Florence Pugh's Labor Day Message

Olivia Wilde’s “Don’t Worry Darling” premiered at the 79th Venice International Film Festival today (almost yesterday) and received a 5-minute standing ovation. As film festival standing ovations go, this one was a pretty tame exercise in blowing smoke, one minute less than the standing ovation for “The Whale,” three-and-a-half minutes less than the standing ovation for “Bones and All,” and eight minutes less than the standing ovation for “The Banshees of Inisherin.” But the relatively meager standing ovation was hardly the seeming scandal where “Don’t Worry Darling” was concerned. No, that came after when co-star Florence Pugh skipped out on the post-screening press conference, seen walking and drinking an Aperol Spritz on the Venetian streets instead.

Happy Labor Day!

Though tabloid columnists immediately speculated Pugh’s no-show aperitif stemmed from the rumored ongoing feud between Pugh and director Olivia Wilde, experts at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment in Berkeley theorized this was something else. “The Venice Film Festival might be held in Italy but it’s a global event,” associate director Alexandra Almendares told Cinema Romantico. “And though today is merely September 5th in Venice, it’s Labor Day in America. Skipping a work obligation for a spritz sends a powerful message.” 

The Aperol Spritz is nothing if not a symbol of aperitivo, those couple hours when Italians relax after work and eschew racing to get ahead in the world to just let the world go by. “The struggle will only end,” Almendares told us, “when every hour is aperitivo hour.”