Noah Baumbach’s White Noise opened the Venice festivities yesterday, with what Variety referred to as a “tepid 150-second standing ovation.” Two and a half minutes IS more of a polite smattering than actual enthusiasm, by festival standards (and possibly any standards?). But consider that at Cannes, The Neon Demon got a 17-minute ovation, and the one for Annette — creepy puppet movie in which Adam Driver sang into Marion Cotillard’s vagina, and yes, I saw it, and no, I don’t give it my ovation — was sufficiently long that Adam apparently lit a cigarette. My point being, festival crowds are not necessarily a good barometer either way and the movie might be totally fine. Although, Variety also described the source material as “Don DeLillo’s acerbic domestic academic satirical dystopian novel of American middle-class life in the 1980s,” which are a LOT of adjectives I might not need in my life. Anyway! You saw Jodie, you saw Julianne, and you saw Greta; now let’s dig into everyone else.
