QUOTE(Associated Press)
'Brokeback Mountain' Wins Top Venice Award
Sep 10, 3:24 PM (ET)
By DOMENICO STINELLIS
VENICE, Italy (AP) - Ang Lee's tale of the homosexual love between two cowboys set in the conservative West of the 1960s won the Venice Film Festival's top award Saturday.
"Brokeback Mountain," starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, topped 19 other competitors, including favorite "Good Night, and Good Luck," George Clooney's black-and-white movie set in the McCarthy era of the early 1950s.
Receiving the Golden Lion award, Lee described his movie as a "great American love story" that is "unique and so universal."
"I'm so glad it's prevailed here and was received so warmly here," he said.
Based on a novella by "The Shipping News" author E. Annie Proulx, the movie has sweeping vistas, lonesome men, bucking broncos and smoldering campfires. It also has sex scenes between two men whose lives are changed, disturbed and entwined after being hired to tend sheep for a summer in Wyoming.
Lee's other films include "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,""Hulk,""The Ice Storm" and "Sense and Sensibility."
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