Film Review: Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty

So far, anyone and everyone who has reviewed this The Great Beauty, or La Grande Bellezza in its native Italian tongue, has one descriptive in common - and that descriptive is highlighted by everyone's favourite F-word.  And by everyone's favourite F-word, I of course mean Felliniesque.  From the first deliciously giddy moments to the grand morality tale finale, Paolo Sorrentino's latest film is possibly more akin to a Fellini film than any film since Fellini himself was making movies.  Hell, this film is so Felliniesque, it may be even more like a Fellini film than many of Fellini's own films.  Okay, perhaps that is just hyperbole, but seriously, this film is quite the spectacle to behold, and the blatant influence of Sorrentino's late great countryman, has to be the major reason why.  But none of this obvious influence, or over-use of that aforementioned F-word, should take away from the post-modern sensibilities and stunning film work brought forth by this post-realist, post-Fellini auteur.

Tackling many of the same concerns that Fellini (there he is again) played with in his masterful La Dolce Vita, Sorrentino takes a look at Jep Gambardella, an aging writer, and popular partier-cum-Roman pseudo-celebrity, upon his 65th birthday, as he tries to figure out what has happened to, and what will now happen to his life.  The juicy, contemplative role of Jep, Sorrentino's modern channeling of Marcello Mastroianni's Marcello Rubini in (here he is again) Fellini's La Dolce Vita, is played with plenty of aplomb by 54 year old actor Toni Servillo, most notably seen in Matteo Garrone's brilliant Gomorrah, and Sorrentino's own Il Divo. His performance is a centerpiece looking all around him at the titular great beauty, or grande bellezza, that is Roma, the Eternal City.  Acting, much in the way Mastroianni did in La Dolce Vita, as a visual narrator of the sometimes decadent, sometimes mournful world of Roman society, Servillo's Jep is the proverbial lost soul in search of meaning in an otherwise unfulfilled life of constant parties and drink and women.  A one time promising novelist, now relegated to writing cheap articles on Roman high society and its esoteric art world, Jep looks back on a life possibly wasted, longing for true companionship while simultaneously running from it, and yearning for his lost first love. It is as stunning a performance as the film itself is a stunning work of art.

Sorrentino's film, as Felliniesque as it wants to be (I keep going back to that F-word, don't I?), is essentially the story of a human tragedy, but not the kind usually associated with the genre of tragedy.  For all intents and purposes, Jep is a successful person, a celebrated member of Rome's upper crust society, but inside he is lost and lonely and unsure of his true place in the world.  He is part of a faux society, trapped inside a spiraling circle that leads deeper and deeper into despair and hopelessness, with no idea of how to escape this outwardly happy, inwardly depressing lifestyle.  Servillo gives this multifaceted character the most bravura of performances (his chutzpah is off the so-called charts), and this performance is integral in making the film work, but it is Sorrentino giving his all as director, that lifts this tragedy to near epic proportions.  With a swirling camera that takes in the great tragic beauty that is his Eternal City, a camera-eye that wraps itself up down around and through the heart of Rome's society, Sorrentino engulfs us with a visually Felliniesque (yep, that word again) brouhaha, showcasing both the city itself and Servillo's wayward Jep, and it all comes out so beautifully, it almost hurts.  Easily one of the best films of the year (and the probable winner of the Best Foreign Language Oscar), F-word laced or not, this old school cinephile was quite surprised as to not have the film end with a shot of Servillo turning away from the camera and walking down the beach.  La Dolce Vita, indeed.

This review can also be read over at my main blog, All Things Kevyn.

Film Review: We Have A Pope

In an acerbic tone reminiscent of Buñuel at his satiric height, Nanni Moretti's lovingly snide take on the Catholic Church and its faults and foibles is as subtly nuanced and as sweetly sentimentalized as it is sharp-tongued and laceratingly droll.  With a scope that is narrowed from the all out assault on organized religion that permeates many of Italian cinema's greatest works, to a softly witty tale of one man whose faith has made him the leader of the church but whose insecurity has made him unable to lead.  In other terms, Moretti gives the church its well-deserved jabs, but also shows the all-too human side of papal life, and how such immeasurable faith and perceived absolute power can weigh on a man's very soul.

Playing out as part comedy and part drama, We Have A Pope, starts out as the former pope dies and the conclave to elect a new chief pontiff gets underway.  After much self-deliberation (and some pretty hilarious voice-over inner thought insights) a quiet cardinal by the name of Melville is elected - much to his ever-increasing chagrin.  After a near-balcony emotional meltdown just as he is about to be announced to the faithful throngs that fill St. Peter's Square, Melville retires (runs full throttle in the midst of the mother of anxiety attacks, if you will) to his chambers with no reasonable thoughts of coming back out.  Of course this causes a bit of a problem for the other cardinals and the bureaucrats of the Vatican, who must belay any ceremonies and keep the eager press at more than arm's length.   Bringing in a psychoanalyst, played by the director himself, doesn't really help at all.  After a secret visit to another psychoanalyst (the ex-wife of the first) things begin to go even more awry.  

Moretti, whose other films include the tragic The Son's Room and the comic self-parody Felliniesque Caro Diario, gives the film both heft (through the inner turmoil of the wouldbe pope) and absurdity (through the director as psychoanalyst setting up a round robin volleyball tournament for all the visiting cardinals), but at the proverbial heart and soul center of the film is the performance of French actor-cum-icon Michel Piccoli as the aforementioned titular Papal BMOC.  The actor, best known for his roles in Godard's Contempt and Buñuel's Belle de Jour, though he has appeared in some of the most respected of art films such as Diary of a Chambermaid, The Young Girl's of Rochefort, The Milky Way and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (to name just a few), gives a quieter, more retrospective performance than we are used to from the usually bravura thespian, but that most certainly does not mean it is any less powerful or brilliant or whatever you want to call it.

Between Piccoli's subtly masterful performance (we are surprisingly shaken by his predicament) and Moretti's blend of silly satiric humour and sincere emotional pathos (Laugh? Cry? How 'bout both!) and a kicker of an ending that is a narrative bombshell, this seemingly disarming Italian dramedy slaps you with a surprise right hook just when you think you have it all figured out.  Simply put, a delightful and dangerous film both.  Sincerely delightful and dangerous indeed.  An oddly tender look at the church that shows both its ridiculous nature and its inherent, oft-overlooked humanity.  And surely a film that any who like the nuanced narratives of classic Commedia all'italiana and the satiric world of Fellini and Buñuel should most definitely take the time to see.

My 10 Favourite Things About Don't Touch the White Woman

**spoilers ahead, for those who worry about such things**

1) Obviously when talking about Marco Ferreri's French/Italian hybrid Don't Touch the White Woman, something must be said about the that title.  Played as a recurring gag (or jag) throughout the film, General Custer's Indian scout Mitch is repeatedly told this (or scolded about this) by the white men around him.  When I told my friend Max that this was the movie we were going to watch on a certain night, he instinctively assumed that I was acting the fool, and making such a title up.  But lo and behold, it is indeed Don't Touch the White Woman - or Touche pas a la femme blanche in its native French (and I use the term native in several different manners of ironic twist).

2) Ferreri's absurdist take on the American Western.  Placing characters such as General George Armstrong Custer, Buffalo Bill Cody and Chief Sitting Bull smack dab in the then-current 1974 Paris - with Richard Nixon as the beloved president - and setting the climactic Battle of Little Big Horn in the recently demolished remains of the old Paris marketplace.  Mixing and matching time periods, Ferreri's film is a comic absurdist delight.

3) Marcello Mastroianni as General Custer, extremely vain and quite pompous (this may actually be a rather accurate portrayal) and kicking up his boots in a ridiculously comic salutation of sorts, is at his batshitcrazy best here.  His long dangling locks, desire to change uniforms for each battle and constant militaristic attitude - not to mention his arrogant style of wooing - is great comic fun.

4) The (far from subtle) allusions to both Vietnam and Algeria (Nixon is president here, spying down at everyone from his overly prevalent framed pictures) and an obvious (and quite legitimate if you ask this liberal critic) Leftist attitude toward the military, as well as a revisionist outlook on American/Indian affairs of the time (the Custer time that is).  The Algerians are even thought of as an Indian tribe, and thus are treated in the same cold, hateful manner by the white people in the film.

5) The Altman connection.  Or I should say, the Altman feel.  Predating Altman's own Buffalo Bill movie by two years, Ferreri's movie plays out in a very Altmanesque manner, with characters speaking over top of each other and musicians following around as balladeers and an overall constant sense of mayhem.

6) Ugo Tognazzi, long before he became the prancing star of La cage aux folles (a role played by an equally prancing Robin Williams in the remake), plays the aforementioned Mitch, the man to whom the warning of the title is told to.  Of course he is not really an American Indian (and doesn't even look like one, given a tanning session before filming began perhaps) but full-blooded, and full-bodied Italian.  His leading of a sweat shop manned by white women (with the ever-watching eyes of big brother Nixon peering down from the wall) and his defilement of one of them is one of the many highlights of this crazy ass movie.

7) The use of what appear to be real period hippies as the Indians of this so-called Little Big Horn.  I mean really, who needs the noble savage when you've got a city full of hippies who will walk around in the background for, well for pretty much anything you are wiling to give them.  We even get one who looks an awfully like that self-declared ant-hippie, Jim Morrison.  Perhaps he didn't die in that bathtub after all.  I mean he did live in Paris when he "died".

8) Michel Piccoli may very well be the most batshitcrazy Buffalo Bill in cinematic history.  Played by everyone from Roy Rogers to Joel McCrea to Clayton Moore to Chuck Heston to Paul Newman to Stephen Fucking Baldwin (even Buffalo Bill himself - as himself! - appeared in several early silent films) but I can't think of anyone who made the man look like a stark raving lunatic more than M. Piccoli.  From his white eyeliner to his big-boobied back-up dancer to his bizarro (almost) one man show to his eventual maniacal cowardice and grandiose hissy-fit, Piccoli is the premier batshitcrazy Buffalo Bill.

9) I cannot confirm this was on purpose, and it may very well be a "just me" kinda thing, but the talking heads who we first see at the beginning of the film, and who recur throughout as nosy, do-nothing politicos, remind this critic of a certain band of outsiders (if you will pardon the pun) known collectively as the Nouvelle Vague.  The two main ones even resemble the new wave's leaders (for lack of a more apt word) Godard and Truffaut.  Again, it is probably all in my imagination, but isn't imagination what cinema is all about?

10) Catherine Deneuve as a redhead!!  I am sure I need not say more, but I will anyway.  Looking spectacular as a blonde is Mlle. Deneuve's normal style, but here she goes fiery red for her role as Custer's love interest, Marie-Hélène de Boismonfrais.  Perhaps it is in keeping with the batshitcrazy aspect of the film itself - after all (and this will get some angry comments I am sure, but I sincerely mean it in the most complimentary fashion possible) most redheads I have known have been quite batshitcrazy themselves.  Perhaps it is just to make the already drop dead Deneuve look all that hotter.  One of the final moments of the film - after the slaughter at this makeshift Little Big Horn - shows a now dead Deneauve covered partly in an American flag.  Except for the whole dead part (unless you are into that) this is a pretty spectacular image on the screen (which unfortunately cannot truly be captured by the corresponding image below).

Happy Birthday Asia Argento

The kind of girl who would kill and devour you after sex, but the kind of girl you would be okay with such..

I Am Love Reviewed at The Cinematheque

I first saw Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love at a little arthouse cinema just outside of Philly, called The Ambler Theater.  The Ambler first opened its doors on the last day of 1928 (owned by Warner Brothers at the time) by showing the Harry Beaumont directed, Joan Crawford vehicle, Our Dancing Daughters.  After closing down in 1970 (as many classic cinemas were forced to do) and becoming a christian theater (specializing in showing 16mm prints of movies like The Robe) the Ambler began to deteriorate and finally shut down for good - well almost.  In 2003, The Ambler opened its doors again and to this day shows both new releases and classic cinema inside its fully renovated doors.

The reason I go on about the cinema itself is because it is a classic movie house in modern times and this is exactly what I Am Love is.  The whole complaint about how they no longer make 'em like they used to is put to rest with this beautiful, delectable new work of Italian cinema.  Go inside my review (linked just below) and read much more loving, gushing hyperbole on this film.  And if you ever find yourself in or around Philadelphia, check out the Ambler Theater.  I know I for one, am going back to see Lawrence of Arabia on 35mm next month!

Read my review of I Am Love at The Cinematheque.

Vincere Reviewed at The Cinematheque

Although a new movie, Marco Bellocchio's Vincere reminds one of not only the art cinema of the fifties and sixties, but also of the early Soviet cinema of Eisenstein, Dovzhenko and Vertov.  This seems to be some sort of cinematic roadblock for the uninitiated among filmgoers - many of them calling the film brash and loud and overly dramatic.  Of course these are the very attributes that made this film so enjoyable for yours truly.  Ah well, you can't please everyone - nor should you want to.  Anyway, my review is finally posted over at The Cinematheque (weeks after seeing it) and it is one of many reviews that were waylaid by my sudden (and quite unexpected, even by me) sabbatical during March and April.  And it is also one step closer to me finally catching up on all those "lost" reviews - a thing that should happen very soon now.

Read my review of Vincere at The Cinematheque.