Reviews

Eleven years after "Una storia semplice" Emidio Greco directs another filmization of a book by Leonardo Sciascia. In the life Don Giuseppe Vella, translator-forger of an old Arabic document that could mark the end of privileges of the sicilian aristocracy, Sciascia wanted to outline the figure of an opportunist with a personal moral code that pushed him to accelerate the dissolution of a regime of abuse and conservation of the statu quo the wind of change coming from pre-revolutionary France had started already. Emidio Greco maintains faithful to the spirit and the letter of the book and he releases a precise and formally sober film, without useless directorial frills, slowly paced and inspired from an untrendy idea of cinema. It could be tedious for somebody, and a little bit old-fashioned, but for patient viewers the 138 minutes of the film are a careful description of a world in decline which is easy to recall more contemporary issues. Silvio Orlando, one of the best Italian actors of its generation, delivers a good performance as well as Tommaso Ragno in the role of Francesco Paolo Di Blasi. The soundtrack by veteran composer Luis Bacalov also deserves to be praised.

"The Others" can be considered the festival of quotations. There wouldn't even be the need to mention "The Sixth Sense", which Amenábar said he has seen when he had already achieved the script. From the plot reminding "The Haunting" by Robert Wise to the Victorian atmosphere which sends back to "The Innocents", the film Jack Clayton took from Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw" in 1961; from the ambiguous mix of reality and reverie which prevents during large part of the film to distinguish the world of the living ones from the world of the dead ones, like in "The Other" by Robert Mulligan, recalled even in the title and that a few have noted, to the soundtrack, composed by Amenábar himself, full of echoes of the works included in "The Shining" (the "Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta "of Béla Bartók and the quartet for strings by Krystof Penderecki), this film assume the shape of a glamourous, well crafted collection of quotations that a young unquestionably skilled director dedicated to (or stole from, it depends on your point of view) his favorite authors. Therefore we are dealing with the work of a director who probably doesn't have anything to say, but he says it very well. In that being very modern.

Being a huge fan of Takeshi Kitano since his very first works I found "Dolls" a great disappointment. This film intertwines three stories inspired by Bunraku, traditional japanese marionette's theatre. It should be an ode to eternal love and its overwhelming importance over success in life but it fails because of Kitano's "poetic" narrative style. "Dolls" finally provides only a slight amount of supposed to be beautiful images, stunning colors, cheap symbolisms and nothing more. We are in Japan so there are also cherry blossoms, almonds in flower and snowy mountains, like in the most banal segments of Akira Kurosawa's "Dreams". It seems that too many awards in western film festivals deprived Kitano of his dry, cruel humour and gave him in change the sloppy, sugary look at life we saw in "Brother" already. Unlike "Silence at the sea" and "Hana-Bi", "Dolls" lacks that laconic and unsentimental way of depicting feelings which was one of Kitano' trademarks. Acclaimed as one the most original authors of the earliest nineties, after receiving the "Leone d'oro" for "Hana-Bi" Kitano started releasing films which seem unintentional spoofs of his previous works; he's maybe becoming that kind of director who is not satisfied with making films: he wants to deliver some true "art". Arty must be the most appropriate word for this misfire. Boring is the second most appropriate. I gave it 5/10 only because I don't want to inflict a too low rate on a such a great director's film.

This film is a partially successful attempt to describe the juvenile bewilderment and the desperation of the adults in a country in transition to the economy of free market and the West. Its greatest asset is the dryness of the style, which in the second part of the film turns into its major flaw: repetitiveness of a monotonous mood; as someone has noticed before there isn't any shot too much, but maybe there is some less than necessary: in the long run the effort of being essential leaves the suspicion that the unusually short running time, only 68', is due to a certain lack of invention and what previously was slick then becomes flat and dull. In any case the script is sincere and brave enough to show that Slovenia is not such a "posh" country as someone could believe, not being immune from nationalism and ethnic chauvinism that often give vent to the economic and social troubles. A warning for the viewers: this is one of those films indulging in their own gloom so if you have suicidal tendencies just avoid seeing it. It could be the last thing you do! The director Jan Cvitkovic has received the prize for the best debut film at the Venice film Festival; during the closing ceremony he went on the stage to receive the prize wearing T-shirt with the symbol of communism on. Finally I would say that "Kruh in mleko" is a flawed but interesting film of a director whose next releases are gonna deserve our attention.

With "Dancer in the Dark" Lars von Trier confirms his tendency to cheat the audience by involving it in a cruel game. In this case the game consists in doing everything to make the viewer identify him/herself in Selma's character; so He shows her as the most harmless, excessively generous and implausibly naïve person in the world: a sort of a child-woman who hides her money in a cookies-box, someone which is impossible not to have sympathy for. Then He subjects Selma to a contrived series of physical and psychological tortures which, because of the identification process between character and viewer, is inflicted to the audience too. This way the director achieves his only aim: have the viewers crying after taking them on the verge of a nervous breakdown. One of the negative notes of this movie is the balance of characters: after "Breaking the Waves" Lars von Trier has been accused of misogyny and knowing that also The Dancer could be liable of the same remark, because of the very similar childish, tormented female main character, He surrounded Selma with a series of male characters who are almost all nasty and negative and He interspersed the script, especially toward the finale, with a lot of references to sorority and female bonding. For these reasons I invite IMDb commentators who claimed this film as a masterpiece to reconsider their judgment and think about it with more detachment: in fact the director's seemingly succeeded attempt was to talk only to viewer's heart cutting out the brain. Finally two requests: don't take The Dancer as film against death penalty and the American way of life because those issues here are merely functional to the heroine's martyrdom; but above all don't ever compare Lars von Trier to C.T. Dreyer: They don't have anything in common but the fact that They're both Danes and The Dancer resembles more to Arthur Hiller's "Love Story" than to "The Passion of Joan of Arc". I give it 6/10 just for its technical merits and the indubitable effectiveness.

This short movie is about a tiny theater for children placed in Villa Borghese, one of the most beautiful places in Rome. The plot is not so clever, trying quite unsuccessfully to make fun of the little viewers of this theater, however the film is interesting because it is one of the earliest Italian color films and it shows a theater existing since the '30s, beloved by Roman cinema buffs and recently nominated "cultural heritage" by Roman municipality. It's interesting that a similar idea was more radically developed in Herz Frank's most famous work: "Par desmit minutem vecaks" (1978), known internationally as "Ten Minutes Older". Anyway Francesco Maselli has been a great director of short movies; I suggest you "Un fatto di cronaca", "Bambini" and "Adolescenza". Note: in the short movie's opening credits, the title is "I bambini al cinema".