Space Thriller 'Gravity' Debuts At Venice Film Festival, Were The First Critics In Awe?

If like us, you've been itching to see Gravity even since the 90 second teaser trailer was first released, the news that there are people somewhere out there who have seen the movie will be enough to make your ears prick up and start crossing off the days until 4th November (if you're in the US, 8th if in the UK).

Cuaron, And The Entire Cast Of Gravity.

Steeped in mystery with a rather unique concept, shots of Alfonso Cuaron's new space thriller look hauntingly beautiful and the movie's disaster scenario sounds gripping. When films look this good, we don't like sitting around and waiting a long time for them to hit our screen. The movie was famously difficult to make, as Cuaron wanted to make the space shots look as authentic and CGI-less as possible with a heavy emphasis on single take scenes that made for gruelling filming sessions.

Watch The Gravity Trailer Now:

George Clooney and Sandra Bullock - the only actors in this lonely film - play two astronauts who are on a routine shuttle mission. There's a glut of peacefulness, philosophical musings and spacewalking until disaster suddenly strikes. Their craft is hit by flying debris and a nightmarish scenario ensues. The pair battle fire, equipment failure and parachute problems whilst trying to save their skin and prevent being launched adrift into the black abyss.

Clooney & Bullock: This Is More Flesh Than We See In The Entire Movie.

After being in the audience for Gravity's Venice premiere, The Guardian describes Gravity as "a howl in the wilderness that sucks the breath from your lungs," claiming that the Mexican director Cuarón (Children Of Men) has thrown the film festival a lifeline on its opening night with "brilliant thriller' that is "steered masterfully" and even manages to throw in a moral lesson for good measure.

The Independent is less positive, though praises the beautiful cinematography, saying "The opening scenes have a mesmerizing, abstract beauty. Cutting is kept to a minimum as we see the two astronauts floating in space in what seems like perpetual slow motion." However, it seems like the breath-taking, almost documentary space vista comes at a price: "The one problem with Gravity is that the plotting never quite matches its visual imagination." Using terms like "banal" and "predictable," The Independent scorns the incongruity between the high-class cinematography and the B- grade storyline.

Clooney & Bullock Must Escape A Space-Themed Disaster Scenario.

Does anyone care? We want to see Gravity for the same reasons we'd visit a planetarium, except instead of having David Tennant narrate a journey through our solar system, we have the wise-cracking dreamboat George Clooney and the intensely likeable Sandra Bullock to keep us company in a heart-racing disaster story.

The film's selling point is it's gorgeous space-scape, awe-filled shots of our own blue globe and the experiment of having just two, killer actors floating around in space in just one take; all projected on to IMAX's giant screens. If it doesn't pleasingly adhere to Labov's narrative theory, and wrap up with a satisfying conclusion, we probably won't feel too cheated.