Venice Film Festival jury president Isabelle Huppert expressed support for Nicole Kidman after the actress was unable to accept her Best Actress prize for Babygirl in person, due to her mother’s death.
Kidman had traveled to Italy to receive the award but had to get back on a plane shortly after landing.
“I just wanted to express my compassion to Nicole Kidman, who can’t be here tonight, who had to go back unexpectedly, and I just want to tell her that we really miss her and we love her,” Huppert told the jury press conference.
Earlier at the awards ceremony, Babygirl director Halina Reijn had read out a message from Kidman as she accepted the award on her behalf, in which the actress said she was in shock and was dedicating the prize to her mother.
Kidman plays a high-powered CEO in the thriller, who puts her life’s work on the line when she begins a torrid affair with her much-younger intern.
“I thought she was quite extraordinary. It’s a very daring performance, but it’s not only what she does. It’s also about what the film is about,” said Huppert.
“I really like the perspective of the director, the way she really mingles the two aspects of a woman. You can be a woman of power and yet, you can also be a fragile woman… And I think what Nicole Kinman does is quite extraordinary. She shows a range of emotions, of intelligence in what she does. I was really struck.”
Huppert was joined in the jury by James Gray, Andrew Haigh, Agnieszka Holland, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Abderrahmane Sissako, Giuseppe Tornatore, Julia von Heinz and Zhang Ziyi.
They gave the festival’s Golden Lion to Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language euthanasia drama The Room Next Door, starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore.
Other key prize-winners including Vermiglio by Maura Delpero (Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize) and The Brutalist by Brady Corbet (Silver Lion Best Director), while Vincent Lindon took Best Actor for The Quiet Son.
Explaining the choice of Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door for the top prize, Huppert said the jury had been impressed with the way the director had dealt with the subject of euthanasia.
“In a way, he does it with life, with a sense of life, of transmission. I think he considers end of life and death like a movement, something which stops and something which goes on. The film is philosophical, and he makes us think about what it means to be alive and what it means to end your life,” she said.
“Obviously, we loved the two actresses who are great, because the film is, strangely enough, never really sentimental, nor really melodramatic. It’s Almodóvar’s talent to keep a certain distance from his subject. For for all those reasons, we liked the film.”
Quizzed about the process of deciding on the prizes, Huppert hinted that the decisions on the awards had not necessarily been unanimous but she suggested this was not an issue.
“I don’t think we did any compromises. We just let ourselves be sometimes convinced, or we convinced the others, and you don’t necessarily need to be unanimous to agree. I think that’s also a good rule,” she said.