George Clooney and Brad Pitt brought a jolt of electricity -- and old-school Hollywood glamour -- to Venice Sunday, joking, teasing and presiding over a public love fest as their new film "Wolfs" premiered.
The high-profile production starring Hollywood's two top leading men is one of the highlights of the 10-day Venice Film Festival.
The actors' red carpet appearance did not disappoint -- with both playfully sneaking into the risers among the paparazzi as fans shrieked and waved.
Ahead of the premiere, Clooney said it felt second nature sparring with Pitt in the action comedy about two professional fixers begrudgingly forced to work together.
"That sort of banter, the way we blast over each other every time, it just felt easy," Clooney told a press conference.
The 63-year-old star kept the wisecracks coming, telling reporters of his sidekick: "I'm much younger. I know I don't look it, but I'm much younger."
"He's 74 and he's lucky at this age to be still working," Clooney joked of 60-year-old Pitt, grinning at his side.
The 81st edition of the world's oldest film festival has been awash with stars this year, starting with Nicole Kidman and Angelina Jolie -- Pitt's ex-wife -- and next week's Lady Gaga and Daniel Craig.
In the production from US director Jon Watts, whose credits include the Marvel Studios "Spider-Man" trilogy, Clooney is called in to help a woman in a swanky penthouse hotel room deal with a dead, half-naked young man on her bedroom floor.
"There's nobody who can do what I do," Clooney's character assures her.
- Clooney on Biden -
Until, of course, Pitt arrives.
Clad in nearly-matching black leather jackets, the pair soon realise the job is bigger than they imagined -- involving city prosecutors, Albanian drug-dealers and even a wide-eyed college student in his underwear they chase through a snowy New York.
The film is at its best with its tongue-in-cheek nods to the celebrity and age of its stars, from Sade's "Smooth Operator" playing in Clooney's car, to the moment in which both reach for their glasses to read a pager.
The Coen brothers last tapped the on-screen energy of Clooney and Pitt for 2008's "Burn After Reading", an easy rapport also evident in the trio of "Ocean's" heist films.
"In 'Burn After Reading' I had the supreme pleasure of shooting him (Pitt) in the face and so I thought we'd try again," joked Clooney to reporters.
Pitt was more diplomatic: "I've got to say as I get older, just working with the people that I really enjoy spending time with has really become important to me."
The film -- whose title references the fixer played by Harvey Keitel in "Pulp Fiction" -- gets a limited theatrical release before going to streaming on Apple TV+ September 27.
Clooney, one of the Democratic Party's leading fundraisers, was asked about his July New York Times opinion piece in which he urged President Joe Biden not to seek re-election to make room for a younger candidate -- which he did two weeks later.
"The person who should be applauded is the president who did the most selfless thing that anyone has done since George Washington," said Clooney, referring to one of the United States' Founding Fathers and first president.
- Repercussions of war -
Also having its premiere Sunday was Brady Corbet's "The Brutalist" starring Adrien Brody, who won a 2003 Best Actor Academy Award for Roman Polanski's war drama "The Pianist".
In the ambitious, three-and-a-half-hour film, Brody -- in a gut-wrenching performance that could bring him a Venice award -- plays a Hungarian Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor, Laszlo Toth.
After emigrating to the United States, he meets a wealthy benefactor (Guy Pearce) who commissions him to build a huge religious and community centre, an imposing work of Brutalism, a project that both inspires, and threatens, the war-damaged Toth.
Speaking to reporters, Corbet said so many promising Bauhaus architects never had the chance to realise their full potential because of the war.
"This film, it's dedicated to them, the artists who didn't get to realise their visions," he said.
Brody spoke of his mother, New York photographer Sylvia Plachy, who fled Hungary after the revolution of 1956.
"Much like Laszlo, she started again. She lost her home and pursued a dream of being an artist," Brody said.
"I understand a great deal about the repercussions of that on her life and her work as an artist," he said.
"Even though it's fictional, it feels very real, very real to me."