Brad Pitt and George Clooney (with disenchanted festival-goer in the background). Photo: Reuters/Max Rossi
Last night was all about the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading - or more specifically, George'n'Brad, the buddy-buddy double act who briefly reunited for the film's red carpet premiere. As your correspondent struggled into a suit to attend the event, he reflected on the way the city had temporarily become psychotically fixated on this grinning, perfectly-formed duo.
After all the proles had been shoehorned inside the Palazzo cinema, closed-circuit cameras enabled us to not miss a moment of their adorable clowning and mugging for the assembled crowds. In truth, it never fails to amaze me how comfortable some people are with knowing they are the centre of attention - and with movie stars its pretty much the major job description.
On the other hand, most people don't have a camera trained on their face from the moment they sit down in a cinema seat, as Pitt did; nor do they then have to look at it 30 foot high as it is projected onto the cinema screen in front of them. Pitt actually bore that rather unpleasant intrusion with rather good humour - pretending to develop a twitch, wagging his finger at the cameraman, etc. Tilda Swinton, sitting next to him, looked definitely disturbed by the minuteness of the scrutiny - she's still got a lot to get used to in the Hollywood micro-climate. (Clooney, unsurprisingly, just came up with more doofus pranks: fingers held up behind the head, that sort of thing.)
The opening rituals, hosted by Russian actor Ksenia Rappoport, were what I've come to understand is the traditional Venice shambles: names forgotten, nationalities got wrong, and celebrity guests not introduced. And rather shamefully for the locals, 99-year-old Manoel de Oliveira, director of the opening short, was heckled by an audience member (presumably because he gave his speech in French). But after the interminable pre-show finished, the main feature went down well - and then several hundred people wandered down the road to a nearby hotel for a sit-down dinner in very fancy surroundings.
Though your correspondent happily tagged along, little actual glamour attaches itself to these events: they are like going to a massive wedding where every one of your relatives has had plastic surgery. Since Frances McDormand's character in Burn After Reading is obsessed with finding money for her "surgeries", it was strangely appropriate.
