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Cate Blanchett attended the first five days of the 81st Venice Film Festival. Alfonso Cuarón’s DISCLAIMER* premiered on Day 2 (chapters 1-4) and 3 (chapters 5-7) of the festival. On Day 1, she attended the opening ceremony and screening of the opening film, BEETLEJUICE, BEETLEJUICE. Day 4 saw her at the Armani Beauty Passione Party, then Day 5 at the premiere of Jon Watts’ WOLFS also produced by Apple Studios.
All episodes of Disclaimer* premiered at Venice Film Festival in the span of two days, it was also screened at Telluride Film Festival while chapters 1-3 will be screened at Toronto International Festival and London Film Festival. Cuarón and cast will be on stage for a discussion after the screening in London on 10 October, more here.
Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson’s RUMOURS will have it’s UK premiere at LFF on 13 October, more here.
Reviews
Some parts of the reviews on the series. Beware of spoilers!
The series has a rich texture, both tactile and dreamy. When the story wades into the hot-button issue of cancellation, it stumbles. But its emotional arithmetic is just right: heightened to near melodrama while also dreadfully credible. Blanchett hums along as Catherine’s condition worsens; watching her tread water is as invigorating as it is exhausting. Leila George is striking as a younger, hungrier, more reckless version of Catherine, ably rising to the formidable task of playing the same character as Cate Blanchett. Lesley Manville also potently registers as Stephen’s wife, crafting an exacting portrait of a woman reeling from shock.
As Disclaimer grows ever more earnest, one might begin to miss the implied wickedness of its first few hours. Gradually, though, the show’s sincere entreaty proves effective; and anyway, there are still some suspenseful thrills to be enjoyed almost to the very end. As popular and well-reviewed as Disclaimer’s source material is, I have been asked not to spoil anything. Thus I won’t say much more about the series, other than to encourage you to stick with the show past its somewhat awkward premiere episode. Disclaimer grabs tight hold as it goes, sending us sifting through interpretation and inference on the way to a disarmingly resonant finale.
The series might benefit from a binge watch, one of those drawn-out plunges into a story that best approximate the sensation of reading a juicy novel.
Full review on Vanity Fair
Cate Blanchett’s latest TV series is a methodical, magnificent mystery of complicity about an acclaimed documentarian whose dark past resurfaces in a vengeful widower’s debut novel.
Complicity. Narrative. Form. Cuarón isn’t shy in laying out his thesis, instructing the audience to watch carefully as his seven-episode adaptation of Renée Knight’s 2015 novel plays out. What information do we know, and what information do we only presume to know? Who’s providing it? How are they providing it? These questions are always top of mind, but the four-time Academy Award winner behind “Roma,” “Gravity,” and “Children of Men” trusts in his story — and his team’s storytelling prowess — to sweep you up anyway. Which it does, and they do. “Disclaimer” is a cunning psychological thriller with twists and turns enough to thrive as pure entertainment. But never does it drift from its initial portent, so that when the truth comes crashing down, it levels everyone involved, onscreen and off.
Blanchett, in a role that’s a sneaky-great follow-up to Lydia Tár, excels at cutting through the chaos with vital precision.
Full review on Indiewire
Disclaimer is, then, like one of those Penn & Teller magic tricks in which they tell you exactly what they’re doing and, if they spin their meta-yarn enthusiastically enough, you know you’re being manipulated and you’re still amazed.
Full on THR
Interviews
‘Disclaimer’ Is Unlike Anything Alfonso Cuarón or Cate Blanchett Have Done Before
“It’s so diverse of what she has done. She has been Bob Dylan. And if you see ‘Manifesto,’ how many characters are in ‘Manifesto’?” Cuarón told IndieWire at the festival. “Too many,” joked Blanchett. “And each one is completely different than the others. I don’t know if there’s really a trademark in terms of the kind of characters [she plays],” said the director.
“What is clear is that Catherine is a very, very intelligent woman; [she’s[ very smart, sophisticated, but also has learned to be able to wear masks — a mask with the family, a mask with her work, but also a mask with society at large,” he said. “And when you are wearing the mask, the mask is just the exterior part. What is important is the person that is inside. I cannot think of anybody other than Cate that can play that.”
For her part, Blanchett accepted the role of Catherine Ravenscroft in “Disclaimer” out of trust in Cuarón. “I’m very director-driven because you can read the greatest script in the world, but it depends who’s going to be directing it, who’s looking down the lens. And the fact that, obviously, Alfonso is a writer/director, and you knew that the script was one part of the process of making a film,” she said, gesturing toward the four-time Oscar-winning filmmaker behind “Roma,” “Gravity,” and more.
“My first encounter with the story was the reading of the script,” she said. “And when we first spoke about it, it was a really short conversation. You said, ‘Please, I don’t want to say anything. I just really want you to read the script, and then we’ll talk.’ And so it started from there, and so I was very much alive to what you wanted to do with it.”
“You’ve moved across so many different genres and styles,” she said. “This was an adventure for you in serialized storytelling, and how would you deal with a narrative that is handed out in parcels? The way the audience is going to consume it. I felt like you were on a personal, creative adventure. And so, I was really excited to be part of that.”
Blanchett added, “It’s always when someone’s making a departure of some kind, which you always seem to do, you’re always setting off into the unknown. And then that’s really exciting. Whereas if someone’s in a groove, doing what they always do, you can go, ‘Ok, that’ll be great fun,’ but this felt slightly dangerous.”
“The tricky thing is to have a character that has a rich inner life, but yet is ambiguous enough. Because in a way, certainly in the first four chapters of this story, far more is said about Catherine than she says about herself. There has to be a glass-of-water quality about her onto which people can place their own judgments and perspective,” said Blanchett. “A lot of people have had a lot of different reactions and perhaps that says more about you [Cuarón] in a way than my performance. Some people have found her really repugnant, and things that many of the characters think have transpired they found unforgivable. And so I think it really depends on the audience member’s response.
Full interview on Indiewire
Google translated from Italian to English.
Cate Blanchett, the quintessence of one, none, and a hundred thousand attitudes
[Cate Blanchett] has rarely experienced a prolific season of roles so different from each other: these days she is at the cinema with Borderlands, a crazy sci-fi action movie in fluorescent colors, which adapts the homonymous shooter video game (“One of those crazy projects that every now and then attract me, born by chance when my husband seeing me pruning the plants in the garden for too long during Covid, convinced me to accept the part”); at the Venice Film Festival (and then from October 11 on Apple TV+) we will see her directed by Alfonso Cuarón in Disclaimer – The Perfect Life, a thriller series in which the peaceful bourgeois existence of a successful woman risks being shattered when a trauma that seemed buried forever re-emerges from oblivion. Her last two films, both presented at the Cannes Film Festival, should also hit the cinema in the next few months: The New Boy, which sees her wearing the sacred habit and reflects on the abuses, not only spiritual, committed on the Aborigines in Australia, and Rumours, the most recent, which stages a tragicomic G7, with politicians gathered to resolve the greatest global crisis ever, but left lost in a forest prey to a horde of the living dead.She takes off her high heels before starting the interview: “Let’s hope it doesn’t cause the same scandal as when Pope Francis took off his slippers during the nomination ceremony,” jokes Blanchett, one of the few actresses to maintain the aura of a star even when she literally lands, from her 1.74 meters of height, among us earthlings.
“Many people have asked me if I was inspired by Angela Merkel to play the German chancellor,” she begins. “The fact that she came to mind for everyone shows the real underlying problem: the lack of female political leadership in the world. How many other female prime ministers are there and have been recently? Very few. It reminds me of when I arrive on a film set and everyone is male: the result is that you have to adapt and the conversation always goes towards the majority opinion or perspective, that is, male, rather than in the opposite direction.”
How do you prepare to play a world-class political figure?
I watched the G7 videos and it struck me how disconnected these politicians seem from their bodies, how unnatural their gestures seem. It’s as if they were actors and they were performing. And of course this only adds to the absurdity of their role.
In what sense?
These are people who find themselves having to deal with a catastrophic situation: climate change, systemic inequalities, mass migration. How can you not feel helpless in the face of events of this magnitude? It takes planning. But the 24-hour news cycle demands instantaneous responses, and so politicians are more concerned with extending their mandates than with implementing policies that solve the real problems.
We have to start somewhere… Where?
Some issues are clear for all to see: for example, the principle that the 500 richest companies in the world should pay taxes and not evade them. And issues that affect tomorrow should be taken to heart: who decided that the human genome can be held by companies that have the power to commercialize it?
What can we do?
Never forget to go and vote.
In Rumours we talk about artificial intelligence. Does its advent scare you?
Of course, the world that my children will inhabit will be greatly influenced. For this reason we must try to regulate it, as the actors’ union in Hollywood has rightly done for the part that concerns us.
You have been working as a UNHCR refugee ambassador since 2016. How would you sum up your experience?
When I started there were 60 million displaced people in the world, today we have reached 114 million. For my part, in addition to giving visibility to the problem and helping in humanitarian operations, I am trying to attract funds to finance the work of directors and artists who are among these people. Because I find it disconcerting that very few films talk about the stories of courage and resilience that concern them. Few have done so, such as Matteo Garrone with Io, Capitano .
Rumours means “gossip”. What is the gossip about you that you can’t stand?
How I hate those appliances that are used to blow leaves away from the garden! (laughs). I once said it as a joke to a journalist and it has become a meme that now haunts me. Try searching my name on Google next to “leaf blower” and you will see.
How do you choose the many projects you are involved in?
Usually based on the people I have to work with, or I look for the antidote to the previous character, to get as far away from it as possible. For example, after playing Lydia Tár, who absorbed me a lot and was a very self-centered woman, I preferred the role of the nun in The New Boy. I also did it because it had been nine years since I had been back to my native Australia and I especially wanted my children (who live in the family mansion in Crowborough, East Sussex south of London) to breathe in the freedom and contact with nature, something you can only experience in those great spaces.
What’s the craziest thing you’ve done to prepare for a role?
Buying a PlayStation 5 for Borderlands . I played it with my kids, even though I’m terrible with a joypad.
The New Boy deals with the sensitive subject of the forced conversion of Aborigines to Catholicism. Was it hard?
The oppression of the indigenous people, colonization, is a topic that we Australians have naturally removed and prefer not to talk about, but it should be addressed every day. As for religion, Western religion is mainly concerned with the afterlife, while Aboriginal spirituality is focused on the present and the place where they are. The film tells the story of this nun’s attempt to educate Aboriginal orphans by forcing them to adhere to her ideas.
Eileen was originally a priest, what happened?
When I proposed to the director to transform her into a nun, a range of nuances opened up that made her less schematic, starting from her maternal role and the cracks in her faith. This is what happens when you focus on female characters (laughs).
What is your relationship with religion?
I try to have more doubts than certainties in life and this is not really a good direction if you have to cultivate a faith. But I admit that perhaps believing can be useful when you need someone to blame. In any case when I was a child I would have done anything to go to a Catholic boarding school.
Why?
I went to public school, where classmates insulted and fought, and my best friend, who I talked to at recess through a gate, attended the adjacent Catholic college, where the atmosphere seemed idyllic. At the time, I knew nothing about the evils of the Church, and I went to Mass every Sunday because I loved the celebration of the rite. Then when I was 10, my father died and I spent a year praying for him to come back. But it never happened. I think my doubts began to arise then.
I know you can’t say anything about the series directed by Alfonso Cuarón. But what’s your next project?
I have to fly to London where I’m shooting Black Bag with Steven Soderbergh, Michael Fassbender and Pierce Brosnan: it will be a thriller about secret agents. But seen from the side of emotions and relationships, more than on action scenes.
Cate Blanchett loves her chickens. Today, she is gently hypnotising one in her potting shed. She’s never done it before but is following instruction on the art by director and friend John Hillcoat. Cate is stroking her feathered friend and gently guiding its vision from its beak to her gloved finger as she sits on a doorstep dressed in muddy wellies, a black silk gown and leather gloves. The chicken relaxes as she soothes and is soon so chilled that she can carefully place the bird on its side, where it lays motionless. ‘I’ve fucking done it!’ Cate whispers in astonishment.
After finishing shooting Black Bag with Steven Soderbergh, she is about to set sail to promote her latest role as a space renegade in game-turned-movie actioner Borderlands, as well as her autumn Apple+ TV series, Disclaimer. Directed by Alfonso Cuarón, it features her as a documentarian who finds the tables turned on her and will premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Then there’s Rumours, in which she plays a fictional German chancellor at a G7 meeting that goes weirdly awry in the woods. It’s a typically varied slate that shows Cate’s appetite for exploration, but right now she has found time to play in the vegetable garden. She leads me into the rambling back yard – the chicken has shaken itself off and pottered away back home to the chicken coop labelled ‘Cluckingham Palace’ that it shares with six other chickens. Cate is hoping for baby chicks soon from two broody birds snuggled in their nests.
Deep in the garden, in a tangle of trees and verdant plants, are a set of active hives that provide lavender-flavoured honey. ‘We’ve always wanted to have bees,’ Cate says as she swaps her silks for protective wear to inspect the apoid workers. ‘We’ve had bee bricks in the city, for orphan bees or solo bees. But the idea of having hives… I’ve become obsessed because about 20 years ago on the cover of Time magazine, there was genuine full-on panic about how pesticides were killing off the bee population, and the enormous knock-on effect of that. It was an exploration of how fragile bees are as an insect species, and as the major pollinators they are, how deeply we rely on them. It really activated me, environmentally – and engendered big-sky thinking. The change in the taste of the honey reflects the change of their environments. It’s fascinating.’
As she carefully peers inside the hive, she tells me how she lost a colony to hornets last year, so had to invest in paper imitation wasp nests to hang in the trees. I ask her if it’s hard to leave the garden when she has to go away to work for months at a time. ‘Don’t you think, when you’re away, it helps to have a “dreaming” place?’ she asks. ‘A point of physical connection?’ She considers the question as someone who travels extensively for work. ‘Is it hard to leave the weeds?’ she jokes. ‘Actually, can I say: weeding is deeply therapeutic. My grandmother, who lived with us, and helped raise us after my father died, was an avid gardener but hated weeding. So she hired a gardener. His name was Mr Crutchett and he used to sing these beautiful songs, and just sit on his rear end, all day, pulling weeds in our garden. I think he was serenading my gran who he had a crush on. And he was the happiest man I’ve ever met. You don’t have to make headway in the garden – I humble myself and say, you know, “One weed at a time”.’
We leave the woody dell and Cate is driving a tractor as we discuss our first meeting, on set of Elizabeth, a star-making role that gave her her first Oscar nomination. ‘If I knew it was going to be a big moment, I would have collapsed under the weight of the pressure,’ she recalls. ‘I kept saying Judi Dench, Flora Robson, Glenda Jackson – I mean, what can I possibly add to the conversation? And the fact it was Shekhar Kapur – a director from Bollywood, and I was from the Antipodes; from the colonies – only exacerbated my hubris. These two outliers were looking at Elizabethan history, which is a period where so much of the English dream time comes from. Who did I think I was? The chutzpah. I think the only way I coped was the fact that I thought: “This is both the beginning and the end of my career.” I honestly thought, “This is it, so I may as well enjoy it.” I think that was the moment where I learned to flip terror and anxiety to excitement. They’re very similar energetic forces. People often ask “What would be the advice you’d give to your younger self?” I’m always really reticent to give people advice because mistakes are so important, and I’ve certainly made a lot of them.’ She pauses for a moment. ‘But honestly, as one gets older, the advice is think quicker. Do it quicker.’ Quicker? I ask. I imagined she’d say slower. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Live more slowly, think more quickly. Don’t overthink.’
As she amassed more work in the likes of The Talented Mr Ripley, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Veronica Guerin and The Aviator, Cate admits : ‘You hone your instincts, and you learn to trust them. There are times when one doesn’t trust – I mean, the times when things have gone a bit cattywampus are the times when I’ve not trusted my instincts.’ Cattywampus? Does she really use that word? ‘You don’t use that word? Everything’s akimbo. All screwed up. Back to front. I am sure it’s in the dictionary.’ She laughs. ‘Surely Hollywood Authentic is cattywampus?!’
We walk to a nearby swing hanging from a tree and as she twists the rope and allows it to unfurl, she spins as we discuss inspiration. I have a preoccupation with ideas and the notion of where they come from, and I naturally want to hear Cate’s take on it. ‘It’s elusive and it never comes from the same source. If it came from the same place, creative flow would be easy, wouldn’t it?’ she says. ‘Inspiration, for me, arises from unexpected places. Sometimes it’s a snippet of conversation, a snatch of someone else’s conversation that you overhear, or sitting in cold water, or actually tuning in to the sounds immediately around you or the music of others… And I think probably a lot of the time it comes in that – and I hate this word because it’s so overused – liminal space between wakefulness and sleep. You know, that glorious moment just as you’re waking, and coming into consciousness. Hopefully it’s not in a gutter, it’s in your own bed!’
Inspiration also comes from being open to receiving, she says. ‘I’ve had experiences on stage where there’s energy coming from the audience, and from the other actors, and from the text – there’s something that just erupts out of this intersection, that none of you can name, and you don’t quite know how it came or what it means and it’s absolutely thrilling. I think it’s probably the feeling that people get when they bungee jump. You intellectually know the sequence of events, but, once you’re in the middle of it, it’s happening to you, and through you, and you just have to flow with it. I’m deeply uncool. I can’t surf, and I can’t play pool. But I imagine if you hit the ball in that spot, or you catch the wave, it’s similar to being on stage. You can rehearse and prepare for this but if you take flight it’s a collective experience that is about connecting to the present moment with radical openness. It’s not something you can ever plan your way into.’
Full interview can be read on Hollywood Authentic
“C’était ma plus grande peur que Cate Blanchett dise non !”
Alfonso Cuarón revient sur la génèse de la série Disclaimer, en sélection à la Mostra 2024Une série bientôt disponible sur Apple TV+ avec CANAL+#BiennaleCinema2024 #Venezia81 @la_Biennale@antoinedecaunes pic.twitter.com/VFZdZoYgOM
— CANAL+ (@canalplus) September 3, 2024
Click image to watch the interview Rai
La Biennale Portrait
Reception for Disclaimer* cast and crew
mi sono appena accorta che cate blanchett mi ha sorriso????? pic.twitter.com/FC56tvxhQY
— lulli??? (@beingaparrilla) August 30, 2024
cate blanchett i hope you know my parasocial is through the roof after these two days #Venezia81 pic.twitter.com/AZm2Tn9XA1
— irene @ vff?? (@jodiecomeras) August 30, 2024
The full standing ovation for Disclaimer and Cate Blanchett pic.twitter.com/9oXmgsD6kS
— Zak ? (@ZakRed567) August 30, 2024
cate blanchett, the woman that you are! <3 pic.twitter.com/O4G5zqMSXe
— lotte (@blanchettsheart) August 30, 2024
sometimes babygirl is a 55-year-old woman pic.twitter.com/MGOerh7Dom
— ?? (@nymphaemme) August 30, 2024
@georgestrit Cate Blanchett at #venezia81 #Disclaimer #standingovation
@gala.fr #cateblanchett #armanibeauty #whatmakesyourheartbeat #beautytok #tiktokfashion #filmtok
@gala.fr #cateblanchett #Armanibeauty #WhatMakesYourHeartBeat #mostra #venezia81 #venicefilmfestival #filmtok #tiktokfashion #beautytok
Cate Blanchett sul red carpet di Wolfs a Venezia 81 #CateBlanchett #Wolfs #Venezia81 #BiennaleCinema2024 pic.twitter.com/yCTVfm34pj
— Screenweek (@Screenweek) September 2, 2024
Cate Blanchett sul red carpet di #Venezia81#HollywoodReporterRoma #BiennaleCinema2024 @la_Biennale @alanfriedmanit @ElisaDospina pic.twitter.com/NJZB7ciAf7
— The Hollywood Reporter Roma (@THRRoma) September 1, 2024
Cate Blanchett and Benedict Cumberbatch greet each other at the Sala Grande before the world premiere of #Wolfs starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt #Venezia81 pic.twitter.com/XvPrGmEzQi
— Deadline (@DEADLINE) September 1, 2024
Sources: Marie Claire IT
Black Bag (202?)
Father Mother Brother Sister (2024)
Disclaimer (2024)
Rumours (2024)
Borderlands (2024)
The New Boy (2023)
TÁR (2022)
Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)
Documentary Now!: Two Hairdressers in Bagglyport (2022)
