Bruni Tedeschi delights as demon in Venice's The Spiral

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi gives a career-best performance in The Spiral, a Venice film festival competition entry in which she plays a demon who visits a wealthy Italian family to prey on their pampered weaknesses, the Guardian's review reports. The film, directed by an unnamed filmmaker, uses the supernatural premise to satirise the vanities of a privileged household, with Tedeschi's mysterious stranger cutting a deal with a vain matriarch.

The Guardian's critic writes that Tedeschi is "hilarious" in the role, marking a high point in a career that has long intertwined Italian and French cinema. Born in Turin and raised between Italy and France, Tedeschi has built a reputation for comic timing and psychological depth, and the review suggests The Spiral draws on both traditions to unsettling effect.

The film arrives at the 83rd Venice Film Festival, where it competes alongside works from directors such as Sergei Loznitsa and Lance Oppenheim, according to the Guardian's festival coverage. The festival has this year faced scrutiny over gender balance, with only two female directors in the main competition, a structural problem that Danish director May el-Toukhy blamed on the "cult of male genius" in remarks reported by the Guardian.

The Spiral's premise — a demon exploiting a family's weaknesses — allows the film to probe the moral rot beneath Italian bourgeois comfort, a theme the Guardian's review suggests is handled with a lightness that belies its bite. Tedeschi's character operates as both tempter and mirror, exposing the matriarch's self-regard as the mechanism by which she is undone.

Tedeschi's own biography enriches the reading. As the sister of Carla Bruni, the former French first lady, and a figure who has moved between the two countries' film industries, she embodies the Franco-Italian cultural exchange that Venice, as Europe's oldest film festival, has long celebrated. Her performance in The Spiral, the Guardian notes, may be her finest yet, a claim that positions the film as a likely talking point as the festival's awards approach.

The review also situates The Spiral within a Venice lineup that has leaned heavily on documentary and archive work — from Luke Lorentzen's Boatbuilders to Loznitsa's Imperium — making Tedeschi's fictional comedy a counterpoint to the festival's non-fiction streak. Whether the film translates its festival buzz into prizes remains to be seen, but the Guardian's endorsement gives it early momentum with international audiences and distributors.