Vanessa Redgrave has been awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at this 75th Venice Film Festival.
To celebrate, an invitation-only screening was held of her new film, shot in Venice last summer, of The Aspern Papers.
She has had a long association with Henry James’s story, her father Michael Redgrave having adapted it for the stage, and she herself having taken the role of the younger of the two ladies, Miss Tina, on stage in 1984.
Now she plays ancient Juliana Bordereau magnificently, full of acerbity and imperiousness, while her daughter Joely Richardson makes a magnetically odd Miss Tina.
Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is quite the imposter as the publishing scoundrel who will do anything for the papers.
The feature debut of the young French director Julien Landais, it is nonetheless quite the historical document itself.
The Aspern Papers: In pictures
