Place to Be: Burstyn Can Carry a Pigeon. The Movie Cannot Carry Two Hours

Woman Unknown took the Lion on Saturday. Out of competition, the same festival ran a different kind of victory lap: Ellen Burstyn, already holding this year’s Golden Lion for lifetime achievement, walking through almost every frame of Place to Be with a racing pigeon.

Deadline filed from the premiere. Kornél Mundruczó directs. Kata Wéber wrote it. Australia, 2026. Cast: Burstyn, Taika Waititi, Pamela Anderson, David Wenham, Lena Waithe, Murray Bartlett. CAA is selling it. Runtime is a small argument. Deadline says 1 hour 50. The Hollywood Reporter says 1 hour 44. Screen Daily says 104 minutes. I am not going to pick a clock. I will pick the reviews, which are kinder to the actress than to the concept.

What happens, without pretending I sat in Sala Darsena

Screen Daily’s plot is the cleanest. Brooke, a widow, is “writing the final chapter of my life” and would like a happy ending. She gets a cross-country road trip instead, in the company of an errant racing pigeon and Nelson, Waititi, a dissatisfied middle-aged man. AwardsWatch puts her in Chicago, once married to a successful and domineering artist. Care of children and husband. The late question is not how the world sees her. It is whether it sees her at all.

The pigeon is named Intruder. AwardsWatch says the performance is twenty-five birds stitched together, and that the wrangling produces more empathy than the CGI flock footage. That is a real reviewer’s sentence. Believe the “twenty-five pigeons” part. Discount the harmony shots.

Deadline’s register is warmer. Burstyn is in her nineties, in a rare lead, carrying the bird everywhere, doing more physical work than the festival program will admit. The piece says she wants the pigeon to keep its freedom the way she wants to keep hers. That is the theme on a postcard. Mundruczó has used Burstyn before. Pieces of a Woman. AwardsWatch thinks both films share staginess, odd turns, dialogue that does not sit in a mouth. Burstyn is the crutch. The crutch is load-bearing. The house still leans.

The other people in the car

Waititi is the passenger the marketing will use. AwardsWatch does not let him escape the twitchy persona the film invents in the first act. Screen Daily hears an uneasy discord between the two styles. That is the risk when you hire a comic whose default is riff and a ninety-year-old who has been doing stillness since before he was born.

Pamela Anderson and Murray Bartlett, in AwardsWatch, are a cartoonishly unsympathetic pair. I have not seen the scenes. I have seen enough festival copy to know “cartoonishly” is not a compliment you walk back in the next paragraph. Lena Waithe and David Wenham are in the credits. The reviews I have do not spend their word count on them. That is data.

THR’s bottom line is the one I will steal and not dress up: a corny concept elevated by a major actress. Screen Daily’s headline already told you it never quite takes flight. AwardsWatch wanted Thelma, the other late-in-life getaway comedy, and did not get the verve. Deadline is the friendly notice you print if you are in the Burstyn business. All four can be true. Festival coverage is a stack of moods, not a verdict from a single god.

Mundruczó’s year, not the pigeon’s

This is his second 2026 feature to open a major European festival. Berlin got At The Sea, Amy Adams, also Wéber. Screen Daily says both films are about women trying to change how they are looked at. Brooke’s version is bleaker: looked at, at all. I am not going to braid the two scripts into a brand statement. I will note that a director who already had Adams in February and Burstyn in September is not hunting discovery slots. He is hunting actresses who can survive a conceit.

Venice put Place to Be out of competition. That is the slot where you premiere a famous person and a bird without asking Maggie Gyllenhaal’s jury to vote. The competition list we tracked before the Lion did not need this title. You can skip it at the festival and still have a festival. You cannot skip Burstyn if you care what a lead in her nineties looks like when the camera stays on.

The lifetime Lion and the movie landed in the same week. That is booking, not destiny. It will follow the film into whatever U.S. release CAA finds. “She just won a Lion” is easier to write than “the pigeon is twenty-five pigeons.”

Should you watch it

If you want the Venice movie that stopped the room, that is still NAZA. If you want the thriller the jury crowned, Woman Unknown. If you want a road picture because Burstyn is in it, this is the one, and you should go in knowing three trade papers called the concept thin and the lead not.

I would not put it on a “eight titles before the Lion” list now. The Lion is done. I would put Burstyn on a list of people who can make a corny logline play as a person. That is a skill. It is not the same as a good film.

Waititi fans who need him chaotic will get a version of that. People who need him warm will fight the reviews. Anderson’s presence will be the still they use online. None of that is a reason to argue with THR’s “corny.”

Runtime, call it a hundred minutes and some change. Australia. English-language, from the coverage. No U.S. date in these pieces. When the date exists, the question is the same: do you want two hours of Burstyn and a bird, or do you want the movie the bird is in. Only one of those is a sure thing.

We do not run star ratings. The stack says: see it for her. Do not expect it to take off. That is enough.

What “out of competition” is doing here

Venice competition is twenty-one films and a jury that has to pick a Lion. Out of competition is where you put a lifetime-award recipient, a pigeon, and a sales company. It is not a slight by itself. NAZA was the movie the building stood up for. Place to Be is the movie the building is supposed to like because Burstyn is in it. Those are different jobs.

Wéber’s second festival script of the year is the part I keep circling. At The Sea had Amy Adams and a woman trying to change the look she gets. Brooke is trying to get a look at all. That is a darker joke. It is also a template you can feel: older woman, late chapter, male passenger who talks more than he should. AwardsWatch reaching for Thelma is the tell. Once a critic names the movie you wanted, you know this one did not get there.

I have no U.S. distributor in these pieces. CAA will take meetings. Burstyn’s Lion will be in the first paragraph of every announcement. Waititi’s name will be in the poster, larger than Mundruczó’s. Anderson will be in the still. The pigeon will be in the social clip, probably the CGI one AwardsWatch already does not believe. That is how a thin road movie travels. It does not make Deadline wrong about Burstyn. It makes THR right about corn.

If you are building a fall list from Venice, put this below the Lion, below Lee Chang-dong, below the documentary that ran long. If you are building a list of late performances, put Burstyn at the top and admit you might be bored in the car. That split is the review. Everything else is runtime arguments and twenty-five birds.

Screen Daily’s “never quite takes flight” is doing the title’s job for it. A racing pigeon should fly. The movie keeps explaining why freedom matters while the bird sits in Burstyn’s hands. That can work as a metaphor for ten minutes. Past an hour it is a prop. Deadline sees the prop as a partner. I am with the papers that got bored, and I am still going to watch Burstyn work, because a lead in her nineties who can carry a live animal through a festival premiere is not a common object. Just do not confuse the object with the film.

Mundruczó already proved, with Pieces of a Woman, that he can put Burstyn in a room and let the air go bad. This is the comic version of that instinct, and comedy is less forgiving of staginess. Waititi’s twitch against her stillness could have been the engine. The reviews say it is a mismatch. Believe them until you have a ticket. Then decide whether the mismatch is the point or the mistake. I am guessing mistake. I would still rather guess in a seat than from four trade links. That is as far as a review of a movie I have not seen should go, and further than most festival roundups bother to.