User Reviews

The obvious sadness flows freely and discretely in Pupi Avati's movies:with the fluidity of a bitter smile.And moreover,this is not very pretentious stuff either.Yes,the lightness in execution is first-hand. Whence,the atrocious sadness.I guess Pupi Avati is not afraid of simply approximating.This is certainly part of his no nonsense approach.As the other Avati films, Festa … is incredibly cruel.The more shockingly brutal are the facts narrated by Avati,the more luminous and light gets his drawing. Realism that is very simple,very discreet also;very well-thought.Sane expressive abilities.

There are a couple of very fine lines in this movie that I would like to point out (e.g.,the two orphans call out their adoptive mother:"Mother!";she answers:"Who goes there?";and the two orphans answer:" The orphans!").The quality of the script and of the dialogs is worthy of admiration.Graduation Party is a thrilling film.And ultimately unpredictable.I mean,beyond the standard poking fun at the disappointments that humans provide. Avati's most evident quality,his clean intelligence,conjoined with a masterful ability of artistic expression,is also one of the most rarely met,not only in cinema.

Festa … is a movie about the utter hideousness of the life.A man,whose simplicity is somehow Flaubertian,sees everything crumbling around him,going under;himself and his life.Yet,Avati has the moral and intellectual courage to poke fun at this man's stupidity.The main character is this baker that has a retarded son and an old father.His son,the retarded young man,is an ugly mirroring of the father .The baker adores his son;the son partly loves him,and partly despises him.These are things that,in life ,mostly pass unnoticed,whether willfully or not.In Avati's film,they are given their importance.The son likes the daughter of the woman that the baker loves;at first,he encourages his son to court the city girl.And then,realizing the ineptitude,he tells his son:"I do not think she likes you".A thing important, as we see that the baker is telling this thing to himself.He is asked to organize a graduation party;and it does not get along very well.

There are excellent sketches of the vacuity and ugliness of the rich and of the "successful",yet one feels the Substantiality and depth and validity of this satire,and that nothing is pushed or faked to get a populist turn.

Avati cruelly incises every appearance.He opens up, impassibly,all abscesses.He makes the parade of shamelessness go ahead;and also go beyond.Avati lances his characters,and he finds inside nothing but a handful of ashes.Mostly,cold ashes.

It is likely that Avati's film draws on the essential failure,the appearance,the delusions,the loneliness, the vacuity.It also implies that these are amusing,and,despite the amusing quirk,frightful. Avati forbids himself any stupidity,any stolidity,any sentimentalism.His detachment has for fruit this uniquely intelligent and contemplative cinema.This purposeful and purified,purged art draws on an equable,rapid intelligence.I will resort a little to some chronology,and add that he was 47 years old in '85,when Festa … was made.

Festa's themes are the most universal ones:the cruelty,the sexuality,the love,the appearance,the hidden savageness,the heart,the erring,the stupidity.And I have not touched yet what is the most significant:the fact that in his movie Avati seizes ,together with the cruelty and the stupidity,the life's aspect:the incongruities,the asymmetries.

CDP's merits,as an actor,cannot be overestimated.It is needless,I hope,to say that his intensity does not come from his prominent eyes' look.What a flawless precision,what an accuracy has his play!And what a gamy actor,how does he talk to the other characters,when he speaks about his son's ingenuity, when he tells him that the feasted graduate girl does not like him,or when he talks to his sleepy son, or to his father,or to the gamines ("Has my son said something stupid again?"),etc..CDP is matchless. In Festa … one can appreciate his intensity,and his rank.His huge merits.An astounding variety is showcased in one of the most minimalist acting styles.His character is simultaneously the same and completely different when he speaks to the other characters:his son,his revered father,his ex-wife's couple of adoptive sons,the people on the beach,the graduate girl,the professor,and the admired hirer that kissed his chin close to his mouth ten years ago,when Italy entered the war.

Carlo Delle Piane raises his character to the rank of the greatest objective creations in cinema.The baker (a confectioner who owns a pastry shop) is a character molded in the very purest artistic eternity ,and I am not exaggerating his value.Carlo Delle Piane brings us back to a simple pleasure and teaches us a lesson that needs to be sometimes taught:the pleasure of watching a great actor in a role that suits him.