The Wright Stuff ; He's the Toast of Venice After His Star-Laden Atonement Opened the Film Festival Last Night. Joe Wright a Dyslexic Failure at School, Talks About How He Turned It All Around to Become Britain's Hottest Director

Summary

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WHEN Joe Wright's mesmerising adaptation of Ian McEwan's Atonement opened the Venice Film Festival last night, it was a triumph on many levels. At 35, Wright is the youngest ever director afforded the accolade of the opening film. What's more, Atonement is only his second feature, following 2005's "dirty hem" Pride and Prejudice, yet in both cinematic outings he has proved himself a master of the medium, as well as a man able to draw career-best performances from Keira Knightley.

Many of the book's three millionplus fans considered Atonement unfilmable, with a shifting narrative that covers 65 years from a 1935 country house party to the Dunkirk evacuations to a final dramatic twist in modern London. But critics have already praised the faithfulness of Wright's film to the novel, its subtle blend of epic events and private feelings, and its sheer beauty. Even McEwan approves.

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The Wright Stuff ; He's the Toast of Venice After His Star-Laden Atonement Opened the Film Festival Last Night. Joe Wright a Dyslexic Failure at School, Talks About How He Turned It All Around to Become Britain's Hottest Director

Wright, who grew up in the Little Angel Marionette Theatre his parents ran in Islington, who is dyslexic and left his tough local comprehensive without O-levels, and who worked as an actor before breaking into TV directing, now finds himself much in demand.

After Venice, he jets back home for Atonement's London premiere on Tuesday, then off to the Toronto Film Festival, before Los Angeles, where he starts shooting The Soloist, an American blockbuster based on the true story of a schizo...

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