As the international artist Paolo Troilo reports in his interview in this issue, advertising calls ‘The Shark’s Leap’ a narrative paradox. An exaggeration so pronounced that it reveals to us that the authors are – so to speak – at their wits’ end. Well, it seems that the sexual obsession expressed by the last Film Festival is a bit like the Shark’s Leap in Happy Days, where Fonzie was forced to jump over the omnivorous fish in his boxer shorts, configuring a paroxysmal poverty of ideas.
It is not so much the orgasmic fixations of director Halina Reijn in Babygirl, nor the alcoholic and homosexual perversions of Daniel Kraing in Luca Guadagnino’s Queer. All of them, even the nostalgic Pupi Avati, attempt the task of soliciting the thrill of the forbidden that the categorical imperative 2024. The divas of national-popular porn, Staller, Pozzi, Henger, almost take on a trait of nostalgic tenderness. It seems that the tendency to push on the edge, on the borderline, is more of an escape route not to think. It makes one smile, the fact that The Hollywood Reporter recently presented a survey where Generation Z says outright that they are sick and tired of overly explicit sexual content. 51% of young people surveyed would like to see less sex on screen, many find such depictions unnecessary and 44% even annoying.
Is there a difference in screens? If the big one sinks into the mud, the small smartphone can’t even stand the effigy of a nipple: Pio Fedi’s Rape of Polyxena was censored ‘because it might violate community rules’. The same fate befell a painting by Peter Paul Rubens. The imposing breasts of the Venus of Willendorf, a statuette dating back 25,000 years, have found Meta’s barrage.
In this constant nonsense, which at times could be described as madness, a redeeming element emerges: Demna Gvasalia’s fascination for Mina, which resulted in collab after an artistic courtship lasting over ten years. Emotion, here, has a voice.
