On the subject of death and Venice, one of the most stunning works in the international show at the Italian pavilion — one where people linger much longer than normal, speechless and somber, some breaking into tears — is by the French artist Sophie Calle, who is also representing her country in the French pavilion. In the pavilion are two simple rooms, one with a wall text describing how Ms. Calle received the news last year that she had been accepted at the Biennale on the same day she learned that her mother was dying.A detail from the installation “Pas Pu Saisir la Mort” by Sophie Calle. (Librado Romero/The New York Times)In very simple language, she describes her mother’s last months, her fears, her Duchampian choice of epitaph: “I’m getting bored already!” Across from the text is a portrait of her mother that seems to have been painted several decades earlier. And then in the next room is a video, shot with an unmoving camera, of her mother resting peacefully on her deathbed, in the last minutes of her life. Medical attendants check her pulse and breath several times. Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major, one of her favorite pieces, plays in the background and the screen fades to dark.On Wednesday morning, Joachim Pissarro, a former curator of paintings and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and now an art history professor at Hunter College, stood watching the video, stock still. He turned to leave shaking his head and whispering, “Wow.”