This is an old post about his appearance at the Venice Film Festival where he was calling himself "Keith Ledger"
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Boyd from European Films here, reporting from the Venice Film Festival.Ang Lee has done it again! He has again won the Golden Lion, the Venice Film Festival's top prize, just two years after Brokeback Mountain, but now with a drama set on another continent and in another language: Se jie (Lust Caution), a war-time drama set in an occupied Shanghai in which a theatre student (Wei Tang) is asked to seduce a high-placed official (Tony Leung) who collaborates openly with the occupiers. The film also won the prize for Best Cinematography for DOP Rodrigo Prieto, the same man who shot Brokeback Mountain.
Besides this Taiwanese-US co-production, US films won several other prizes, including Brian De Palma's Redacted (Best Director); Todd Haynes's I'm Not There (Best Actress for Cate Blanchett, Special Jury Prize) and Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which was awarded the Best Actor Coppa Volpi for Brad Pitt.
Neither Pitt nor Blanchett were present, though Blanchett's co-star Heath Ledger accepted the Best Actress award on her behalf. Ledger was in top shape, rocking the red carpet with the coolest pair of socks ever before apologizing for not being Cate Blanchett but "just this dirtbag" when accepting the award. He later referred to himself in Cate's thank-you note he read out loud as "Keith Ledger". Funny man.If anything, like with Brokeback Mountain, Lust, Caution just got a serious Oscar boost after early mixed-to-positive reviews. (From my Lust, Caution review: "An uncompromising and incredibly seductive piece of filmmaking that is too long but has so many good elements going for it that it is hard to really care that on certain points the director seems to have thrown caution to the wind.")
Check out European Films for a full list of 2007 Venice Film Festival winners.
