Clooney opens Venice film festival with political thriller

‘I get to hang around with seductive people’:

ITALY: Hollywood star George Clan opened a star-studded Venice film festival on Wednesday with the world premiere of his political thriller “The Ides of March” based around a US presidential campaign.

Hundreds of fans crowded round as a tux-wearing Clan, who strode down the red carpet and signed autographs after cruising the watery city on a motorboat.

A rakish-looking Clan came to the world’s oldest film festival unaccompanied after breaking up with his Italian girlfriend Elisabetta Canalis.

He spoke to reporters earlier of his disillusionment with the US political scene and said his cynical tale was a fit for the times in the United States.

The director said he ready to begin filming in 2008 when Barack Obama won the US elections, but he was initially worried about the climate of optimism.

“Everyone was in such a good mood! It only took about a year for that to all change,” he said.

“At the moment, cynicism seems to be winning over idealism.”

Clooney, who plays a presidential candidate in the film, denied any political ambitions of his own — or aspirations to stand for president. “There’s a guy in the office right now who is smarter and more compassionate than anyone I know,” he said of Obama, adding with a laugh: “Hollywood’s still a playground... and I get to hang around with seductive people.”

Venice’s lagoon was buzzing with water taxis all day whisking stars and movie moguls to the Lido island. Clooney’s co-stars Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti, as well as friend Cindy Crawford a former supermodel. The stars are headed for an exclusive party on the beach after the showing. Clooney’s film is the first of 22 from around the world competing for the Golden Lion award in the second most prestigious film festival after Cannes. The thriller is about a US campaign in which a loyal aide helping the Democratic governor win a primary in Ohio discovers just how dirty politics can be and it was met with general acclaim by critics at an advance screening.

At the heart of the film, Clooney said, is the question: “What you are willing to pay for power... whether you’re willing to trade your soul for it.” AFP