Open Roads ’18: Equilibrium

What is the proper role for a priest? Should he fight for justice or maintain the balance of power, like a 1970s State Department bureaucrat, who read too much Bismarck? It seems like a no-brainer in theory, but would you be tempted to opt for stability, if you had to chose in the real world? Don Giuseppe will make his choice and his parishioners will make theirs when he is transferred to his native Campania in Vincenzo Marra’s Equilibrium (trailer here), which screens during Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2018.

Don Giuseppe has always been actively engaged in the world. He did life-altering missionary work in Africa and he has steadfastly ministered to the illegal aliens congregated at a migrant shelter in Rome. Frankly, he is concerned he could become a little too engaged when a social worker admits her romantic feelings for him. To preserve his calling, Don Giuseppe requests and is granted a transfer to a blighted district just north of Naples.

When the good father first meets Don Antonio, whom he will succeed, the veteran cleric seems to be quite the crusader himself through his campaign against the illegal noxious waste dumping in the hills above town. However, it soon becomes clear this is cheap activism, since nobody claims responsibility for the dumping and everyone generally agrees it is a less than ideal practice. However, when it comes to standing up for the vulnerable in the community, Don Antonio is much more circumspect.

Frankly, Don Antonio has done his best to intimidate the isolated Assunta into accepting her boyfriend’s sexual abuse of her daughter. Unfortunately, she happens to live in the housing project that is the center of the local drug dealers’ transactions. Having the cops pay a visit would be bad for business. For the sake of peace in the valley, Don Antonio is willing to sacrifice Assunta and her daughter—and the cops and dealers are right there with him. However, Don Giuseppe will not play that game.

Equilibrium is a deeply moving film that challenges what faith really means and how it should be manifested in the real world. Marra filmed docu-style, employing many street level long-takes. He recruited many non-professional actors from the region, scoring a double jackpot with Mimmo Borrelli and Roberto del Gaudio, who are both tremendous as Don Giuseppe and Don Antonio, respectively. Borrelli is a quiet marvel, expressing so much questioned faith and Christian love through subtle and restrained looks and gestures. In contrast, del Gaudio is flamboyantly charismatic and chillingly Machiavellian. Astrid Meloni, one of the few professional ringers, adds further layers of compelling human messiness as Veronica, Don Giuseppe’s source of temptation.

It is impossible to watch Equilibrium without hearing echoes of the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandals. It is easy to damn in retrospect, but the film clearly challenges viewers to ask what they would have done if they were cops, social workers, or lay leaders trying to hold their communities together. Throughout the film, Marra shows in concrete terms why ostensibly responsible people often opt for stability over moral principle, while never endorsing or excusing their expediency. It is a tough, powerful film. Very highly recommended, Equilibrium screens tomorrow (6/3) and Wednesday (6/6) at the Walter Reade as part of this year’s Open Roads.

Open Roads ’18: Boys Cry

It is pretty depressing when getting initiated into an organized crime clan is the highest ambition two meatheads can aspire to. Unfortunately, it is all too attainable. The only price is whatever might be left of their souls. There will be money and hedonistic pleasures in the short term, but don’t count on much of a long run for Mirko and Manolo in the D’Innocenzo Brothers’ Boys Cry (trailer here), which screens during Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2018.

Even though they are enrolled in some kind of community college hotel-restaurant management program, Mirko and Manolo are not very serious about it. Their corner of Rome’s suburbs does not encourage optimism or long-term planning. They demonstrate why well enough on their own when they kill a stealthy pedestrian in a hit-and-run. Initially, they are panicked about potential repercussions, until Manolo’s wannabe-gangster father realizes this is a good thing.

It turns out their victim was a snitch wanted by one of the local clans. Manolo’s father brokers his son’s apprenticeship with the clan, claiming he deliberately mowed the so-called “grass” down. Suddenly, Mirko is bent out of shape hearing Manolo taking credit for his negligent homicide. However, his friend quickly brings him into the fold, recruiting him to assist on what will be their first official hit.

You can guess the general trajectory of their grubby lives from there, but it is especially harrowing to watch Mirko seeming lose all remaining vestiges of human decency. He will drive away his girlfriend Ambra (who was frankly out of his league) and his ailing mother. This is a gritty, grimy film, but its takeaway comes through loud and clear: even when there is substantial monetary renumeration, crime still doesn’t pay.

It is a grim milieu, but Matteo Olivetti lights up the screen with his hostile intensity and barely contained energy. As Mirko, he steals the picture outright from Andrea Carpenzano’s more snide and reserved Manolo. Olivetti also has the benefit of playing scenes opposite Milena Mancini, who is quite a supportive co-star, while still being exquisitely tragic as his mother Alessia. It would be interesting to see them play mother and son again, but in a completely different context.

This is a riveting movie, in a horrifying train-wreck kind of way. Shallow, kneejerk critics will probably be put off by the misogynistic and homophobic attitudes expressed by the two gangsters-in-training, but they are thugs. Everything they say and do is awful, almost by definition. The D’Innocenzos (Damiano & Fabio) water nothing down. This sure isn’t Bugsy Malone, but Mirko and Manolo really aren’t a heck of a lot older than that. Recommended for fans of the new wave of naturalistic gangster films (like Gomorrah and Salvo), Boys Cry screens Sunday (6/3) and Tuesday (6/5) at the Walter Reade as part of this year’s Open Roads.

Open Roads ’18: Naples in Veils

This is the other Naples—the city we never see in films like Gomorrah. It is a center of great art and architecture, but death remains a constant presence there. Indeed, those cobblestone alleyways are both romantic and ominous in Ferzan Ozpetek’s Naples in Veils (trailer here), which screens during Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2018.

After one scorching hot night with Andrea, Adriana is convincing he must be the one. Therefore, she is rather disappointed when he fails to show for their date the next day. The good news is he did not intentionally stand her up. The bad news is he happens to be on her slab at the medical examiner’s office. He wasn’t merely murdered. He was also blinded and disfigured. Looks like a Camorra warning killing to us, but nobody comes to that conclusion in this film.

Already reeling from horror and disappointment, Adriana starts seeing Andrea’s doppelganger throughout the city. That would be Luca, his twin brother, who was separately adopted out while both were still in infancy. Luca’s planned meeting with Andrea never happened, but he needs little encouragement to pick up with Adriana where his brother left off. Of course, they both agree to keep his kept-man presence in her flat secret, for fear his brother’s killers will then come looking for him. This definitely includes the police and even Antonio, the rumpled detective falling for her. Much to her own surprise, Adriana also starts feels a degree of attraction to him as well, further complicating matters.

The Naples of Gomorrah is nowhere to be found in the lush, sophisticated Veils, which should do wonders for the city’s tourist trade. The locales are exquisitely cinematic, while the drama itself is unapologetically steamy. It mostly qualifies as a psychological thriller in the tradition of De Palma’s Obsession, but there are also oblique hints of the supernatural. Yet, the really cool thing about the film is the extent to which its twists and turns are rooted in the city’s macabre lore.

Giovanna Mezzogiorno is absolutely terrific as the haunted (in whichever sense of the word) Adriana, proving you do not need to look like a CGI-enhanced supermodel to heat up the screen. Nobody will nod off during her scenes with Alessandro Borghi (as both brothers), but she is at her best playing with and off Adriana’s extended family and family friends, who constitute Naples old guard. Anna Buonaiuto is wonderfully tart-tongued and regal as Aunt Adele, while Beppe Barra is practically the soul of Naples incarnate as old ribald Pasquale.

Frankly, the merits of the ending are debatable, but it is a pleasure getting there. Watching Veils is like a sipping a series of cappuccinos on the city’s piazzas. Ozpetek masterfully commands the film’s seductive mood and even manages to pull off a surprise or two through misdirection. It may very well be his best film yet. Very highly recommended, Naples in Veils screens this Saturday (6/2) at the Walter Reade as part of this year’s Open Roads (and it can also be seen at the Seattle International Film Festival on 6/2, 6/5, and 6/6).

Open Roads ’18: Rainbow—A Private Affair

It seems cosmically unfair that Italian writer Beppe Fenoglio died of Bronchial cancer at the age of forty, as surviving WWII as an Italian partisan. However, he has continued to have a literary presence through the posthumous publication of a number of works, including this novella of love and war. Frankly, the two are not so easy to distinguish in Rainbow: A Private Affair (trailer here), the final film collaboration from the Taviani Brothers, Paolo and Vittorio, which screens during Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2018.

Before he was a partisan, Milton was a student of English literature—hence his nickname. He also carried a torch for the free-spirited Fulvia, whom he often visited at her family’s summer estate, along with their mutual friend Giorgio. It was sort of a Jules & Jim style triangle. However, the revelation Fulvia might have favored Giorgio, perhaps even in carnal terms, has Milton profoundly distracted from the war. Fortunately, his comrades are also Italian, so they can understand his inconvenient shift in priorities.

Determined to learn the truth, Milton obtains leave to visit Giorgio, who is also a partisan, attached to a different brigade operating around the Langhe region. However, as soon as he arrives, Milton learns his friend (or rival) has been arrested by the Blackshirts. This propels Milton’s desperate scramble to capture a “roach” he can exchange for Giorgio, but his motives are not exactly clear. He wants to hear the truth from Giorgio directly, yet his loyalty towards his friend also seems genuine, at least to some extent.

Vittorio Taviani passed away a little over one month ago, but he and his brother still show a fine command of their craft with their final outing as a filmmaking tandem. In fact, it is a fitting capstone for their work, given its aching romanticism. It is also rather personal, even limited in scope, as the title would suggest. Yet, despite all Milton’s heartsick gloominess and death-seeking behavior, it is ultimately a life-affirming film.

Luca Marinelli broods for all he is worth as Milton, but ironically, his most memorable and moving scenes are played with neither Fulvia or Giorgio. In fact, they both seem too shallow to be worth his anxiety, as portrayed by Valentina Bellè and Lorenzo (blonder than he was in Marco Polo) Richelmy. However, there several small but brilliant supporting turns, such as Antonella Attili as the austere caretaker of Fulvia’s family villa and Andrea Di Maria as a roach who fancies himself a jazz drummer.

Arguably, Marinelli’s real co-star is Judy Garland, whose rendition of “Over the Rainbow” Fulvia plays incessantly. Giuliano Taviani (Vittorio’s son) and Carmelo Travia nicely incorporate the tune into their lush, somewhat jazz-influenced soundtrack, but it would have been much cooler if they’d used a Billie Holiday song. Regardless, cinematographer Simon Zampagni fully captures the ominous beauty of the fog-shrouded Langhe foothills. Throughout it all, the Tavianis deftly maintain the mysterious, mystical atmosphere, without indulging in excessive pretentions or padding. It is a lovely little film that serves as an apt coda on their storied careers together. Highly recommended, Rainbow: A Private Affair screens Friday (6/1) and the following Monday (6/4) as part of this year’s Open Roads.

Open Roads ’18: The Place

It is sort of like an Italian Cheers, but nobody knows the name of the quiet, Mephistophelean man who always sits in the corner table. If you are there to see him, you must be desperate, but the deals he offers never bring peace of mind. If this sounds familiar, then perhaps you remember

Christopher Kubasik’s two-season FX television show, The Booth at the End, which Paolo Genovese been remade as an Italian one-shot feature. Fans of the source show will find it translated surprisingly smoothly when Genovese’s The Place (trailer here) screens during Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2018.

He sits in “The Place” (this time around, it really is more of a café than a diner), where he drinks a lot of coffee, a little bit of whiskey, and lets the despairing sign away their souls. All day long, people ask for miracles, but he gives them Faustian bargains. One old woman wants to cure her husband’s Alzheimer’s. To do that, she must place a bomb somewhere where it is sure to kill a certain number of people. Hers is probably the most extreme case, but not by much. To save his son, one man must kill another innocent child. Rather nefariously, “The Man” sends another favor-seeker on a mission to protect the girl he is stalking.

The thing of it is, The Man at the corner table is by far the most interesting character in the film (and several others are quite compelling). We never get any of his backstory or any real explanation, but we quickly get the impression he takes no pleasure from any of this mayhem. He is a cosmic middle man—perhaps even a reluctant one, whose hands are tied by the mysterious notebook he frequently consults. Angela, who works the swing and graveyard shifts can’t figure him out, but he rather uncharacteristically seems to enjoy her efforts to crack his code.

Frankly, it is pretty darned impressive how successfully Genovese boils down the first season of Booth into a tight, taut feature. It will hold viewers rapt by its spell for one hour and forty-five minutes, yet you will probably have no desire to go catch-up with the two seasons of Booth (even though it stars the ever reliable Xander Berkeley), because you will feel like you have seen it in its essence.

Genovese puts a lot on the cast’s shoulders, because he retains the original show’s minimalist technique of unfolding all of the narrative developments in conversations with the Man, but they bear it smashingly, particularly Valerio Mastandrea, who is wonderfully subtle as the Man himself. Throughout the entire film, he has the audience guessing whether he is the monster many favor-seekers think him to be, or the lonely, world-weary man Angela assumes he is. He is also perfectly counter-balanced by Sabrina Ferilli as the warm and down-to-earth Angela. You can see why anyone would guzzle java at her late-night café. The Place is also frequented by at least half a dozen other top Italian thesps, such as Alba Rohwacher (I Am Love, Hungry Hearts) and Marco Giallini, who are all working at the top of their respective games.

The Place is not exactly a thriller per se, but it turns a couple of twists that are real game-changers. As a remake of a somewhat known American property, The Place will probably be a tough sell for theatrical distribution, which is a shame, because it is a prime example of super-slick, ultra-grabby filmmaking. Very highly recommended, The Place screens twice this Thursday (5/31) at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s Open Roads.