The Venice Film Festival always manages to come at a time when we need it most. In 2020, it brought our first bigtime red carpet in the Covid era, and gave us a lot to talk about when Cate Blanchett announced she’d be doing mostly re-wears; in 2021, it was the first truly massive red carpet of the Covid vaccine era, and included the public debut of Bennifer: The Sequel. And now, it’s back AGAIN to sweep us up in glamour and boat photos and maybe a little mess, given the recent gossip shitstorm (including a surprise rebuttal) surrounding Don’t Worry Darling, which will make its (non-competition) debut.

But! There are a few other noteworthy premieres coming, which are guaranteed to deliver some big gowns. Noah Baumbach’s White Noise seems to be the first one up tomorrow, which includes Jodie Turner-Smith (YES) and Greta Gerwig and Adam Driver, and then the next day it’s Alejandro Inarritu’s latest, then Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All. (If you’re wondering whether the universe has a dark sense of humor, Guadagnino basically launched Timothee Chalamet by casting him opposite Armie Hammer in Call Me By Your Name, and this latest is a movie with Timmy about “two cannibalistic lovers,” which… also, of course, has a link to Armie Hammer. It’s based on a book, but still. Eerie.) Chloe Sevigny will be showing up to support that one, I hope. And THEN on the 3rd it’s Don’t Worry Darling and Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, which stars Brendan Fraser, Hong Chau, Samantha Morton, and Sadie Sink. We’ll get a look at Ana de Armas as Marilyn on Sept. 8 when Blonde screens, and on the 7th, it’s Florian Zeller’s The Son — a follow-up to The Father (they’re part of a trilogy of plays, apparently), which won Anthony Hopkins an Oscar in 2021, and which stars Hopkins and Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, and Vanessa Kirby. And Julianne Moore is your jury president, and in the midst of all that, plenty of celebrities will come and go on delightful water taxies, some of them in precarious shoes, and probably all of them in sunglasses. I cannot wait, and yet wait we must, for one more day. Let’s whet our appetites with a flashback to last year’s biggest moments, shall we?

[Photos: Matt Baron, Anthony Harvey, Maria Laura Antonelli, David Fisher, IPA, Broadimage/Shutterstock, Marechal Aurore/ABACA/Shutterstock, Dejan Jankovic, Joel C. Ryan/Invision/AP/Shutterstock, Cinzia Camela/LiveMedia/Shutterstock, LAURENT LAURENT VU/SIPA/Shutterstock, Rune Hellestad, Rocco Spaziani/UPI/Shutterstock]