Guadagnino's 7-Hour Bertolucci Doc Premieres at Venice — SkimNews
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- "Joie de Vivre" premiered at the 2026 Venice Film Festival, running 435 minutes (roughly seven hours), and is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
- Guadagnino frames the documentary as both an ode to lost cinephilia and a plea to win over Gen Z and millennial audiences to Bertolucci's work, calling it his most personal film to date.
- The film confronts the "Last Tango in Paris" controversy head-on, revisiting how Maria Schneider felt "a little raped" by the unscripted butter scene; film scholar Mark Cousins says of Bertolucci, "He was 31, and his judgment was fucking shit."
- "Joie de Vivre" almost entirely omits "The Dreamers" (2003) — the NC-17 Bertolucci film most central to Gen Z's awareness of his work — while devoting a full hour to acknowledged misfires like "La Luna" and "Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man."
- Guadagnino explicitly criticizes "Stealing Beauty" and admits in the film to being sexually attracted to Bertolucci when he was younger, asides where the reviewer's flamboyant personality breaks through.
- Talking heads include Martin Scorsese, Alfonso Cuarón, David Cronenberg, Catherine Breillat, Kirill Serebrennikov, James Gray, Margot Robbie, producer Jeremy Thomas, and Debra Winger, with Gray offering pointed commentary on Letterboxd-era criticism.
- Margot Robbie appears as a surprise guest, getting animated about the cocaine scene in "1900," while Debra Winger gets dishy about backstage "shenanigans" on the Moroccan shoot of "The Sheltering Sky."
Why it matters: Guadagnino is making a deliberate bet that confronting Bertolucci's ugliest legacy moments — including Schneider's "a little raped" account and scenes of sexualized violence — can rehabilitate the director for new audiences, yet the near-total omission of "The Dreamers," the very film that defines Bertolucci for younger viewers, undercuts that stated Gen Z mission. With the seven-hour doc still seeking U.S. distribution, those editorial choices will shape how Bertolucci's complicated legacy gets transmitted to the streaming generation.
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