Central
bankers should be more like Roberto Salus and his fellow Carthusian monks.
Whenever the former talk, they needlessly rile the markets. IMF director Daniel
Roché will never make that mistake again, because he has died under rather
mysterious circumstances. Salus might very well understand what happened, but
he is apparently bound by the confessional seal as well as a rather slippery
vow of silence in Roberto Andò’s The
Confessions (trailer
here),
which screens during Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2017.
For
reasons that are never explicitly clear, Roché has invited Salus to attend the
current G8 conference in an austerely swanky resort. It turns out the global
financier wanted Salus to hear his confession, if it can be properly called
that. The next morning, Roché’s body is discovered—an apparent suicide using
the plastic bag Salus that previously held the monk’s suspiciously missing
digital recorded. Would Salus ever secretly record a confession? That would be
a grave betrayal of trust, but it sure would make the investigating secret
service agents’ lives easier.
In
addition to the dead body, there is also intrigue swirling around a
controversial proposal Roché has pushed through, over the objections of Italy
and Canada. Could they be related? Claire Seth suspects as much. Like Salus,
the J.K. Rowling-like leftist children’s author was invited to observe the
summit, along with aging rocker Michel Wintzl. Frankly, the notion the
guardians of the western world’s financial systems would be interested in their
insights is absolutely terrifying, but sadly far from impossible.
The Confessions starts out like a
moody Claude Chabrol mystery, featuring a picturesque setting and a set-up ripe
with potential. Unfortunately, the second and third acts are fatally mired in a
morass of conspiratorial hokum. Andò is absolutely convinced the G8 would
happily pass a proposal that deliberately makes the big industrialized nations
richer and the small developing countries poorer, but he clearly has no idea
what that policy would be. As a result, there are endlessly awkward
conversations in which the finance ministers refer to “that thing we agreed to.”
Instead of a juicy whodunit, Confessions degenerates
into a middling Seinfeld episode.
It
is a shame, because Toni (Great Beauty)
Servillo is terrific as Salus. He is wise and humane, but in a rather
astringent way that isn’t the least bit cutesy or shticky. Connie Nielsen also
adds a refined presence as Seth and Marie-Josée Croze is entertainingly
scandalous as the Canadian minister. Unfortunately, most of the other power
brokers are standard issue stock characters.
