Lisa Cholodenko & Frances Mcdormand's "olive Kitteridge" Impresses In Venice

The biggest positive surprise at Venice is probably Lisa Cholodenko’s HBO miniseries, “Olive Kitteridge.” Starring those national treasures Frances McDormand and Richard Jenkins as the title character and her pharmicist husband, Henry, the four-part series travels through their lives over some 25 years. In today’s press conference, McDormand said that she’d been playing supportive roles to male characters for her entire career and “it feels like I’ve been working for 35 years to set up this part.” And it does feel like she was meant to play this small-town Maine teacher who, as McDormand says, “not everyone likes but no one can ignore.” This is to put it mildly: Olive Kitteridge is brusque, sharp, acerbic, unforgiving, ungenerous, rude, mean, and downright unhappy much of the time – most of all with those close to her – Henry and their son, Christopher (John Gallagher, Jr).