A star-studded film which begins and ends beneath Venice’s decadent Hungaria hotel. Filmmakers and actors check in and begin shooting a period film. But little do they suspect what can happen in the dark hotel underworld.
A film crew and a group of actors arrive in Venice and begin making a period film based on John Webster’s Jacobean tragedy The Duchess of Malfi. They find lodgings in the decadent Hungaria hotel, a strange place where bizarre incidents happen in the dark world beneath it: the hotel staff are able to provide things the guests can barely imagine in their wildest dreams. Director Stoken meets with an inexplicable accident, and while in a coma he experiences a frenzied vision in which the real world mingles with entirely irrational events. What is dream and what is reality? Which hotel guest will find himself in the clutches of a dark power? Producer Jonathan realises that an opportunity has presented itself but under his direction real life is increasingly substituted for the artificial film world. The finale is approaching. . . .
114 min / Black & white, 35 mm
Director Mike Figgis
/ Screenplay Mike Figgis
/ Dir. of Photography Patrick Stewart
/ Music Mike Figgis, Anthony Marinelli
/ Editor Adam Barton
/ Producer Annie Stewart, Mike Figgis, Etchie Stroh
/ Production Hotel Productions Ltd. and Cattleya S.R.L. C/O Red Mullet Productions
/ Cast Max Beesley, Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Brian Bovell, Saffron Burrows, Elisabetta Cavallotti, Valentina Cervi, George DiCenzo, Andrea Di Stefano, Nicola Farron, Christopher Fulford, Valeria Golino, Jeremy Hardy, Salma Hayek, Danny Huston, Rhys Ifans, Jason Isa
Mike Figgis (b. 1948, Carlisle, UK) spent his childhood in Kenya. He picked up trumpet and guitar as a teenager, studied music for three years in London and performed with a band called The People Show. In 1980 he left the group and start writing and directing. He established his own theatre group and focused on multimedia productions (which included extensive use of film). He has made eleven movies to date (e.g. Stormy Monday (L988), Internal Affairs (l99O), Liebestraum (l99l), Mr. Jones (l993), The Browning Version (l994), One Night Stand (l997), The Loss of Sexual Innocence (l999). Leaving Las Vegas (1996) was nominated for four Academy Awards including the one Nicolas Cage took for Best Actor.
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