Italian producer and director Ginevra Elkann, whose delicate first feature “If Only” opened the 2019 Locarno fest garnering critical praise, is at the Toronto Film Festival with her tonally different follow-up, “I Told You So.”
The movie features a group made up mostly of women who are having a mental meltdown amid an unprecedented January heat wave in Rome. As the heat rises, so do the characters’ obsessions with sex, food, drugs, alcohol, and religion. The eclectic ensemble film, which was conceived by Elkann and her co-writers during the pandemic, features a star studded cast comprising Danny Huston – speaking perfect Italian on screen – as a heroin-addicted Italian-American priest. Then there is Valeria Golino as a past-her-prime porn star named Pupa; Valeria Bruni Tedeschi as a psychopathic mother who happens to be obsessed with Pupa; and Alba Rohrwacher as an alcoholic artist who loses custody of her son to her heartbroken ex played by Riccardo Scamarcio.
The movie features a group made up mostly of women who are having a mental meltdown amid an unprecedented January heat wave in Rome. As the heat rises, so do the characters’ obsessions with sex, food, drugs, alcohol, and religion. The eclectic ensemble film, which was conceived by Elkann and her co-writers during the pandemic, features a star studded cast comprising Danny Huston – speaking perfect Italian on screen – as a heroin-addicted Italian-American priest. Then there is Valeria Golino as a past-her-prime porn star named Pupa; Valeria Bruni Tedeschi as a psychopathic mother who happens to be obsessed with Pupa; and Alba Rohrwacher as an alcoholic artist who loses custody of her son to her heartbroken ex played by Riccardo Scamarcio.
- 9/12/2023
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
An ambitious project, originated from producer Cristiano Bortone’s Bridging the Dragon association, has adapted Alberto Simone’s novel “Un Amore a Roma” into “The Italian Recipe”, a film co-produced by Italy and China, and developed for the Chinese market. Very aptly, the movie will open with its World Premiere Screening, the 24th edition of the Udine Far East Film Festival, following by its release in thousands of Chinese cinemas.
“The Italian Recipe” is screening at Udine Far East Film Festival
Two very different young Chinese citizens are struggling to understand their life path in two very far apart corners of the world. Peng (Liu Xun), in Beijing, is an emerging popstar, completely englobed in the stardom system machine, guided by his agent Pete (Wu Yingzhe) and dependent on social media analytics. He is good but not good enough to surpass some of his peers that seem to have a...
“The Italian Recipe” is screening at Udine Far East Film Festival
Two very different young Chinese citizens are struggling to understand their life path in two very far apart corners of the world. Peng (Liu Xun), in Beijing, is an emerging popstar, completely englobed in the stardom system machine, guided by his agent Pete (Wu Yingzhe) and dependent on social media analytics. He is good but not good enough to surpass some of his peers that seem to have a...
- 4/22/2022
- by Adriana Rosati
- AsianMoviePulse
Some creatures waste away when they’re domesticated, pining for the freedom of the outdoors. That seems to be the case not only for the immensely improbable, leadenly symbolic peacock at the center of Laura Bispuri’s “The Peacock’s Paradise,” but also for Bispuri’s flair for characterization and absorbingly grounded melodrama, which comes tamely indoors after the vibrant, windblown elementalism of “Sworn Virgin” and “Daughter of Mine,” and vanishes.
In the stultifying environment of a small coastal apartment, “The Peacock’s Paradise” follows a family of unbearably self-involved secret-keepers at a reunion that precipitates an entire telenovela’s worth of soapy revelation in the space of a single afternoon. Long-term same-sex affairs are discovered; dormant passions are reawakened; new lovers are betrayed; a history of institutionalization is dredged up; financial petitions are broached; and a clinically mute character speaks, delivering one single, loaded comment that scriptwriters Bispuri and...
In the stultifying environment of a small coastal apartment, “The Peacock’s Paradise” follows a family of unbearably self-involved secret-keepers at a reunion that precipitates an entire telenovela’s worth of soapy revelation in the space of a single afternoon. Long-term same-sex affairs are discovered; dormant passions are reawakened; new lovers are betrayed; a history of institutionalization is dredged up; financial petitions are broached; and a clinically mute character speaks, delivering one single, loaded comment that scriptwriters Bispuri and...
- 10/29/2021
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Leading arthouse outfit The Match Factory is continuing its successful partnership with Laura Bispuri as it boards sales on her latest film, “The Peacock’s Paradise.” The film stars Cannes best actress winner Dominique Sanda and Venice best actress winner Alba Rohrwacher, Bispuri’s long-time collaborator.
The Match Factory previously represented the director’s “Sworn Virgin,” which played in Berlinale Competition in 2015, and “Daughter of Mine,” which was in Berlinale Competition in 2018.
“The Peacock’s Paradise” follows Nena’s family, who reunite in their house by the sea to celebrate her birthday. Everybody is there: her husband Umberto, their children Vito and Caterina, cousin Isabella, their daughter-in-law Adelina, Caterina’s ex Manfredi with his new girlfriend Joana, their granddaughter Alma, and Lucia, the maid, with her daughter Grazia. Finally, there is Paco, Alma’s peacock, who surprisingly falls in love with a little painted dove: an impossible love that will...
The Match Factory previously represented the director’s “Sworn Virgin,” which played in Berlinale Competition in 2015, and “Daughter of Mine,” which was in Berlinale Competition in 2018.
“The Peacock’s Paradise” follows Nena’s family, who reunite in their house by the sea to celebrate her birthday. Everybody is there: her husband Umberto, their children Vito and Caterina, cousin Isabella, their daughter-in-law Adelina, Caterina’s ex Manfredi with his new girlfriend Joana, their granddaughter Alma, and Lucia, the maid, with her daughter Grazia. Finally, there is Paco, Alma’s peacock, who surprisingly falls in love with a little painted dove: an impossible love that will...
- 3/3/2021
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
Marco Bellocchio with Pierfrancesco Favino on The Traitor (Il Traditore): “The whole world is really tied together by the moon.”
Marco Bellocchio’s The Traitor (Il Traditore), co-written with Valia Santella, Ludovica Rampoldi, Francesco Piccolo, and Francesco La Licata, shot by Vladan Radovic is a film of breathtaking beauty with costumes by Daria Calvelli. Pierfrancesco Favino gives a career-defining performance in his portrayal of real-life Mafia boss Tommaso Buscetta.
Judge Falcone (Fausto Russo Alesi) with Tommaso Buscetta (Pierfrancesco Favino)
There is nothing alluring about the lifestyle of his family, when Marco Bellocchio takes it on, because the director never lets us forget the threat of violence, lurking around every corner, in every scene. A count-up warns of assassinations to come and music soothes and heightens, in a way only Bellocchio knows how to combine.
Buscetta, after his extradition from exile in Brazil in the Eighties, and the murderous rampage by rivalling factions of.
Marco Bellocchio’s The Traitor (Il Traditore), co-written with Valia Santella, Ludovica Rampoldi, Francesco Piccolo, and Francesco La Licata, shot by Vladan Radovic is a film of breathtaking beauty with costumes by Daria Calvelli. Pierfrancesco Favino gives a career-defining performance in his portrayal of real-life Mafia boss Tommaso Buscetta.
Judge Falcone (Fausto Russo Alesi) with Tommaso Buscetta (Pierfrancesco Favino)
There is nothing alluring about the lifestyle of his family, when Marco Bellocchio takes it on, because the director never lets us forget the threat of violence, lurking around every corner, in every scene. A count-up warns of assassinations to come and music soothes and heightens, in a way only Bellocchio knows how to combine.
Buscetta, after his extradition from exile in Brazil in the Eighties, and the murderous rampage by rivalling factions of.
- 1/17/2020
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Ginevra Elkann with Alba Rohrwacher at the Museum of Modern Art premiere of Magari (If Only) Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
At the Istituto Luce Cinecittà opening night reception for The Wonders: Alice and Alba Rohrwacher at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, while Julian Schnabel circulated through the crowd and Sony Pictures Classics Michael Barker and Rome Film Festival Artistic Director and Le Conversazioni founder Antonio Monda held court, Ginevra Elkann, the director of Magari (If Only) joined me for a conversation on her debut feature film, co-written with Chiara Barzini.
Riccardo Scamarcio as Carlo with Alba Rohrwacher as Benedetta in Magari (If Only)
Magari, shot by Vladan Radovic, stars Oro De Commarque, Alba Rohrwacher, Céline Sallette, Brett Gelman, and Riccardo Scamarcio with Ettore Giustiniani, Milo Roussel, and Benjamin Baroche. After viewing If Only, I thought of my Babsi, Isabella Rossellini’s Nando, and Thom Browne’s Hector with Andrew Bolton,...
At the Istituto Luce Cinecittà opening night reception for The Wonders: Alice and Alba Rohrwacher at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, while Julian Schnabel circulated through the crowd and Sony Pictures Classics Michael Barker and Rome Film Festival Artistic Director and Le Conversazioni founder Antonio Monda held court, Ginevra Elkann, the director of Magari (If Only) joined me for a conversation on her debut feature film, co-written with Chiara Barzini.
Riccardo Scamarcio as Carlo with Alba Rohrwacher as Benedetta in Magari (If Only)
Magari, shot by Vladan Radovic, stars Oro De Commarque, Alba Rohrwacher, Céline Sallette, Brett Gelman, and Riccardo Scamarcio with Ettore Giustiniani, Milo Roussel, and Benjamin Baroche. After viewing If Only, I thought of my Babsi, Isabella Rossellini’s Nando, and Thom Browne’s Hector with Andrew Bolton,...
- 12/17/2019
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
The Traitor
Italian auteur Marco Bellocchio, whose radical early works were a seminal part of 1960s and 1970s Italian cinema, embarks on his latest feature The Traitor, a biopic of Cosa Nostra member Tommaso Buscetta, the first high ranking official of the mafia organization to break their code of silence. Pierfrancesco Favino stars as Buscetta, joined by Brazilian actress Maria Fernando Candido, Luigi Lo Cascio, Fabrizio Ferracane and Fausto Russo Alesi. Oscar winning composer Nicola Piovani of 1998’s Life is Beautiful is writing the score and Vladan Radovic will serve as Dp. The feature is a four-country co-pro financed through Italy’s Ibc Movie, Kavac Film and Rai Cinema, while France’s Ad Vitam, Arte France Cinema and Canal Plus are also joined by Brazil’s Gullane and Germany’s Match Factory.…...
Italian auteur Marco Bellocchio, whose radical early works were a seminal part of 1960s and 1970s Italian cinema, embarks on his latest feature The Traitor, a biopic of Cosa Nostra member Tommaso Buscetta, the first high ranking official of the mafia organization to break their code of silence. Pierfrancesco Favino stars as Buscetta, joined by Brazilian actress Maria Fernando Candido, Luigi Lo Cascio, Fabrizio Ferracane and Fausto Russo Alesi. Oscar winning composer Nicola Piovani of 1998’s Life is Beautiful is writing the score and Vladan Radovic will serve as Dp. The feature is a four-country co-pro financed through Italy’s Ibc Movie, Kavac Film and Rai Cinema, while France’s Ad Vitam, Arte France Cinema and Canal Plus are also joined by Brazil’s Gullane and Germany’s Match Factory.…...
- 1/7/2019
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Brazilian actress and model Maria Fernanda Candido is to play the female lead in veteran Italian auteur Marco Bellocchio’s “The Traitor,” a biopic of Tommaso Buscetta, the first high-ranking member of Cosa Nostra to break the Sicilian Mafia’s oath of silence.
Candido, who most recently starred in Rede Globo’s popular prime-time soap “Edge of Desire,” will play Buscetta’s third wife, Maria Cristina de Almeida Guimaraes, the daughter of an upper-crust Brazilian lawyer. She played an important part in her husband’s decision in 1984 to start cooperating with Italian and, later, American prosecutors.
She is believed to have been crucial in prompting Buscetta to turn against the Corleonesi faction in the first major “betrayal” within Cosa Nostra’s high-ranks. Buscetta’s testimony about heroin smuggling in the ”pizza connection” case in the mid-1980s allowed him to obtain U.S. citizenship and a place in the witness protection program.
Candido, who most recently starred in Rede Globo’s popular prime-time soap “Edge of Desire,” will play Buscetta’s third wife, Maria Cristina de Almeida Guimaraes, the daughter of an upper-crust Brazilian lawyer. She played an important part in her husband’s decision in 1984 to start cooperating with Italian and, later, American prosecutors.
She is believed to have been crucial in prompting Buscetta to turn against the Corleonesi faction in the first major “betrayal” within Cosa Nostra’s high-ranks. Buscetta’s testimony about heroin smuggling in the ”pizza connection” case in the mid-1980s allowed him to obtain U.S. citizenship and a place in the witness protection program.
- 9/17/2018
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
In the Italian provinces, the Virgin Mary appears to a directionless woman who tries to reject her commands in Gianni Zanasi’s unremarkable “Lucia’s Grace.” Perhaps it’s cynical to suggest, but the film’s Europa Cinema Label prize in Directors’ Fortnight says more about the movie’s expected chances at the box office, where its sunny and unchallenging cuteness will translate to robust sales, rather than any intrinsic cinematic merits. Lazily constructed and stocked with familiar caricatures, “Lucia’s Grace” can generously be called a pleasant comic bauble whose extremely mild ecological message will make multiplex audiences feel good without inspiring them to action.
It’s not easy for single mom Lucia (Alba Rohrwacher) to find regular employment as a surveyor, maybe because she’s a little too nervy and a little too honest. Brash local businessman Paolo (Giuseppe Battiston) hires her and assistant Fabio (Daniele De Angelis...
It’s not easy for single mom Lucia (Alba Rohrwacher) to find regular employment as a surveyor, maybe because she’s a little too nervy and a little too honest. Brash local businessman Paolo (Giuseppe Battiston) hires her and assistant Fabio (Daniele De Angelis...
- 5/22/2018
- by Jay Weissberg
- Variety Film + TV
Laura Bispuri’s follow-up to her captivating transgender-themed debut Sworn Virgin is a wrenching, heartfelt drama with an unfussy social commentary that again seeks a new definition of womanhood. Daughter of Mine, led by a trio of female actors–Valeria Golino and Alba Rorwacher, and an equally headstrong first-timer, Sara Casu–contemplates the nature of motherhood in a variety of forms: adoption and the absence of a birth mother, the lack of father figures, and even the effect of an exclusively female family unit. Why is society obsessed with balance in nuclear families about gender–mother and father–rather than in more complex sensibilities?
In a sizzling summer on the Italian island of Sardinia, nine-year-old Vittoria (Casu) is starting to question her place in the world. Her flame-red hair marks her out, she’s bullied at school, and can’t seem to articulate herself to her mother Tina (Golino), who,...
In a sizzling summer on the Italian island of Sardinia, nine-year-old Vittoria (Casu) is starting to question her place in the world. Her flame-red hair marks her out, she’s bullied at school, and can’t seem to articulate herself to her mother Tina (Golino), who,...
- 2/19/2018
- by Ed Frankl
- The Film Stage
There’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment towards the end of Laura Bispuri’s raw and arresting “Daughter of Mine” when a distraught Sardinian mother named Tina (“Hot Shots! Part Deux” star Valeria Golino) desperately tries to flag down a sunbathing teenager. “Have you seen a little girl with red hair?” she asks in a panic, but the stranger doesn’t speak a word of Italian — she’s just a tourist in a bikini. Tina drives off, frustrated and frantic, her tires kicking up the ancient Mediterranean dirt.
It’s the first and only time in this tempestuous drama that the world outside of the island is anything more than an abstract idea, a cloud that might not come your way, a mild itch that doesn’t asked to be scratched. Bispuri presents Sardinia as a rugged and primordial place where the houses are built out of cinder blocks and the...
It’s the first and only time in this tempestuous drama that the world outside of the island is anything more than an abstract idea, a cloud that might not come your way, a mild itch that doesn’t asked to be scratched. Bispuri presents Sardinia as a rugged and primordial place where the houses are built out of cinder blocks and the...
- 2/19/2018
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Out April 13, 2017 in Italian theatres, Francesco Amato’s comedy sees the Neapolitan actor playing the role of a rigid psychoanalyst who winds up in trouble
by Camillo De Marco from Cineuropa.org
Toni Servillo in “Let Yourself Go!”
Toni Servillo in a comic role? Yes it is possible, and happens in “Let Yourself Go”/ “Lasciati andare” by Francesco Amato (“Cosimo and Nicole”), in theatres as of today with 01 Distribution. With a beard and glasses à la Sigmund Freud, Servillo plays a psychoanalyst who lives and works in the Roman ghetto, a beautiful neighbourhood in the historic city centre which is rarely used in films. Separated from his wife Giovanna (played by a Carla Signoris on top form) — but with a very thin wall separating their respective bedrooms — Dr. Elia Venezia lives a methodical and rather self-centered existence, livened up only by the weirdness of some of his clients, until one...
by Camillo De Marco from Cineuropa.org
Toni Servillo in “Let Yourself Go!”
Toni Servillo in a comic role? Yes it is possible, and happens in “Let Yourself Go”/ “Lasciati andare” by Francesco Amato (“Cosimo and Nicole”), in theatres as of today with 01 Distribution. With a beard and glasses à la Sigmund Freud, Servillo plays a psychoanalyst who lives and works in the Roman ghetto, a beautiful neighbourhood in the historic city centre which is rarely used in films. Separated from his wife Giovanna (played by a Carla Signoris on top form) — but with a very thin wall separating their respective bedrooms — Dr. Elia Venezia lives a methodical and rather self-centered existence, livened up only by the weirdness of some of his clients, until one...
- 4/20/2017
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Laura Bispuri’s moving, fiery Sworn Virgin comes in a recent tradition of cinematic meditations on gender as a form of identity like Tomboy and All About My Mother, but her film is, above all, about the privilege of access. For Mark (a revelatory Alba Rohrwacher), changing his gender identity was about personal freedom, but it’s not about self-expression or empowerment as much as a reflection of Mark’s need to conform to societal expectations in order to be recognized as a human being with agency.
As Sworn Virgin begins, Mark leaves his life-long Albanian village of Ragam for Rome, Italy, to find Lila (Flonja Kodheli), his long-estranged sister. More than a decade since their last meeting, Mark and Lila’s friendship is speckled with lingering bitterness and a mutual disappointment. Each of these characters had the same goal of escaping their fate, but their paths diverged long ago.
As Sworn Virgin begins, Mark leaves his life-long Albanian village of Ragam for Rome, Italy, to find Lila (Flonja Kodheli), his long-estranged sister. More than a decade since their last meeting, Mark and Lila’s friendship is speckled with lingering bitterness and a mutual disappointment. Each of these characters had the same goal of escaping their fate, but their paths diverged long ago.
- 4/25/2016
- by Michael Snydel
- The Film Stage
The world would be a much better place if there were more motion pictures as human, humane and nuanced as the debut feature from filmmaker Laura Bispuri.
Entitled Sworn Virgin, Bispuri’s film (based on a novel from Elvira Dones and from a script penned by Bispuri and Francesca Manieri) takes a look at a long standing Albanian tradition that is grotesque and sexist, yet never truly judges it as such. To much of the modern world, where transgender issues are admittedly being handled in a different yet just as disgusting and grotesque manner, the “sworn virgin” concept is absolutely foreign. A woman may proclaim herself as a man without issue if she in turn takes a chastity vow, ostensibly taking sexual chastity over any form of punishment faced as per the Kanun, an Albanian code of social norms.
Not a documentary, Bispuri’s picture does a superb job in...
Entitled Sworn Virgin, Bispuri’s film (based on a novel from Elvira Dones and from a script penned by Bispuri and Francesca Manieri) takes a look at a long standing Albanian tradition that is grotesque and sexist, yet never truly judges it as such. To much of the modern world, where transgender issues are admittedly being handled in a different yet just as disgusting and grotesque manner, the “sworn virgin” concept is absolutely foreign. A woman may proclaim herself as a man without issue if she in turn takes a chastity vow, ostensibly taking sexual chastity over any form of punishment faced as per the Kanun, an Albanian code of social norms.
Not a documentary, Bispuri’s picture does a superb job in...
- 4/22/2016
- by Joshua Brunsting
- CriterionCast
In places where opportunities and hope are harder to obtain than a loaded gun, the glorification of a seemingly effortless and powerful criminal lifestyle is engraved deeply into the youth’s psyche like a poisonous spell. Irremediably, it becomes their most tangible aspiration. Kids there do not dream of becoming doctors, lawyers or teachers, but drug dealers, murderers, or gangsters who walk through life intoxicated by the fear of others disguised as respect. It’s just the same in a rough American neighborhood, a Mexican border town, a war torn African capital, or an isolated village in the Italian countryside.
Is in this last setting that director Francesco Munzi unfolds “Black Souls” (Anime Nere), an understated mafia tale that is brutally unflinching and sobering when distilling the built-in conventions of the genre and reapplying them in a powerfully stark manner. First, Munzi takes us on a short trip to the high-stakes world of international drug trafficking and the money laundering schemes that fueled it. Brothers Luigi (Marco Leonardi) and Rocco (Peppino Mazzotta) manage the operation as a family business each with a distinct approach to getting things done. Luigi is the threatening brute that’s willing to get his hands dirty, while Rocco prefers to be as diplomatic as the drug underworld allows. But just as we are prompted to believe the film will follow on the footsteps of countless predecessors, the perspective shifts to a much more intimate, almost pastoral, look at the unbreakable ties and honor-driven feuds between opposite families within the same criminal microcosm: the Calabrian hills in southern Italy.
Making a humble living from farming and raising cattle, Luciano (Fabrizio Ferracane), the eldest sibling in the dynasty, disapproves of his younger brothers lifestyle, which he left behind years ago. But in spite of his father’s evident disdain for his siblings’ violent ways, Luciano’s son Leo (Giuseppe Fumo), a teenage boy full of senseless bravado and thirst for retribution, admires his uncle Luigi ‘s status as an authority figure within the community. Projecting fearlessness and absolute dispassion to be part of the gang, Leo grows detached from his father and begins partaking in the increasingly dangerous disputes with their adversaries. With Luigi back in town, old grudges resurfacing, and Leo’s reckless ability to start trouble, tragedy permanently lurks over the entire clan.
This perpetual feeling of an imminent disaster approaching is what makes the film a restrained and potent statement. Intelligently, the filmmaker chooses unnerving tension over gruesome imagery. Of course, violence is unavoidable in a story like this, but those scenes are much more effective because of their importance in the layered emotional landscape presented. Pride is a boundless catalyst for hatred, and that’s what motivates the individuals here to die in the name of their lineage. Leo loses respect for his father because the promise of easy cash and overall badassery is exponentially more enticing than arduously working the land. Luciano is a coward in his son’s eyes for wanting to live a peaceful life, but the man can hardly experience that as he is caught up in between his brothers’ unfinished business and preventing Leo from following their path. It’s all the subtext that is embedded in every interaction that keeps “Black Souls” from becoming predictable, and instead asks us to ponder on the complex set of characters on screen.
Hauntingly somber, but all the more enthralling because of it, Vladan Radovic’s cinematography inconspicuously contributes to Munzi’s exploration of human darkness. A prime example of its gloomy appeal is a funeral sequence that centers both on a mother grieving her son, and the inevitably brutal consequences of the event. However, although a viscerally serious tone permeates the film, Munzi and Radovic were clever enough to capture beautiful moments of rural life that give “Black Souls” a timeless atmosphere: Luigi singing a traditional tune for the sheer joy of singing or Luciano walking among the ruins of an ancient church quietly denoting his religious devotion. Such glimpses of vulnerability create a mob film that is more concerned with the subtleties beneath the gunshots.
Indispensable for an ensemble piece like “Black Souls,” the entire cast, even those in minimal roles, is made up of a group of actors capable of refraining from ostentatious performances and focusing on the characters’ essential, nuanced qualities. Their conflicts are so profoundly intertwined that a weak link would have been problematic. Still, among these talented group, Fabrizio Ferracane as Luciano gives the most quietly compelling performance as a father, a brother, and a son who can’t recognize himself anymore or fit in among those around him. Ultimately, Ferracane steals the film in the riveting and shocking conclusion.
“Black Souls” delivers a gutsy twist on the tiresome works that showcase villains as stars and their feats as heroic. Munzi offers authenticity and poignancy ignoring our expectations and portraying his characters as deeply misguided people for whom loyalty is a golden asset and death is a common outcome. His film is about unspoken rules and unforgivable transgressions that might appear irrational to the outsider, but unquestionable to those involved.
"Black Souls" is now playing in NYC and opens in Los Angeles on April 24th.
Director Francesco Munzi will be doing a Skype Q&A from Rome, Italy on Saturday 4/18 at both the Angelika Film Center in NYC (after the 7:30 pm show) & at the Angelika Film Center in Fairfax, Va (after the 8pm show).
For all the play dates and theaters across the U.S. visit Here...
Is in this last setting that director Francesco Munzi unfolds “Black Souls” (Anime Nere), an understated mafia tale that is brutally unflinching and sobering when distilling the built-in conventions of the genre and reapplying them in a powerfully stark manner. First, Munzi takes us on a short trip to the high-stakes world of international drug trafficking and the money laundering schemes that fueled it. Brothers Luigi (Marco Leonardi) and Rocco (Peppino Mazzotta) manage the operation as a family business each with a distinct approach to getting things done. Luigi is the threatening brute that’s willing to get his hands dirty, while Rocco prefers to be as diplomatic as the drug underworld allows. But just as we are prompted to believe the film will follow on the footsteps of countless predecessors, the perspective shifts to a much more intimate, almost pastoral, look at the unbreakable ties and honor-driven feuds between opposite families within the same criminal microcosm: the Calabrian hills in southern Italy.
Making a humble living from farming and raising cattle, Luciano (Fabrizio Ferracane), the eldest sibling in the dynasty, disapproves of his younger brothers lifestyle, which he left behind years ago. But in spite of his father’s evident disdain for his siblings’ violent ways, Luciano’s son Leo (Giuseppe Fumo), a teenage boy full of senseless bravado and thirst for retribution, admires his uncle Luigi ‘s status as an authority figure within the community. Projecting fearlessness and absolute dispassion to be part of the gang, Leo grows detached from his father and begins partaking in the increasingly dangerous disputes with their adversaries. With Luigi back in town, old grudges resurfacing, and Leo’s reckless ability to start trouble, tragedy permanently lurks over the entire clan.
This perpetual feeling of an imminent disaster approaching is what makes the film a restrained and potent statement. Intelligently, the filmmaker chooses unnerving tension over gruesome imagery. Of course, violence is unavoidable in a story like this, but those scenes are much more effective because of their importance in the layered emotional landscape presented. Pride is a boundless catalyst for hatred, and that’s what motivates the individuals here to die in the name of their lineage. Leo loses respect for his father because the promise of easy cash and overall badassery is exponentially more enticing than arduously working the land. Luciano is a coward in his son’s eyes for wanting to live a peaceful life, but the man can hardly experience that as he is caught up in between his brothers’ unfinished business and preventing Leo from following their path. It’s all the subtext that is embedded in every interaction that keeps “Black Souls” from becoming predictable, and instead asks us to ponder on the complex set of characters on screen.
Hauntingly somber, but all the more enthralling because of it, Vladan Radovic’s cinematography inconspicuously contributes to Munzi’s exploration of human darkness. A prime example of its gloomy appeal is a funeral sequence that centers both on a mother grieving her son, and the inevitably brutal consequences of the event. However, although a viscerally serious tone permeates the film, Munzi and Radovic were clever enough to capture beautiful moments of rural life that give “Black Souls” a timeless atmosphere: Luigi singing a traditional tune for the sheer joy of singing or Luciano walking among the ruins of an ancient church quietly denoting his religious devotion. Such glimpses of vulnerability create a mob film that is more concerned with the subtleties beneath the gunshots.
Indispensable for an ensemble piece like “Black Souls,” the entire cast, even those in minimal roles, is made up of a group of actors capable of refraining from ostentatious performances and focusing on the characters’ essential, nuanced qualities. Their conflicts are so profoundly intertwined that a weak link would have been problematic. Still, among these talented group, Fabrizio Ferracane as Luciano gives the most quietly compelling performance as a father, a brother, and a son who can’t recognize himself anymore or fit in among those around him. Ultimately, Ferracane steals the film in the riveting and shocking conclusion.
“Black Souls” delivers a gutsy twist on the tiresome works that showcase villains as stars and their feats as heroic. Munzi offers authenticity and poignancy ignoring our expectations and portraying his characters as deeply misguided people for whom loyalty is a golden asset and death is a common outcome. His film is about unspoken rules and unforgivable transgressions that might appear irrational to the outsider, but unquestionable to those involved.
"Black Souls" is now playing in NYC and opens in Los Angeles on April 24th.
Director Francesco Munzi will be doing a Skype Q&A from Rome, Italy on Saturday 4/18 at both the Angelika Film Center in NYC (after the 7:30 pm show) & at the Angelika Film Center in Fairfax, Va (after the 8pm show).
For all the play dates and theaters across the U.S. visit Here...
- 4/15/2015
- by Carlos Aguilar
- Sydney's Buzz
Writer-director Ruth Borgobello is casting her debut feature, a cross-cultural romantic drama set in northern Italy.
Remarkably, The Space Between will be the first official co-production between Italy and Australia since the two countries signed a treaty in 1996.
.We.ve worked really hard to develop this relationship and have created a very strong network here that we hope to carry into further projects,. the Melbourne-based Borgobello told If via email from Italy, where she is scouting locations.
Flavio Parenti (To Rome with Love, I am Love ) will play the lead, Marco, a 35-year-old who has a dispiriting job at a factory in Udine despite his skill as a chef, amid the deepening economic crisis in Italy.
Eschewing real love, he passes his time in an empty relationship. After his best friend Claudio is killed in a car accident, he tries to keep Claudio.s struggling bookshop business alive. Then he encounters Olivia,...
Remarkably, The Space Between will be the first official co-production between Italy and Australia since the two countries signed a treaty in 1996.
.We.ve worked really hard to develop this relationship and have created a very strong network here that we hope to carry into further projects,. the Melbourne-based Borgobello told If via email from Italy, where she is scouting locations.
Flavio Parenti (To Rome with Love, I am Love ) will play the lead, Marco, a 35-year-old who has a dispiriting job at a factory in Udine despite his skill as a chef, amid the deepening economic crisis in Italy.
Eschewing real love, he passes his time in an empty relationship. After his best friend Claudio is killed in a car accident, he tries to keep Claudio.s struggling bookshop business alive. Then he encounters Olivia,...
- 10/22/2014
- by Don Groves
- IF.com.au
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