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).

Tribeca ’10: Loose Cannons

Tommaso Cantone has two bombshells to drop on his family: he is gay and wants to quit the family pasta business to become a writer. The latter will only be slightly less scandalous to the traditional Cantone patriarch than the former. Unfortunately, a funny thing happens on the way to Tommaso’s coming out in Turkish-born Italian film director Ferzan Ozpetek’s Loose Cannons (trailer here), which was awarded the Special Jury Mention in the World Narrative Competition at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Tommaso wants out of the Cantone family business. He has his literary aspirations and a lover waiting faithfully in Rome. He realizes coming out will result in irreparable break with his father, particularly in such an embarrassing forum—a formal dinner to celebrate the Cantone merger with another powerful corporate family. However, much to everyone’s surprise, especially Tommaso’s, his brother Antonio beats him to the punch.

With his father suffering a heart attack shortly banishing Antonio, Tommaso finds himself stuck in the life he was trying to avoid. Obviously conflicted in this role, he develops a strangely intimate platonic relationship with Alba, the emotionally damaged daughter of their new business partners.

As befitting a big Italian family, the Cantones supply plenty of subplots, some of which work better than others. The Grandmother’s mysterious past is an intriguing framing device, beautifully realized by Ozpetek and cinematographer Maurizio Calvesi. Perhaps the strongest scenes involve the ambiguous friendship between Tommaso and Alba. Unfortunately, when Marco and three friends are forced to “play it straight” while visiting Tomasso, Cannons basically recycles old La Cage Aux Folles material that just seems awkward and dated here.

While several of Ozpetek’s recent films, like A Perfect Day and Facing Windows, have been almost oppressively tragic, the mood of Cannons is much lighter, more bittersweet than unremittingly sorrowful. It is a welcome change. While there is heartbreak in Cannons, there is also love (romantic and familial) as well as hope, just like real life.

Ironically given the subject matter, the head-and-shoulders standout in the cast is the beautiful Nicole Grimaudo as Alba. Tempestuous and vulnerable, it is a highly nuanced, fully dimensional performance. She also shares real screen chemistry with Ricardo Scamarcio, who brings an earnest likability to Tomasso.

Balancing laughter and tears quite adeptly, Ozpetek mostly hits the right marks throughout Cannons. The picturesque locations in and around the Italian town of Lecce also set a nice La Dolce Vita vibe, which is never a bad thing. It screens again tonight (5/1) at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Ozpetek at MoMA: Facing Windows

In 1988, Babette’s Feast became a true sleeper hit in America, largely due to its beautifully filmed scenes of the meal’s lavish preparation. It was eventually followed by the likes of Eat Drink Man Woman, Like Water for Chocolate, and Chocolat, establishing the “food” movies as a pitchable property on the international film circuit. It would be a mistake to consider Ferzan Ozpetek’s Facing Windows in such a context. Yes, elegant pastries are lovingly assembled, but the act of baking in Ozpetek’s film offers consolation, not fulfillment. Such consolation is very much needed in Windows (trailer here), which screens at MoMA as part of their Ozpetek retrospective series.

Giovanna is not overwhelmed by domestic bliss. She toils at a soul-deadening job and her marriage to Filippo is deteriorating. At least she takes some enjoyment from baking pastries for the local pub. One fateful night, Filippo insists they bring home an addled old man who appears to be suffering from some sort of dementia. At first, all they get out of him is the name “Simone,” but he becomes much more vocal when Giovanna starts her baking.

As flashbacks from his past intrude into his perception of reality, “Simone” suddenly tears off into Rome’s old Jewish Quarter, like a man possessed. Giovanna enlists the help of her neighbor Lorenzo, the bachelor banker whose apartment faces hers, to corral the elderly man. As Giovanna cleans up her mysterious guest after his safe return, she discovers a number tattooed to his forearm, and the pieces start to fall into place.

“Simone” has several secrets. One of which is the nature of the great love of his life, which is pretty easy to guess from the early flashbacks and the gay themes of Ozpetek’s previous films. The other involves the infamous round-up of Roman Jews on October 16, 1943. However, he is not the only secretive character. It turns out Giovanna and Lorenzo have both been furtively watching each other for sometime, in his case to a degree that approaches the obsessive.

Ozpetek is very circumspect in his treatment of the Holocaust, focusing on its lingering emotional aftermath rather than the actual horrific events. While there are many flashbacks to 1943, Ozpetek includes no scenes of the concentration camps or even the infamous round-up. When originally released, Windows may have been sold on the strength of the elaborate confections Giovanna and her elderly guest create, but they are misleading. Their pastries are only a bittersweet desert complementing a much more austere meal of pain and regret.

As the mysterious gentleman baker, Massimo Girotti gives a haunting performance, in what would be his final role. Giovanna Mezzogiorno is also quite convincing as the quietly desperate Giovanna. Unfortunately, when Raoul Bova’s problematic Lorenzo comes out of his reserved shell, he seems overly melodramatic, and his angst compares poorly with the far greater sufferings of the other characters

Windows is visually dramatic, thanks to Patrizio Marone’s masterful editing of flashback sequences and Gianfilppo Corticelli’s rich cinematography. Unfortunately, Andrea Guerra’s sweeping score is often sounds overwrought and the occasional use of Italian pop songs sabotage the overall mood of the picture. Despite some emotional excesses, it effectively displays Ozpetek’s tremendous sensitivity as a filmmaker. Windows screens again on Sunday the 14th, as the Ozpetek retrospective continues at MoMA.

Ozpetek at MoMA: A Perfect Day

Films told in flashback necessarily lose an element of suspense. In Ferzan Ozpetek’s A Perfect Day, when shots fired bring the police to the apartment of one of their own, we know something terrible has happened inside—the only question is the extent of the horror that transpired. Perfect (Italian trailer here) makes its American debut this Friday at the MoMA as part of a retrospective series focusing on the Turkish born Italian filmmaker.

Ozpetek’s films frequently involve unexpected tragedy and the consolation of humane compassion. However, in Perfect, the former greatly overwhelms the latter. When the world-weary Emma dubs her day “perfect,” she speaks with conscious irony. She has already been fired from her dead-end job and endured a harrowing encounter with Antonio, her police officer ex-husband, but she still does not know the half of what she will suffer by the end of the day.

In general, there is not a lot of joy to go around for Ozpetek’s large cast of characters. The unstable Antonio is repulsed by his continuing obsession with Emma, whom he derides as an aging bimbo, and wracked with guilt for neglecting his family. He is assigned to the protection detail of Elio Fioravanti, a crooked politician who stands to lose his immunity if defeated in an upcoming election, which seems increasingly likely. His trophy wife Maja still harbors affection for Fioravanti’s grown prodigal son, but has opted for what she assumed would be the security offered by his father. Only Emma and Angelo’s cruelly bespectacled little boy and Maja and Fioravanti’s popular young daughter display anything approaching healthy, unconditional love.

Despite the film’s constant undercurrent of dread and menace, Oztepek directs with admirable sensitivity, while still maintaining his trademark visual flair. He inspires fearless performances from Valerio Mastandrea as Angelo and Isabella Ferrari as Emma, a role which won her best actress honors at the Venice Film Festival. Yet throughout the film, the only source of suspense is just how bad things will get. And what happens is awful—probably exactly what you already suspect.

Ozpetek does not play games with the narrative, employing a conventional flashback as his framing device. As a result, Perfect is emotionally direct and completely accessible. However, its unrelenting pessimism and mounting sense of inevitable tragedy will probably limit the film’s appeal. Beautifully filmed by Ozpetek and cinematographer Fabio Zamarian, with a soundtrack by Andrea Guerra that gives an almost operatic feeling to the on-screen drama, Perfect is a finely crafted film, but also uncompromisingly depressing. It is an easy film to respect, but a hard film to love.

The Ozpetek retrospective starts at MoMA on Thursday the 4th, with His Secret Life. Perfect then plays on Friday the 5th and Saturday the 13th, with the director and Ferrari in attendance for the first screening.