Venice Film Festival Update: "The Burning Plain" opens to raves

Arriaga with actress Jennifer Lawrence

The film, directed by "Babel" and "Amorres Perros" scribe Guillermo Arriaga and starring Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger, is one of a host of potential Oscar successes that has being laying low...until now.

Only three days in to the Venice Film Festival, a front-runner for the Golden Lion best film award has emerged. The Burning Plain, written and directed by the Mexican film-maker Guillermo Arriaga and starring Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger, has all the right credentials: it is serious-minded and dramatic, with universal themes and a clutch of fine acting performances.

It isn't too early to suggest this film's the one to beat. The story is complex, and reveals itself gradually. It moves back and forth in time and takes place in two main locations; rainy Portland, Oregon, and a dusty, down-at-heel American border town. Events that occur in one place have consequences elsewhere, sometimes years later.

None of this will seem strange to fans of the brilliant Arriaga, who makes his directing debut here but wrote the outstanding screenplays for two notable films, Amores Perros and Babel, both of which also jump around in place and time.

The film's first image literally burns itself on the memory: a trailer consumed by roaring flames in the middle of a desert plain. Then the action moves to Portland, where Theron plays the brisk, competent manager of a chic restaurant. But she's a flawed character, given to self-harming and meaningless one-night stands.

Basinger appears as a wife and mother in the border town, guarding the secret of her illicit affair. It is impossible to explain further without ruining the suspense elements in the story. Suffice to say that Arriaga pulls together the strands of his narrative with great expertise. His job is made easier by great performances from three actresses: Theron and Basinger, who both look like racing certs for next year's awards season, and Jennifer Lawrence as Basinger's teenage daughter.

We have not heard the last of The Burning Plain.