Art films used to cross over into the mainstream more than they do now, though it still happens (just look at the success of “Parasite”). But even back in the heyday of art-house earthquakes like “Z” and “Last Tango in Paris,” there was something surreal about the crossover phenomenon of Björn Andrésen. He was the 15-year-old Swedish boy who director Luchino Visconti cast as the love object in “Death in Venice,” his 1971 film of Thomas Mann’s novel, and for a time Andrésen blew up like a pop star. “Death in Venice” was a grand, slow-moving, and, to me, always rather stilted and awkward piece of lavish-souled literary adaptation. On the page, Mann had evoked the romantic and sensual obsession that his ailing autobiographical hero felt, from afar, for Tadzio, an adolescent he spies at the hotel he’s convalescing at on the Lido. In the movie, the hero’s...
- 11/6/2021
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
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