Hollywood heartthrob George Clooney and Italian showgirl Elisabetta Canalis made their first public appearance together Tuesday for the premiere of "The Men Who Stare at Goats" at the Venice film festival.

The couple, who reportedly met early this year, strolled hand in hand down the red carpet, Clooney in a black tux and Canalis in a low-cut cobalt green gown, along with "Goats" director Grant Heslow and Clooney co-star Ewan McGregor.

In Heslow's dark comedy, scoop-hungry journalist Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) happens upon Clooney's character, Lyn Cassady, embarking on a mission to find Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), founder of the US Army's secret "psychic soldier" programme, in Iraq.

Shown out of competition in Venice, the film is based on a book by Jon Ronson about the army's experimentation with New Age concepts and the paranormal, for instance the ability to kill goats by staring at them, begun in the 1970s.

"As funny as it is, some of the dumbest parts of the film are the true parts," said Clooney, whose character claims to be a former psychic soldier who was reactivated after the September 11 attacks in 2001.

"That's what made us laugh the most."

The mission takes Lyn and Bob to prison camp run by another psychic soldier, played by Kevin Spacey.

"This wasn't an Iraq war film, but a comedy about some of the crazy ideas that went on starting at the end of the Vietnam war, and then carried on," Clooney said.

Also Tuesday, claustrophobics were warned off a real war movie, "Lebanon", by Israeli director Samuel Maoz, shot almost entirely from inside a tank assigned to search a town that had been bombed by Israeli warplanes.

The intensely personal project tells the story of the first Lebanon war, reliving the director's own experience as a young Israeli soldier in 1982.

"I needed distance to do this film as a director and not just as someone who lived through it," Maoz told reporters. "I can't tell this story in a classical cinematic style."

The viewing sight of the gunner is "the filter through which I intended to tell my emotional story," said Maoz, one of several first-time directors vying for the prestigious Golden Lion at this year's Mostra, the 66th.

The sight's crosshairs are always in the frame as the action unfolds, with closeups of terrified civilians, charred bodies, or scenes of everyday life in the town.

Inside, the three young soldiers and their commander play out a tense interpersonal drama.

"I want the audience to be in the tank and to know only what the characters know," he said, adding: "I don't want the audience to understand, but to feel."

To train the actors for the part, Maoz put them "in a certain state of mind. I left them in a small, dark, hot container for hours" to experience claustrophobia.

"Then I banged it with metal pipes to simulate a scary explosion and being attacked."

Meanwhile the second Italian contender for the Golden Lion, "The White Space" by Francesca Comencini, offered a bracing look at the agony of giving birth to a premature baby, then waiting for an outcome -- any outcome -- after the infant spends weeks in an incubator.

In the film based on a novel by Valeria Parrella, Margherita Buy plays Maria, an independent 42-year-old who falls pregnant during a brief fling.

"I surrendered myself completely to this character, reaching a profound sense of her," Buy said.

Source: AFP