Venice finale nears, "Queen", "Bobby" favourites

VENICE, Sep 9 (Reuters) The 11-day Venice Film Festival winds up today after a red carpet award ceremony on the glamourous Lido beach front, with British entry ''The Queen'' and Hollywood's ''Bobby'' favourites to take away the main prize.

Last year's Golden Lion to Ang Lee's ''Brokeback Mountain'' was an expected and popular choice at the world's oldest film festival, but 2006 lacks such a clear frontrunner.

Film critics and the public alike have hailed Stephen Frears' The Queen, in which Helen Mirren plays a monarch hopelessly out of touch with her people when Princess Diana dies in a Paris car crash in 1997.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, played by Michael Sheen, struggles to convince the monarch to throw aside centuries of royal protocol and join in the nation's grief.

''I liked The Queen a lot and I think the real queen would like it too,'' said Tullio Kezich, one of Italy's leading film critics and a veteran of the Venice festival.

''I am sure one night she will put on a DVD at Buckingham Palace and she'll be happy because she comes out of it as a nice person full of humour. Whoever sees this film will appreciate the queen more than they did before.'' He and other critics singled out Mirren as the frontrunner for best actress at the festival, although they added that France's Isabelle Huppert also excelled in ''Nue Propriete''.

In the best actor category Belgian brothers Jeremie and Yannick Renier, also in Nue Propriete, Briton Clive Owen in Alfonso Cuaron's ''Children of Men'' and Sergio Castellitto of Italy in ''La Stella Che Non C'e'' won warm praise.

BOBBY Leading the chasing pack behind the Queen for best picture is Emilio Estevez's Bobby, about a dozen or so characters who are at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles the night Robert Kennedy was shot in 1968.

Sharon Stone, Demi Moore, Anthony Hopkins and Lindsay Lohan all appear in a touching story that works real news footage from the day of the assassination into the movie.

Other US entries in the 21-strong competition fared less well critically, with Darren Aronofsky's ''The Fountain'' booed at a press screening and ''Hollywoodland'', starring Ben Affleck, Diane Lane and Adrien Brody drawing mixed reviews.

''The Black Dahlia'', starring Scarlett Johansson, Hilary Swank and Josh Hartnett, was also seen as a disappointment.

Other contenders for the best film Golden Lion include French veteran Alain Resnais' ''Private Fears in Public Places'', an intimate account of ordinary people searching for happiness in a snow-covered Paris.

Alfonso Cuaron won fans for his terrifying vision of London in 2027 in ''Children of Men''; ''Daratt'', Chad's first competition entry about coming to terms with the horrors of civil war, is seen as an outside bet, and two Asian films are in the frame.

''I Don't Want to Sleep Alone'' by Tsai Ming-Liang explores the lives of migrant workers in Malaysia after economic collapse, while China's ''Still Life'' by Jia Zhang-Ke is about how the giant Three Gorges Dam project affects ordinary people.

Reuters AB VV1239