Have you been to Venice? Enticed by the idea of a near-constant water-side stroll? Just know that any romantic notions you hold about La Serenessima, as the city’s nicknamed, will quickly burst under the throngs of people from all over the world, piling into the same waterbus and snaking down the same labyrinthine street as you while staring down at their phones. Venice is the low point of both Disneyland and a corn maze in one.
If I sound aggrieved, just know that most of my displeasure is rooted in fact. Overtourism is a real deal enemy that’s transformed Venice and condemned it to the ninth level of travel-hell, one that brims with 20 billion+ visitors a year. Most of the locals have been ousted by skyrocketing rents. One man, the director of the Venetian Heritage Foundation, even opines “Airbnb is our Covid”— holding the short-term rental company as responsible for fucking up his city as a global pandemic, which has ruptured and fractured the world. One unintended benefit during the health crisis is that it’s provided a glimpse into what a non-tourist Venice might look like in the future.
Embedded in my apartment, I’ve begrudgingly shoved questions of travel into the part of my brain i like to neglect called “nice things we can’t have, don’t waste your time.” Movies are still around (though not in the way I’d prefer), but all these screens and streamers at least help to satisfy the creeping wanderlust. You too can glimpse the splendor of the Venice, its gothic churches and Rococo palaces, with very few crowds in these cinematic depictions where the illustrious capital serves as the backdrop to unsavory—even murderous—affairs.
Don’t Look Now
Nicholas Roeg
In this horror number, someone calls Venice “a city in aspic, wrapped over from a dinner party, where all the guests are dead or gone.” An apt description of the Venice of this film— depopulated and hampered by spectral fog.
Grieving the death of their child, an archeologist and his wife (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie) travel to Venice where he is restoring an old church. Meanwhile she wife fixates on a chance encounter with a blind clairvoyant. In the book version, Daphne du Maurier’s romantic prose gilded the mood with chills, but the film’s sense of horror is more spiky— escalating suspense and jump-scares come through the classical editing (although the scariest scene might actually be a the tangled spears of Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie having sex. The stars’ extremely fat-bare bodies unintentionally resemble death.) The film is a bit dusty—this and the director’s other Bad Timing seem to have aged poorly—but it only adds flair to Don’t Look Now as the European analogue of a retro Halloween costume: aspirationally high-class, slightly tacky, ultimately diverting. (On Showtime or Criterion DVD)
RIYL: American Horror Story, dabbling in the occult, Suspiria, but don’t have the guts to watch it.
The Comfort of Strangers
Paul Schrader
As a bathtub lined with white porcelain,
When the hot water gives out or goes tepid,
So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion,
O my much praised but-not-altogether-satisfactory lady.
- The Bathtub by Ezra Pound
It is not so in this movie, where a quartet of lovely people fight to keep their passions alive. The Comfort of Strangers confirms my childhood notion that Rupert Everett is a nice looking man. That fact becomes part of the movie’s cruel point when he and his girlfriend (Natasha Richardson) meet a mysterious older couple, one half of which is Christopher Walken holding court in the majestic splendor of the cracking Venice.
While you can confidently anticipate some occult-leaning foul-play in Don’t Look Now, it is less clear what unseemly terror lurks around the grotto here. The characters are opaque and huffy in a period-piece sort of way—sensual enigmas, backstories expended—but their sexual appetites are acute and direct. (On Criterion Channel)
RIYL: Merchant Ivory movies, the sticky tinderbox heat of July, Christopher Walken monologues, even this one.
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Anthony Minghella
Only a sliver of this movie unfolds in Venice. (The original adaptation Purple Moon doesn’t visit the Veneto at all.) The characters mainly laze around southern Italy, and sail off into the cerulean Adriatic without a hitch as one does when they’re monied. It’s the allure of old money, in particular, and its politesse, that draw Matt Damon into Jude Law’s orbit. A movie fashioned after Hitchcock’s heart concerning duality and obsession, repressed homosexuality, glasses and voyeurism, and a beautiful blonde (GOOP herself). (On HBO)
RIYL: Patricia Highsmith stories, “shipping” characters, dry martinis, bergamot.
Among the horrors of Venice: the difficulty in getting a table at a decent restuarant, which is worse than finding dinner in Manhattan on a Friday at 8pm as it requires approximately nine months notice. While I was not able to get the full sit-down table service restaurant meal of my heart’s desire here, I did get cicchetti, which is arguably much better.
Cicchetti are to Venice what aperitivi are to Milan. Traditionally eaten at a bacaro or wine bar, they range from various sandwiches on crusty rolls or on softer bread, seasonal permutations of crostini with cured meats and cheeses or fish and game or vegetables. It is not unlike Spanish tapas or even English tea time.
There are no strict rules when creating this snack, but there are some tried and true assemblages: baccalà mantecato, a whipped salted cod, for one, and sarde in saor another. The sweet and sour fried sardines add an electrifying jolt to the tinned-fish-on-toast that many have fallen back on during quarantine.
I ate it on crusty bread (too lazy to make a more traditional polenta cake) with a drizzle of fresh-pressed olive oil, which stands up against the competing tastes. I would like to have added chopped parsely for a fresh zing. **If you don’t already have a thing for oily fish, this dish, though packed with bold flavors, won’t mask the sardine-iness—in fact they magically enhance it.**
Sarde in Saor (sweet and sour sardines)
adapted from Saveur
Two tins of sardines (oil packed preferably)
½ cup olive oil
1⁄2 cup white wine
1 white onion, sliced thin
1⁄4 cup white wine vinegar
Raisins
Pine nuts
Combine wine and raisins in a bowl. Soak for 30 minutes; drain, and set aside.
Heat oil in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Lightly fry the sardines and then remove. Add onions; cook until browned, about 10 minutes.
Add vinegar, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook until soft, 6–8 minutes. Stir in raisins, nuts, and salt and pepper; let it cool.
Place half the sardines in a glass dish; cover with half the onion mixture. Place remaining sardines on top; cover with the rest of onion mixture. Marinate in the fridge for at least 4 hours.
Typically/obviously the fish are fresh, and deep-fried, which helps soak up the liquid better, but you can also pan fry them. *If you are raisin-averse, you can try golden raisins, which are more mellow, or skip them entirely; the vinegar usually packs enough sweetness.
Extra: wine
Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio may have been slandered as fuel for alcoholic moms but sometimes a clear crisp white is necessary. Soave—a wine from the Veneto region that’s quite popular all over the world— is an easy-glugging honey-ed sunshine, touched with occasional salinity due to the volcanic soil where the grapes are grown. Its lightness pairs well with the above sardines.
Venice is for lovers
Don’t Look Now and The Comfort of Strangers are now on my list to watch because Donald Sutherland and Christopher Walken, respectively. (Haha!) So curious to watch an ”earlier” Shrader film too. Thank you for this star-studded Venice dive!