting, and the film has the benefit of putting the focus on physical production, with far less CG saturation than most of its recent genre brethren.

There’s much to admire in Patrice Vermette’s production design, particularly the Zen elegance of the aristocratic Atreides household on their beautiful oceanic home planet of Caladan and the Arrakis stronghold Arrakeen, a sprawling structure that combines ancient Egyptian and Aztec influences. The costumes by Jacqueline West and Robert Morgan also are full of eye-catching touches, from the gauzy gowns of Jessica and other women billowing in the desert wind to the utilitarian body-cooling “stillsuit” developed by the Fremen for survival in the desert, equipped with a fluid-recycling system.

On a scene-by-scene basis, Dune is occasionally exciting, notably whenever Atreides swordmaster Duncan Idaho ( Jason Momoa ) is in action, backed by Hans Zimmer’s thundering orchestral score. (Duncan also benefits from being the only guy in this dull old universe with a sense of humor.) But the storytelling lacks the clean lines to make it consistently propulsive. Paradoxically, given its lofty position in the sci-fi canon, much of the narrative’s novelty has also been diluted, rendered stale by decades of imitation. Looking at you, George Lucas.

I found myself less interested in the human ordeals than the tech business — the giant Harkonnen harvesters raking the sands like desert beetles as monstrous sandworms tunnel up to the surface to suck everything into their huge fibrous maws; the wasp-winged choppers known as ornithopters, buzzing through the skies; the stillsuits and the recycling tubes of an emergency tent, turning sweat and tears into drinkable water.

Perhaps the biggest issue with Dune , however, is that this is only the first part, with the second film in preproduction. That means an awful lot of what we’re watching feels like laborious setup for a hopefully more gripping film to come — the boring homework before the juicy stuff starts happening.

Zendaya’s role, in particular, is basically a prelude to a larger arc that Paul has partly foreseen, where he lives among the Fremen as their “Lisan al Gaib,” or off-world prophet, as they plot to take back Arrakis. A quick glimpse of him rodeo-riding a sandworm signals the future extent of his powers. Other actors, like Javier Bardem as proud Fremen chieftain Stilgar, will presumably have more to do, as will good guys like Josh Brolin’s Atreides warmaster Gurney Halleck if part two sticks to Herbert’s plot. On the villainous side, Skarsgard’s levitating lard-ass Baron Harkonnen and his thuggish nephew Beast Rabban (Dave Bautista) seem sure to be back to wreak more destruction.

Whether audiences will choose to return for more after this often ponderous trudge through the desert is an open question.

Full credits

Venue: Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition) Distributor: Warner Bros. Production companies: Warner Bros. Pictures, Legendary Pictures Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgard, Dave Bautista, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zendaya, Chang Chen, David Dastmalchian, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem, Babs Olusankokum, Golda Rosheuvel, Benjamin Clementine Director: Denis Villeneuve Screenwriters: Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, Eric Roth, based on the novel by Frank Herbert Producers: Mary Parent, Denis Villeneuve, Cale Boyter, Joe Caracciolo Jr. Executive producers: Tanya Lapointe, Joshua Grode, Herbert W. Gains, Jon Spaihts, Thomas Tull, Brian Herbert, Byron Merritt, Kim Herbert Director of photography: Greig Fraser Production designer: Patrice Vermette Costume designer: Jacqueline West, Robert Morgan Editor: Joe Walker Music: Hans Zimmer Visual effects supervisor: Paul Lambert Special effects supervisor: Gerd Nefzer Casting: Francine Maisler, Jina Jay

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They Came by Night

By Anthony Lane

Published in 1969, Agatha Christie’s “ Hallowe’en Party ” is largely set in the fictional town of Woodleigh Common, “an ordinary sort of place,” thirty or forty miles from London. Thanks to the director Kenneth Branagh and his screenwriter, Michael Green, the book has become a new film, “A Haunting in Venice,” and the action has shifted to Italy in 1947. Now, that’s an adaptation—a bolder metamorphosis than anything essayed by Branagh and Green in “ Murder on the Orient Express ” (2017) or “ Death on the Nile ” (2022). I’m already looking forward to their next reworking of Christie: “The Body in the Library,” perhaps, relocated to the freezer aisle of a Walmart.

Branagh returns as Hercule Poirot, who has retired to a Venetian fastness. There, ignoring the pleas of the importunate, who bug him with their private mysteries, he tends his garden, inspecting his plants through a magnifying glass as if to expose any guilty aphids. A local heavy named Portfoglio (Riccardo Scamarcio), who sounds like a stockbroker but is actually an ex-cop, functions as a gatekeeper. The one outsider to whom he allows entry is Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), a crime novelist on the make. She urges the sleuth to accompany her to a séance, where a celebrated medium, Mrs. Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), will make contact with the beyond. Ariadne’s plan is that Poirot, as an arch-rationalist, will debunk the claims of the paranormal. And Branagh’s plan, as a guileful filmmaker, is to rebunk them to the hilt.

Prepare yourself, therefore, for all the tricks. A palazzo, said to be stuffed with ghosts and currently occupied by an operatic soprano, Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), who hasn’t sung a note since her daughter, Alicia (Rowan Robinson), fell into a canal and drowned. A parrot called Harry, who has kept his beak shut for the same reason. A housekeeper (Camille Cottin) given to speaking in Latin, who alone has access to the daughter’s room. A British doctor (Jamie Dornan), traumatized by his wartime experience. A handsome and reliably vacant rotter (Kyle Allen), who was once betrothed to Alicia and jilted her, apparently for money, which seems fair enough to me. A concealed basement, complete with skeletons. A knitted rabbit. Missing bees. A typewriter whose keys depress themselves. A lashing nocturnal storm so wild that, when death descends, the police cannot reach the scene, meaning that Poirot must lock everyone in and— mon Dieu —solve the crime before breakfast.

I remember being scared by “Hallowe’en Party” when I read it as a child, because the first victim was a child: a girl of twelve or thirteen, whose head was forced down into a bucket of water while she was bobbing for apples. (Christie could be cruel, when she wished, in the matter of fun gone wrong.) As if by way of redemption, the most interesting figure in “A Haunting in Venice” is another kid—Leopold, the doctor’s son, played by Jude Hill, who was the rascally tyke at the heart of Branagh’s “ Belfast ” (2021). Here, Hill is scrubbed clean of any cuteness; instead, he presents us with a kind of precocious mini-Poirot, solemnly clad in a dark suit and tie. Leopold cares for his quaking father, reads Edgar Allan Poe, and, asked about his sympathy with the dead, replies, “Some of them are my friends.” He and the boy in “The Sixth Sense” (1999) would have plenty to talk about.

For the constitutionally morbid, such as Leopold, nowhere can outgloom Venice. “The most beautiful of tombs,” Henry James called it, and I am always bemused by its reputation as a romantic refuge. How can you honeymoon in a city defined by dissolution and decay? Think of Joseph Losey, who took a Hollywood potboiler, James Hadley Chase’s “Eve,” and, like Branagh, moved the plot to Venice. The result was “Eva” (1962), a memorial to disenchantment, in which Jeanne Moreau, as a heedless hedonist, left her lover with his dignity drenched and his heart in ruins. Part of the film unfolded on Torcello, in winter, far from the dazzle of the Grand Canal.

If every Venetian tale has been told, then, and every view exhaustively documented in print or paint, what can “A Haunting in Venice” hope to add to the mix? It’s only a couple of months since Hayley Atwell and Rebecca Ferguson were busy battling a villain on one of the city’s bridges in the latest “Mission: Impossible,” and, for the Venetian mourning of drowned daughters, there is nothing to rival “Don’t Look Now” (1973). Yet Branagh’s film has the charm of ridiculous excess: stylistic flourishes are piled high into a treasury of gothic camp, and the camera is tilted, regardless of provocation, at the most alarming angles—Dutch angles, as they are known in the trade. If you really want to feel at home, M. Poirot, forget Venice. Onward to Amsterdam!

According to the historical record, Augusto Pinochet , who came to power in Chile after a military coup fifty years ago, was born in 1915 and died in 2006. According to “El Conde,” on the other hand, a new movie from the Chilean director Pablo Larraín, Pinochet was around for centuries. He began as Claude Pinoche, a young French officer in the army of Louis XVI, who observed the excesses of the French Revolution at close quarters—so close that, after the execution of Marie Antoinette, he snuck up to the guillotine and licked her blood from the blade. This was no regular brute, you see. He was a vampire.

Such is the conceit that drives this unusual film. Tracking the course of Pinochet’s misdeeds, it jumps forward to the modern age, passes swiftly over the span of his dictatorial reign, and alights on his casket as he lies in state. A small window shows the peaceful visage of the deceased, who opens his eyes and steals a glance, clearly impatient to rise again and resume his thirsty trade. Simple blood, we learn, does not satisfy Pinochet’s discerning palate; instead, he plucks out his victims’ hearts, pops them in a blender, and quaffs the liquidized gloop. Aside from a last-minute coda, “El Conde”—“The Count”—is entirely in black-and-white. The gore is as dark as tar.

The bulk of the story is set on a remote Chilean ranch. The sole occupants are Pinochet (Jaime Vadell), his wife, Lucía Hiriart (Gloria Münchmeyer), and their servant, Fyodor (Alfredo Castro), who takes great pride in the chronicle of his sadism, as meted out during the rule of the junta. To this desolate spot come Pinochet’s five children, who profess a feeble strain of love for their father but are mainly after his money. An accountant by the name of Carmencita (Paula Luchsinger) arrives, to sort out the family finances, not least the funds that were stashed away like a squirrel’s nuts. Carmencita, however, has a secret plan; she is a nun, in civilian disguise, and her suitcase is filled with the tools of an exorcist. The stakes are high.

Vampires notwithstanding, no one in the movie makes a more striking impact than Luchsinger. Close-cropped, sharp-featured, round-eyed, and beaming, she radiates a militant innocence. Yet her character’s purpose becomes perilously blurred, and there is something slack and unfocussed at the core of the plot. The more that Larraín tries to grab your attention with moral grotesquerie, as the Pinochets bicker over the legacy of the undead, the less inclined you are to yield. My suspicion is that “El Conde” is a one-trick tale. The image of a tyrant as an actual bloodsucker, rather than as a harsh subduer of his compatriots, would be meat and drink—especially drink—to a political cartoonist, but it has no narrative force to match its satirical bite. Few jokes, no matter how sick and strong, can be told over and over without beginning to fade.

The film is narrated in the unmistakable tones of Margaret Thatcher (Stella Gonet), who deigns to make a guest appearance in the later stages. It is true that, after Pinochet was indicted for human-rights violations in 1998, and held under house arrest in Britain, Thatcher (and George H. W. Bush) argued that he should be released. Anyone watching “El Conde,” though, and knowing little of that period, will be left with the impression that she was not so much Pinochet’s ally as his monstrous mate—even, perhaps, his superior—with savage tastes of her own. Like him, she flies serenely through vast gray skies, her cape spread out in a bat’s wing. Being a lady, she sips blood from a china cup, as if it were Earl Grey tea.

The fact that Thatcher, unlike Pinochet, was fairly elected, and that she governed a country in which you could call the Prime Minister a vampire without getting thrown out of a helicopter or beaten to a pulp, may be too fine and too dull a distinction to trouble Larraín. His is a curious case: his work has grown sillier, not wiser, in his maturity. The baroque paranoia of “Jackie” (2016), “Spencer” (2021), and “El Conde,” bulging with nightmares of conspiracy, is less persuasive than the urgency of “NO” (2012). That was Larraín’s best film, firmly grounded in the campaign to defeat Pinochet in a referendum of 1988, and peopled with ordinary Chileans who had endured more than enough and gathered themselves to hit back. Where are such folk in “El Conde”? Who needs a movie that is almost all predators, with barely a word from their prey? ♦

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Billy magnussen, sarah gadon and hamish linklater among those rounding out cast of imperative and sony’s ‘a big bold beautiful journey’, venice review: ‘the lord of the ants’ addresses homosexuality under fascist rule.

By Valerie Complex

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Myrmecology is a study of science that looks at the life, society and hierarchy of ants. Early Myrmecologists believed that ant culture was utopian and thought by studying them in encased ant farms, they could find solutions to human problems. However, Gianni Amelio’s Italian post-WWII drama The Lord of the Ants (Il Signore Delle Formiche) flips this idea around. It examines why strict societies foster cultures of oppression where everyone must play their role or be punished.

The screenplay by Amelio, Federico Fava and Edoardo Petti chooses its dialogue with precision. They want us to know they resent post-Mussolini Europe and how not just homosexuals but anyone on the margins is oppressed under fascist rule. 

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In 1965 Rome, Aldo Braibanti (Luigi Lo Cascio) is caught sleeping with his young lover Ettore (Leonardo Maltese). Their relationship started a year earlier in small-town Italy, where Aldo was directing a play. This is when he meets Ettore, who shares Aldo’s love for poetry, theater and ants. Ettore’s brother warns him against getting close to the director as he apparently has a tendency to groom barely legal men. However, the attraction is strong between them, and soon a love affair begins. Eventually, the two run away to Rome, and they are caught by his brother and mother and taken away from Aldo. 

In the form of conversion therapy, Ettore is institutionalized, where he receives shock treatment and other forms of medical torture. His mother visits frequently, but each time, he is more disconnected from reality. Aldo is sitting in jail awaiting trial. He’s charged with the crime of ‘moral subjugation.’  There is a group of young progressives who believe the man is being mistreated and protest his trial. Ennio (Elio Germano) is a local journalist who takes an interest in the case and visits Aldo to get his side of the story out to the public, even at the risk of his career.

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There are several shots of a symbolic ant mound encased in glass. Every ant is born to do a job — nothing more. They take orders from a queen and do what they are assigned. This is a reflection of what Amelio thinks life is like under fascism. Everyone conforms, individuality is discouraged, and you must put society above your own self-interest. Although Mussolini’s reign ended 20 years before the film’s timeline, people still feel his presence. There is no room for homosexuality in that. Ettore often questions Aldo about his friends being too flamboyant because he’s been indoctrinated by his environment. 

The film uses Aldo and Ettore’s relationship and the air of grooming to make parallels between what that dynamic looks like on a micro and macro level, but not all is lost. The Lord of the Ants also declares the youth as the heralds of acceptance and change, but that’s how it’s always been. Many life-changing movements are ignited by those who break with tradition, bringing attention to the purists who refuse to accept the future.

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The film uses Aldo and Ettore’s relationship and the air of grooming to make parallels between what grooming looks like on a micro and macro level, but not all is lost. The Lord of the Ants also declares the youth as the heralds of acceptance and change, but that’s how it’s always been. Many life-changing movements are ignited by those who break with tradition, bringing attention to the purists who refuse to accept the future.

Amelio is a passionate writer and director who does well to display the frenzied hysteria of a culture still obsessed with consonance. The theme is more relevant than ever, especially with conservatism growing worldwide and holding marginalized communities under dictatorships. The message does become preachy and hyperbolic at times. Still, The Lord of the Ants is a powerful reminder of what happens when people would rather be subordinate than take control of their destiny. As long as fascist mentalities are allowed to thrive, everyone is in danger. 

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A Haunting in Venice

In post-World War II Venice, Poirot, now retired and living in his own exile, reluctantly attends a seance. But when one of the guests is murdered, it is up to the former detective to once a... Read all In post-World War II Venice, Poirot, now retired and living in his own exile, reluctantly attends a seance. But when one of the guests is murdered, it is up to the former detective to once again uncover the killer. In post-World War II Venice, Poirot, now retired and living in his own exile, reluctantly attends a seance. But when one of the guests is murdered, it is up to the former detective to once again uncover the killer.

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• 485 User reviews
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• 6 wins & 4 nominations

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• Trivia Sir Kenneth Branagh worked with the technical department to cause surprises for the cast. The actors were not warned about lights going out suddenly, or gusts of wind and slamming doors on the sets in which they worked, causing genuine confused and startled reactions from the actors to appear in the film. Kelly Reilly confirmed that filming the seance scene was a terrifying experience saying in an interview, "It scared the bejesus out of me."
• Goofs Shortly after the first seance, one of the two assistants is seen picking up two hurricane lamps (whch were still alight) by holding them at their tops. Something that would be impossible to do unless you had burn proof hands.

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• Soundtracks When the Lights Go on Again Written by Bennie Benjamin , Sol Marcus and Eddie Seiler Performed by Vera Lynn Courtesy of Decca Music Group Limited Under license from Universal Music Enterprises

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• Sep 16, 2023
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• September 15, 2023 (United States)
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• Campiello dei Miracoli, Campo Santa Maria Nova, Venezia, Italy
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• $60,000,000 (estimated)
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• Sep 17, 2023
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The Bone-Chilling Infested Is Spiders All the Way Down

This review originally published on September 9, 2023 out of the Venice Film Festival. We are recirculating it now that the film (originally called Vermin ; it has since been retitled Infested) is streaming on Shudder.

Screams are one thing. It’s another thing entirely to feel an audience squirm in their seats — legs twisting, arms tensing, bodies slowly contorting. The new French thriller Infested , showing at Venice as part of the Critics’ Week sidebar, is either irresistible or repulsive depending on your point of view, and maybe a bit of both. It’s a movie about huge, deadly spiders invading a French housing project. Some of the spiders, I gather, are played by real spiders, and some have been achieved via effects. Either way, they look like real spiders. They feel like real spiders. There’s personality in their movements; they don’t come across as monsters so much as just another species struggling to survive in a hostile and foreign place. It’s a nifty idea, but it works mainly because director Sébastien Vaniček, making his feature debut, understands how to shoot and cut suspense and terror. I’m not a big arachnophobe, but the first time an army of tiny spider-babies crawled up one character’s arm, my body immediately bent into a shape it has never taken before or since.

Infested isn’t a standard-issue horror film, though it starts like one. Somewhere in a desert, a group of Arab men travel to a desolate, rocky area and start lifting rocks, looking for the creatures. They finally find an enormous hole, and try to smoke the spiders out. One of them is immediately bitten on the neck and starts screaming and spiraling in pain; he’s soon put out of his misery by a swift machete blow. The incredibly venomous spider they capture is then sold under-the-counter in a shop in France to Kaleb (Théo Christine), an enterprising young hustler who makes money selling black market items (mainly sneakers) to the residents of his housing development. Kaleb has also been building a reptilarium in his apartment, much to his older sister’s chagrin. He’s gentle with his creatures, and talks to them; it’s been a dream of his since he was a child to have a small zoo filled with frogs and iguanas and snakes and other creepy crawly things.

Kaleb names his new spider Rihanna, then gives her a temporary home in a shoebox that happens to have a hole in it. As might be expected, Rihanna gets out. Rihanna lays eggs. Rihanna lays lots of eggs. By the time one of the neighbors squashes Rihanna, it’s too late. These eggs hatch and grow to unspeakable sizes in a matter of hours. Pretty soon the already-desperate residents are dropping dead, and massive cocoons and cobwebs are showing up all over the place. Kaleb, his sister, and their pals — among whom is Kaleb’s oldest, estranged friend Jordy (Finnegan Oldfield), who happens to also be a reptile and insect aficionado — have to make their way out of their dark, run-down building.

Infested wants to do more than just scare us out of our wits, even though it does that part quite well. The charged setting of the banlieu invites a political reading of what’s happening. This is a place where the power is often out, where lights aren’t fixed, where the elevator never works, and where mysterious goo on a stair or railing isn’t regarded as a particularly ominous sign. The film resists more ambitious themes or more specific symbolism, however. Vaniček has said that he sees the spiders as a metaphor for the residents of the housing project — unwanted, misunderstood, and feared. One of the programmers introducing the film at Venice Critics’ Week stated that the whole thing was about encroaching, all-consuming neo-capitalism.

I must admit that these connections feel tenuous to me, because the film itself gives very few hints at them; the spiders start biting people before they even have a chance to be misunderstood, and, aside from the fact that Rihanna arrives via a pair of fancy sneakers, there’s little here in the way of neo-capitalist allegory. Besides, for a picture that wants to be a metaphor for these downtrodden souls, it’s maybe a bit too cavalier about the kills at first, which in turn also makes a later death — one which sends the characters spinning into an extended montage of grief — feel a little asymmetric emotionally.

I’m not sure Infested works as quite the refined thesis its creators wish it to be, though perhaps this works to the movie’s advantage as a genre piece; it never really slows down to work a theme. What comes through are Vaniček’s expert orchestration of suspense, and the cast’s ability to make their characters’ fears feel genuine. Indeed, the immediacy of their desperation might be the most effective political aspect of Infested . A general sense of hopelessness gathers over the picture as the police begin to get involved. At first, the cops are neglectful and careless, then they’re violent. You do get a sense of how spiritually abandoned these places are, of the profound depth of institutional failure. It’s enough to make the characters wonder if maybe they were better off with the spiders.

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A Haunting In Venice Review: Enough Disappointment To Fill The Nile

• Fun supporting performances
• Michelle Yeoh steals the show
• Plays its silly source material too straight
• The supporting characters are all underwritten

There is no blockbuster movie franchise right now that's quite as tonally inconsistent as Kenneth Branagh's adaptations of Agatha Christie's classic Poirot mysteries. His dryly comedic take on the Belgian detective debuted in 2017 via a straightforward retelling of "Murder on the Orient Express" — a modest hit that didn't make the source material fresh so much as attempt to distract from its familiarity via a starry cast of A-listers. For the long-delayed sequel " Death on the Nile ," the franchise pivoted from being a straightforward whodunnit into something far more bizarre.

Nearly two years later, and I can't work out if it was a work of knowing-camp that was in on the joke of its sheer ridiculousness, or completely oblivious as to how every performer felt like an alien trying to pass off as human, and each of its oddball sex scenes felt like the result of an AI prompt asking for a "PG-13 Showgirls." It wasn't a good movie, but it was as delightfully deranged as its predecessor was unremarkably ordinary.

At the press screening of "A Haunting in Venice" I attended, I got the sense that many of my fellow critics were priming themselves for a similar so-bad-its-good experience in the hands of director-star Branagh, with the first 15 minutes or so routinely soundtracked by what can only be described as forced laughing. Every mundane incident was greeted with knowing guffaws from viewers who were clearly desperate to seek out a moment that could be as instantly memeable as Gal Gadot's " Enough Champagne to fill the Nile " speech; the sight of Poirot measuring two eggs at a market stall (a mildly amusing depiction of his eccentricities) was treated like the wackiest comedy set piece this side of "Dumb and Dumber." There is nothing in "A Haunting in Venice" anywhere near as memorable as Gadot's bizarre line readings. This is a perfectly functional murder mystery, which aspires to Edgar Allan Poe more than it does Christie — and when placed in comparison with its predecessor, is clearly the better of the two films.

Playing it straight

This is the extent of the faint praise with which I'll damn Kenneth Branagh's movie, which I feel has been given a pass from many critics simply because it's being placed in direct contrast with "Death on the Nile"; this isn't a ridiculous romp in the same light and treats its central mystery with far more seriousness. It functions as a conventional whodunnit and never descends into pantomime, which may satisfy fans of the genre (it's already been hailed as the best of the trilogy) but felt pretty deflating considering just how joyously bonkers the previous film was. This just feels boring placed next to it. By the halfway point, the most unexpected thing of all happened: I found myself longing for Gadot to reappear to liven things up a bit.

This isn't to say that "A Haunting in Venice" is played straight. Instead, its over-the-top aspects are all in its overt nods to the gothic, nodding to the horror literature of the past (direct references to Poe's work), and the horror movies of the present (Branagh has discovered jump scares, and tries to mine as many as he can from this material). We open in 1947 when Poirot has become a semi-recluse, refusing to take on any new cases, until he's greeted by old friend Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), an author of detective novels inspired by Poirot's real-life cases who's in desperate need of a hit after three consecutive flops. Considering Branagh's box office track record of late, I'm sure this is a struggle he empathizes with.

Dragged to a Halloween party, Poirot reluctantly agrees to attend a séance, which Ariadne hopes will get his juices flowing again so she can track one of his cases first-hand. Unfortunately, what the medium (played by a game Michelle Yeoh) discovers is underwhelming, with Poirot initially sensing he's at the center of a lazy practical joke — that is, until bodies start to pile up outside, and he hallucinates the recently departed girl they were all trying to contact. Nobody else can see this, so does it mean the house is haunted, or is it the physical manifestation of his PTSD built up over years of dealing with deadly cases? Before we know it, he proudly announces that after a few years away, "Hercule Poirot is on the case!"

Everyone's a suspect — and nobody is fleshed out enough for me to care

As with Kenneth Branagh's prior Poirot films, it's hard to get fully invested in the mystery when the suspects are barely fleshed out. Three films in, and our wacky protagonist — increasingly closer to "The Pink Panther" detective Inspector Clouseau than his traditional characterization — largely remains more of an interconnected set of quirky mannerisms than a fully imagined character, the trauma of his past that should offer us greater insight relegated to flashbacks. Tina Fey is afforded the most backstory as Ariadne, but this is largely because she was a mainstay of the novels, and a not-so-subtle surrogate for Agatha Christie herself, even if the actress has made the choice to play her like a journalist from a fast-talking 1940s screwball comedy. Of the new additions, Yeoh reminds us that prior to her Oscar win, she was synonymous with elevating franchise dreck by treating silly material with utter solemnity; there's no winking to the audience here as she opens a monologue with "I like the term 'medium,' because I am neither big nor small" — a quote that should land screenwriter Michael Green in jail.

None of the characters feel drawn from the same film; more so than the two prior efforts, broader comedy archetypes sit awkwardly when placed next to quiet figures still struggling to process their traumatic pasts. Jamie Dornan, as Dr. Leslie Ferrier , is defined by his lingering PTSD following WWII — attempts to fashion this into a mismatched buddy comedy with his Edgar Allan Poe-obsessed son Leopold (Jude Hill — yes, the kid from "Belfast," playing Dornan's son for a second time!) taking the role of the parental figure. This is the closest the movie gets to genuine sweetness, but the screenplay keeps trying to find jokes within this dynamic in a way that undermines it; a recurring issue for this film, which I felt was holding itself back from fully committing to the comedic moments so it could ensure a greater tonal command than its predecessor. It once again left me wishing it would just become an out-and-out pantomime, instead of taking itself more seriously than this franchise needs.

If you're looking for a straightforward murder mystery, "A Haunting in Venice" sees Branagh play Christie's source material far straighter than before, even if this is his least faithful adaptation to date. Purists may have a greater appreciation for it because of this — I just wish Branagh would let his hair down a bit more and once again deliver something every bit as eccentric as his mustachioed protagonist.

"A Haunting in Venice" premieres in theaters on Friday, September 15.

This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn't exist.

'A Haunting in Venice' review: A sleepy Agatha Christie movie that won't keep you up at night

Another Agatha Christie movie, another old-school whodunit that doesn’t measure up to Kenneth Branagh’s amazing mustache .

“A Haunting in Venice” (★★½ out of four; rated PG-13; streaming now on Hulu ), Branagh’s third go-round as ace Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot (and third time manning the director’s chair), is only marginally better than the previous two stale outings, 2017’s “Murder on the Orient Express” and last year’s “ Death on the Nile .” For his newest starry murder mystery , based on Christie’s “Hallowe’en Party,” Branagh challenges Poirot’s deductive mind and supernatural belief system and surrounds him with spookiness that can only spiff up a creaky plot and thin characters so much.

Set in 1947 – 10 years after “Nile” if anyone’s counting – this tale finds Poirot retired and living in Venice, Italy. After a career of seeing the worst of humanity while solving murders and witnessing the horrors of war, the ex-detective is content gardening, hiding from potential clients and waiting for his pastry delivery (like a post-war Postmates).

Who's the murderer? The biggest changes between the book and movie 'A Haunting in Venice'

“Cakes for cases,” Poirot’s friend Ariadne Oliver ( Tina Fey ) teases him when she comes to visit. The world’s top mystery writer is in Venice to attend a Halloween seance held at a supposedly haunted palazzo, which was once an orphanage but is now said to house the spirits of tortured children.

The palazzo's owner is opera star Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), a soprano who hasn’t sung a note since her ill daughter Alicia suffered a broken engagement and bizarrely took a header into a nearby canal, and she’s hired renowned psychic Joyce Reynolds ( Michelle Yeoh ) to hold a gathering to communicate with the dearly departed.

Knowing Poirot will think all this is hooey, Ariadne convinces him to come along and debunk the “Unholy” Mrs. Reynolds as a charlatan. But a long and twisty night kicks off in murderous fashion: One of the guests winds up dead, the survivors are trapped by a nasty storm, and Poirot gets back to what he does best, though our hero is thrown off his game when he starts to see and hear strange things.

An intriguing lot rounds out the suspect list, including “Belfast” co-stars Jamie Dornan and Jude Hill as a doctor suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and his clever son, Kyle Allen (“West Side Story”) as Alicia’s ex-fiancé and Camille Cottin (“Stillwater”) as Rowena’s loyal housekeeper. Fey’s Ariadne is the only supporting player that really pops, as a wry foil to the reserved Poirot. The detective himself gets another decent fleshing-out from what Christie had on the page courtesy of Michael Green’s screenplay, which takes more freedom with the source material than "Orient Express" and "Nile" did with their better-known tomes.

Like Branagh’s previous mysteries, “Venice” is awfully nice to look at and Oscar-winning "Joker" composer Hildur Gudnadøttir's darkly classical score sets a pleasingly creepy vibe alongside masked Italian gondoliers and costumed kids. Yet aside from Yeoh’s character and the occasional odd figure in a mirror, it’s not nearly as scary as it should or could be – the family-friendly “Haunted Mansion” is more unsettling, honestly – and the narrative is a grind to get through before Poirot finally reveals all.

From 'Nun 2' to 'Exorcist: Believer': Peep these 20 new scary movies for Halloween

The main problem with these throwback Christie adaptations is that, while sufficiently stylish and serviceable, they just don’t have the infectious, go-for-broke energy of a “Knives Out” movie or even a more relatable version of a classic literary sleuthing type like the “Sherlock” TV series. Multiple bodies drop dead, Poirot’s facial hair is still on point, but “Haunting” can’t exorcise ghosts of the past enough for a thrilling case.

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Death in Venice: 'a slow, precise, and beautiful film' – archive, 1971

4 March 1971 There are times when Luchino Visconti scarcely seems concerned about moving the story onwards

S ome people will be bored by Death in Venice (Warner West End). Those omnipresent office girls who invade press shows in far greater numbers than critics were certainly rustling long before the end of Visconti ’s latest film. But then it is about an elderly gentleman with a platonic passion for a young boy and it is culled from a novella by Thomas Mann in which nothing much actually happens except within the mind’s eye. It is a very slow, precise, and beautiful film, proportioned by a master who is about to embark on a version of Proust’s life story and, whatever some think of it, it is important to say that it is 100 per cent better than 99.99 per cent of what’s on offer in London at the moment.

In a way Proust comes into it almost as much as Mann. The flavour is as much of the former as of the latter. Certainly Visconti has not been afraid to tread in places where Mann never did. The novella’s protagonist was a writer; the film’s is a composer – Gustav Aschenbach is really a code name for Gustav Mahler whose music we hear above the sound of battle. The elderly gentleman has come to Venice to recharge himself physically and spiritually after illness and failure. Instead, he takes leave of life gazing at a youthful image which represents to him everything that is unattainable in himself and in his art.

For Mann’s interior dialogue is substituted some of the most ravishingly wrought images Visconti has ever committed to the screen. Aschenbach’s arrival at the Hotel des Bains of the early century is meticulously detailed and observed. His first sight of the boy, in the bosom of his Polish family, his sniffing out of the cholera epidemic which suddenly decimates the tourists, his ill-at-ease attempts to refurbish himself with the help of the hotel barber, all these episodes could scarcely be better done in terms of direction, art direction and acting. True, the camera lingers lovingly on what has been created. There are times when Visconti scarcely seems concerned about moving the story onwards. Yet it serves its purpose quite as well at Mann’s prose. It is in the final half hour that one’s doubts grow, as the boy smiles and smiles at the man, and the man visibly dies under the untouching assault. Perhaps it is here that Dirk Bogarde ’s otherwise superb performance shows a bit at the seams. We become aware that he is an actor acting, manoeuvring a mask, and that Visconti is watching him do it, lost in admiration.

A weak scene in the form of a flashback to the composer conducting his final symphony and being berated by both audience and ambivalent friend (Mark Burns) contrasts oddly with an earlier breath-taking episode where the boy ( Bjorn Andresen ) pivots backwards and forwards in front of Aschenbach on the beach, almost but never quite brushing against him: the one totally false, the other seeming incredibly true. And the last reel’s moments of quasi-fantasy, with the family wandering through a deserted and beleaguered Venice, do not really match what has gone before.

Yet the whole remains an immensely formidable achievement, engrossing in spite of any doubts. As a successor to The Damned it marks an astonishing return to Visconti’s first principles. As a predecessor to the Proust venture, it whets a wondering appetite. Above all, it makes most other offerings of recent months look like amateurs’ nights out.

• From the Guardian archive
• Drama films
• Thomas Mann

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A haunting in venice, common sense media reviewers.

Stark, spooky Hercule Poirot murder mystery has violence.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Addresses ideas related to faith/belief in the for

Hercule Poirot, like Sherlock Holmes, is fascinati

Main character Hercule Poirot is a White man. Most

Murders and jump scares. Character falls from heig

Sporadic language includes "s--t," "bastard," "Chr

A boy offers to get his distraught father "a pill.

Parents need to know that A Haunting in Venice is writer-director and star Kenneth Branagh's third murder mystery centering on novelist Agatha Christie's brilliant detective Hercule Poirot. It has a different tone from predecessors Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile : It's…

Positive Messages

Addresses ideas related to faith/belief in the form of arguments about whether ghosts are real, whether there's an afterlife, whether there's a human soul. But in the end, movie suggests that nobody knows for sure and that anything's possible. (There's a sense of hope.) Scenes involving a scary shadow-play story lead to a character saying that "Scary stories make life less scary."

Positive Role Models

Hercule Poirot, like Sherlock Holmes, is fascinating. He's extremely bright, he grasps everything. But he seems sad, suffering from untold losses. He spends most of his time alone, seems locked into a very rigid way of thinking. His intelligence and skill are inspiring, but he's probably not someone to emulate in the long run. Other characters have flaws and questionable motivations. Women are smart, sharp, business savvy. Some characters are disbelievers in ghosts/the afterlife, some prey on the beliefs of the believers. One character says, "there is no such thing as psychic phenomena ... there is only psychic pain."

Diverse Representations

Main character Hercule Poirot is a White man. Most other characters are White, although performers come from all over Europe and Asia: Ireland (Branagh, Jamie Dornan, Jude Hill), England (Emma Laird, Kelly Reilly), France (Camille Cottin), Italy (Riccardo Scamarcio), Malaysia (Michelle Yeoh), and the United States (Tina Fey). The actor who plays Nicholas Holland, Ali Khan, appears to be of Indian descent. Other characters of color appear in small/background parts. Women are depicted as smart, independent, and confident.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Murders and jump scares. Character falls from height and is impaled on statue. Character impales self with sword. Spooky stuff: ghosts, sudden noises, screaming, doors slamming, things falling, glass breaking, etc. Fighting, punching, slapping. One person holds another's head over broken window glass. Flashbacks to a person sinking into water and drowning, with others retrieving her lifeless body from the water. Poison used. Four large scratch marks on character's back. One person "clotheslines" another with his outstretched arm; the person hits the ground. Attempted drowning in a tub of apples. Character pushed off of bridge into water. People violently throw things across room. Character tripped by sliding crate. Threats. Cut finger. A bird suddenly attacks another bird. Bees fly out of a skeleton's mouth. A character talks about being a soldier, liberating the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and contending with typhus and death; he admits to "shooting himself through the chest." Dialogue about children locked in a basement and left to die.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sporadic language includes "s--t," "bastard," "Christ" (as an exclamation), "damn," "hell."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A boy offers to get his distraught father "a pill."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that A Haunting in Venice is writer-director and star Kenneth Branagh 's third murder mystery centering on novelist Agatha Christie's brilliant detective Hercule Poirot. It has a different tone from predecessors Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile : It's more contemplative, stark, and spooky. Violence includes murders, jump scares, people being impaled (one by a statue, one by a sword), ghosts, sudden noises, screaming, glass breaking, attempted drowning, fighting, punching, slapping, threatening with broken glass, poison, injury, and more. A woman is seen slipping under water and drowning, and there's discussion over whether she was murdered or died by suicide. Another character discusses an attempt at suicide. Infrequent language includes "s--t," "bastard," "Christ" (as an exclamation), "damn," and "hell." A boy offers to get his distraught father "a pill." The movie is quietly, eerily effective, raising questions about ideas related to faith and belief in the form of arguments about whether ghosts are real, whether there's an afterlife, and whether there's a human soul. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (8)
• Kids say (16)

Based on 8 parent reviews

Boring and Dark

A little creepy but still very christie, what's the story.

In A HAUNTING IN VENICE, Hercule Poirot ( Kenneth Branagh ) is retired and living in Venice. He's hired a former police officer, Vitale Portfoglio ( Riccardo Scamarcio ), as a bodyguard to ward off desperate people looking for sleuthing services. Then Poirot is visited by bestselling mystery author Ariadne Oliver ( Tina Fey ), who has a proposition. She's working on a book about a famous medium, Joyce Reynolds ( Michelle Yeoh ). She can't figure out how Reynolds does her supernatural seances and wants Poirot to accompany her to see if he can find anything. They attend a Halloween party for orphans at the palazzo of Rowena Drake ( Kelly Reilly ), who, after the party, wishes to contact the spirit of her daughter, Alicia. Alicia had fallen from the balcony and drowned; it may or may not have been murder. Lo and behold, more murders start happening, and Poirot goes to work seeking the facts and finding a suspect. But something is wrong: Poirot himself has begun hearing voices and seeing ghosts.

Is It Any Good?

Stark and spooky, Branagh's third Poirot movie successfully adopts a whole new atmosphere. It's less exotic and edgier, more haunted; it's a tense, thoughtful, and satisfying mystery. Murder on the Orient Express had a fluid use of space aboard a cramped, moving train, while Death on the Nile used bright, open spaces. A Haunting in Venice , which is mainly set indoors, during a storm, and in the late hours of Halloween night -- when the barrier between the living and the dead is said to be at its thinnest -- plays with more shadowy, angular, and even hallucinogenic filmmaking.

Author Agatha Christie published the source novel, Hallowe'en Party , in 1969, more than 30 years after the Orient Express and Nile novels, perhaps suggesting a hard-earned fatalism, which Branagh attaches to this movie's fabric. He seems freshly inspired, and his direction flourishes through Christie's material. As ever, he's equally adept with his actors, himself giving an appealingly wounded performance while slowly stripping away the other characters' veneers of protection, revealing their painful pasts. The mystery itself is clever and effective, though it comes almost with a sense of resignation; there's no joy in solving this murder. Even so, A Haunting in Venice leaves off with a sense of promise.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about A Haunting in Venice 's violence . How much is actually shown? What's the impact of the violence that's not shown? Is that thrilling, or shocking?

What's the appeal of scary movies ? Why is it sometimes fun to be scared?

Which characters are "good," and which are "bad" -- or is it hard to tell? Why do films often want viewers to see people as one way or another, rather than showing humans' capacity to be both?

Like Poirot, do you believe that there are simple, black-and-white solutions for every problem? Why, or why not?

Why do you think author Agatha Christie and Poirot have such enduring appeal?

Movie Details

• In theaters : September 15, 2023
• On DVD or streaming : November 28, 2023
• Cast : Kenneth Branagh , Tina Fey , Michelle Yeoh , Jamie Dornan
• Director : Kenneth Branagh
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Asian actors, Middle Eastern/North African writers
• Studio : 20th Century Studios
• Genre : Thriller
• Run time : 103 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : some strong violence, disturbing images and thematic elements
• Last updated : January 27, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Once Upon a Time in Venice

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Watch Once Upon a Time in Venice with a subscription on Hulu, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

What to Know

Once Upon a Time in Venice has a little more of a spark than typical late-period Bruce Willis tough guy movies, but it's still a steep, disappointing tumble from his best work.

Audience Reviews

Cast & crew.

Mark Cullen

Bruce Willis

John Goodman

Jason Momoa

Famke Janssen

Thomas Middleditch

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‘Nowhere Special’ Review: Understated Terminal Illness Drama Earns Your Tears

'Still Life' filmmaker Uberto Pasolini delivers a subtle and caring statement on navigating grief through terrific leads James Norton and young newcomer Daniel Lamont. 

By Tomris Laffly

Tomris Laffly

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So, what kind of a future should John hope for his child when his own life is about the expire? What should he (what should anyone ) prioritize: love, capability, financial security? How does one explain that choice to their offspring? Or better yet, how does one involve him in the decision? These are the weighty questions posed by writer-director Pasolini (who bears no relation to the legendary Pier Paolo, but is a descendant of the neorealist master Luchino Visconti). And he asks them through a lens both socially aware and emotionally layered.

“Nowhere Special” is the kind of confident, understated film that doesn’t need to pound the audience with its sentiments in order to make us feel alive and human in front of it. There are no great declarations about sickness or death here (even the death of Michael’s mom is mentioned in passing), or grand emotional explosions you’d expect from a lesser picture. Instead, Pasolini leans closer into his visual language to show (and not tell), constructing a world of mirrored images and subtle reflections that suggest fractures in characters, all challenged by notions like “what if” and “if only.”

Even costuming choices demonstrate Pasolini’s thoughtful eye for visuals in support of the film’s narrative textures. For instance, instead of burdening the young newcomer Lamont with mawkish dialogue lines, he telegraphs Michael’s innocence through a charmingly faded red baseball cap, placed awkwardly over the little one’s bowl cut and bangs, making him look both impossibly cute and vulnerable at once. One exception to the movie’s overall restraint is perhaps Andrew Simon McAllister’s lovely yet heavy-handedly sentimental score. Luckily, Pasolini doesn’t overuse it, mostly allowing the organic journey of the heartbreakingly burdened father and his troubled son speak for itself.

Much of that journey surely rests on the shoulders of the terrific Norton (“Happy Valley,” Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women”) and Lamont, who jointly give heartrending performances as characters navigating an unbearable situation. Since actors as young as Lamont can only be only as good as the adults holding their hand, Norton and Pasolini both prove they know how to tap into a child performer’s capabilities with care and compassion. That care is what makes “Nowhere Special” a refreshing tearjerker, one that doesn’t manipulate, but lets audiences cry on their own terms when John finally makes the only right choice.

Reviewed online, April 25, 2024. In Venice Film Festival 2020. Running time: 96 MIN.

• Production: A Cohen Media Group release of a Red Wave Films, Picomedia, Digital Cube, N.S.L. production, in association with Rai Cinema. Producers: Uberto Pasolini, Roberto Sessa, Cristian Nicolescu.
• Crew: Director, writer: Uberto Pasolini. Camera: Marius Panduru. Editors: Masahiro Hirakubo, Saska Simpson. Music: Andrew Simon McAllister.
• With: James Norton, Daniel Lamont, Eileen O’Higgins, Valerie O’Connor, Stella McCusker.

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What to Know About Venice’s Fees for Day Trips

Venice is trying to mitigate overtourism with a small fee on busy days. City leaders hope it will make visitors more aware of the city’s fragility.

By Elisabetta Povoledo

Reporting from Rome

After years of debate , Venice on Thursday began charging day visitors five euros to visit its fragile historic center on peak days, making it the first city in the world to adopt such a measure to counter overtourism.

Critics question whether a nominal fee will put people off from visiting one of the world’s most desired destinations. But officials hope that it might encourage some to rethink their plans and decide to come on weekdays or in the off-season.

That might help mitigate the impact of the estimated 20 million visitors who descended last year on the city’s beleaguered residents, who number fewer than 50,000, according to municipal statistics . About half of those visitors came only for the day, city officials said. Overnight guests are exempt from the fee.

The spirit of the initiative, city officials have said, is to make people aware of the uniqueness — and fragility — of Venice. Overtourism is creating an economy solely based on tourism that risks killing the city by pushing its dwindling residents out, said Nicola Camatti, an economics professor and expert in tourism at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

When will Venice start charging?

The fee went into effect on Thursday, a holiday in Italy. For 2024, city officials have singled out 29 peak days when single-day travelers in Venice between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. have to pay. The days run until mid-July and are mostly on national holidays and weekends. The access-fee website provides a list of the dates.

Who must pay?

While just about everyone visiting the city has to register to obtain a QR code, not all visitors have to pay the fee. Overnight guests at registered accommodations like hotels or Airbnbs are exempt, because they already pay a daily tourist tax, as are people who study or work in Venice and those visiting relatives. There are other exemptions as well.

Residents of Venice, those born there and minors under 14 are among those who do not have to register. But they must have documents that prove their status.

It is possible that different fees will apply next year on a sliding scale that will depend on how many people city officials expect on any one day. City officials said the fees could be as high as 10 euros per day.

How will the system work?

Before coming to Venice on peak days, visitors should use the website to register and get a QR code.

The code will be scanned at points where visitors enter, like the train station, the city parking lot, the airport and the sprawling waterfront along the San Marco basin where boats dock. The access points will have one line for tourists and another for residents and what officials call city users, who are coming into Venice for reasons other than sightseeing.

At least for now, those who do not register ahead of time can do so at some access points or on their cellphones, officials said. Assistants will be available.

Initially, the controls will be “very soft,” said Michele Zuin, the municipal councilor responsible for the city’s budget.

Speaking to reporters at the foreign press association in Rome this month, Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said the fee was not about cashing in on tourists. “The costs of the operation are higher than what we’re going to make,” he said.

Why is Venice doing this?

City officials hope to relieve some of the stress that tourists put on the city by encouraging them to come on less busy days. They also say that by knowing ahead of time how many visitors to expect, the city can better deploy services.

“We want to better manage the numbers of tourists and disincentivize mass tourism” that makes it difficult for residents and visitors to “live in this city,” Mr. Zuin said this month.

To track the flow of visitors, the city already monitors them via phone location data and surveillance cameras, a system some critics have likened to Big Brother .

Venice has also fallen under the scrutiny of the United Nations’ culture agency, UNESCO, whose experts are concerned that not enough is being done to protect the city. Last year, Venice risked being added to UNESCO’s list of Endangered World Heritage Sites after experts at the agency listed mass tourism , along with climate change and development, as a major threat to its future. It urged City Hall to take steps to ameliorate the damage.

The municipal council approved the access fee just days before UNESCO was to vote on its status, and Venice stayed off the “in danger” list . But UNESCO officials said in a statement that “further progress still needs to be made” to conserve Venice.

Critics of the access fee note that officials have not capped the number of visitors, and they say that the nominal fee is hardly a deterrent. As recently as Friday, city officials said that about 80,000 visitors swelled the city’s narrow calli, as the streets are known, and the gardens of the 2024 Venice Biennale , still the world’s principal place to discover new art .

How else is Venice trying to restrict visitors?

Venice also has taken other steps it hopes will reduce what city officials call “mordi e fuggi” tourism, or “eat and flee,” referring to those who seek the city’s greatest hits — the Rialto Bridge and St. Mark’s Square — and who bring packed lunches and dump their garbage, contributing little to the local economy.

After years of heated debate and protests by vocal Venetians, the city banned cruise ships from its inner canals in 2021 , though Mr. Camatti, the tourism expert, said the ban on the ships had not reduced the number of day visitors.

This year, the city imposed a limit of 25 people per tour group and also banned the use of megaphones.

Elisabetta Povoledo is a reporter based in Rome, covering Italy, the Vatican and the culture of the region. She has been a journalist for 35 years. More about Elisabetta Povoledo

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As Venice grapples with overtourism, the city tests a 5-euro fee for day-trippers

Willem Marx

The storied city of Venice, Italy, has begun charging fees for day trips by tourists.

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NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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After decades of kicking ass and taking names as one of America's foremost action stars, it's somewhat easy to forget that Bruce Willis began his career as a comic actor. Before " Die Hard ," there was " Moonlighting ," where Willis, alongside Cybill Shepherd , perfected casual, barbed banter as well as his sly wit. He still employs the latter in many of his features, usually in one-liners in between shootouts, but it's rare that a film asks him to prioritize his comedic talents over his considerable action prowess.

The best thing that can be said about "Once Upon a Time in Venice," a very light action comedy from Mark and Robb Cullen , is that it allows Willis to cut loose and have fun. He plays Steve Ford, a private eye in Venice Beach who appears to mostly just skateboard, sleep around, talk shop with his recently-divorced, mildly depressed best friend Dave ( John Goodman , also cutting loose and having fun), and occasionally solve minor mysteries. The film mostly consists of two-hander scenes where Willis gets to crack wise with various character actors, and generally be a likable screen presence. It's genuinely nice to see him work in that mode.

But though Willis, Goodman, and roughly half of the large supporting cast (which includes Thomas Middleditch , Adam Goldberg , Wood Harris , and Kal Penn , just to name a few) acquit themselves well, "Once Upon a Time in Venice" largely suffers from profound laziness. Its bare bones plot isn't the issue (Willis' beloved pup has been stolen by Jason Momoa and his drug gang) since it mostly strives for an ambling, shaggy dog tone, but it has no rhythm. It awkwardly shuffles along from scene to scene while introducing various inane plot points that abruptly conclude before they're developed. There are plenty of thinly-sketched characters whom the film discards or forgets at will until they're suddenly necessary for any given scene. It's amiable and pleasant, but never exactly funny. It features a completely unnecessary, wholly smug voiceover, courtesy of Middleditch. Plus, for a 90-minute film, there's way too much padding to speak of, especially in the first "act," if you can call it that. 

The Cullens clearly wanted to tell a character-based story starring Willis as a lax private dick who acts his shoe size rather than his age, and to their mild credit, they have all the material for that kind of feature. Willis fits the part well and they pepper the film with enough incident to both keep the story afloat and allow a threaded character study. Unfortunately, the Cullens deal primarily in the superficial, which all but negates this effort. They do the bare minimum to ground Willis' character in reality without going through the effort to give him much characterization, let alone depth. They hint at some backstory (he's a disgraced cop and there's suggestion of a troubled past home life), but they mostly want to ignore the work of development and skip right over to the fun stuff. In other words, this ain't " The Long Goodbye ."

To be clear, there's nothing wrong with "Once Upon a Time in Venice" prioritizing "fun" over things like plot or character. The problem arises when the film relies on performances to carry that torch and then provides its cast nothing in the way of support. "Once Upon a Time in Venice" frequently sags underneath its own general lethargy, and not even the snarkiest John McClane can fix that. It's a shame, too, because whenever Willis and Goodman are on screen together, you can see glimpses of what "Once Upon a Time in Venice" could've been with just a little more discipline.

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Film credits.

Once Upon a Time in Venice (2017)

Bruce Willis as Steve

Jason Momoa as Spider

Thomas Middleditch

Famke Janssen

Elisabeth Röhm as Anne Phillips

Colin Kane as Phil

John Goodman

• Mark Cullen
• Robb Cullen

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• Matt Diezel
• Zach Staenberg
• Jeff Cardoni

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