Time Out’s film editor, Mark Smith, is on assignment at the Venice Film Festival. He will be writing about the experience for the Time Out blog. Check back for regular updates, film news and first reviews.

A cloud of oestrogen hung like smog over the Lido today as Brad Pitt and George Clooney arrived to promote Burn After Reading, the latest from the genre-resistant Coen Brothers.

Talk at the press conference, where George obligingly signed a copy of Time Out Dubai - albeit with the initials ‘GG’ - instantly turned to the fact that the Jolie-Pitt brood had swelled its ranks by 50 per cent since the last time Brad was in town.

‘The twins are fine,’ was as much as Pitt was prepared to give away at first, although he later joked that he’s willing to donate a couple of kids to Clooney if the 47 year-old bachelor doesn’t settle down soon.

‘Brad and I are getting married today, as it happens,’ replied Clooney. A fine romance indeed.

As for the small matter of the film, it’s a kaleidoscopic identity farce in a similar vein to The Big Lebowski. John Malcovich plays an alcoholic CIA agent who, to the arctic derision of his cheating British wife (Tilda Swinton, dressed like Thatcher circa 86) responds to constructive dismissal by setting about his memoirs.

When a disc containing the embryonic tome washes up in the ladies’ changing room of a Hardbodys gym, a pair of inept, self-obsessed junior managers (Pitt and the sublimely adaptable Frances McDormand) attempt to turn the find to their advantage, first via attempted blackmail, then by shopping it around America’s foes.

The Coens revealed at the press conference that Pitt and Clooney’s characters were written for the actors, an admission which left the latter reeling in mock affront. ‘I believe they refer to the three films I’ve done with them as “The Idiot Trilogy”‘.

It’s true that, like the comparatively dire Get Smart early this year, this is an intelligence flick peopled almost entirely with numbskulls. ‘Hey, that’s a sensitive subject,’ quipped Joel Coen, ‘there’s nothing wrong with being an idiot. Besides, idiots are a big demographic.’