Venice, Aug 29: The Venice film festival opens on Wednesday with "Atonement," an adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel about a girl who makes a false accusation with tragic results and tries to atone for her mistake.
The movie is the first of 22 in the festival's main competition, and was screened to the press ahead of the glitzy red carpet gala premiere in the evening.
For 11 days, the glamorous Lido waterfront will be the focus of hundreds of reporters, photographers, cameramen and critics there to watch films and follow the stars as they promote their pictures and party into the early hours.
In "Atonement," up-and-coming British director Joe Wright reunites with actress Keira Knightley, who was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Elizabeth Bennet in "Pride and Prejudice," which they made together in 2005.
This time the 22 year-old plays Cecilia Tallis, whose life is turned upside down when sister Briony blames her lover Robbie Turner (James McAvoy) for a crime he did not commit.
Briony goes on to becomes a writer and seeks redemption in the real world and through a novel she knows will be her last.
"She (Briony) did have some success," Wright told a news briefing. "This was one of the difficult questions when we were adapting the book -- would her literary success look like she hadn't paid for her crime?
"And hopefully we conveyed that literary success or career success isn't necessarily the road to her redemption. Her art is her road to redemption, if she ever gets there."
Three Brionies
Faithful to the books' three-act structure, Briony is played as a 13-year-old girl by Saoirse Ronan, as a young nurse during World War Two by Romola Garai and as an ageing and ailing author by Vanessa Redgrave.
The first act takes place in the grandeur of an English country home in the 1930s, where Turner is the housekeeper's son and where Briony lets her imagination run away with her.
It moves to the grim battlefields of northern Europe in act two, where Wright seeks to recreate the chaos of the evacuation of Allied forces from Dunkirk through an ambitious single, steadicam shot.
The third act is set in a hospital for wounded soldiers and the "postscript" in a television studio where an elderly Briony is interviewed about her novel.
Throughout the action, the sound of an old typewriter mingles with the score, reminding viewers that what they are watching may be part of the narrative or of Briony's fiction.
The performances are reminiscent of old black-and-white films, with stylized gestures and clipped, British accents which Wright uses to communicate the social restrictions of the time.
Knightley said she had not read the novel when first approached for the part.
"I read the script when Joe gave it to me and cried, and I think any script that makes you cry is worth pursuing."
Knightley also denied a recent newspaper report that a photograph of her used in a perfume advertisement had been touched up to exaggerate her curves, and added:
"Actually what this film shows is the danger when the line between fiction and fact gets blurred. I think that people have to be very honest about fiction. Magazine pictures, for example, are fiction."
Bureau Report
