And While We Were Here: Now in Lifelike Color

The Camorra has not ruined all of Naples yet.  There are still some picturesque historic neighborhoods.  They will make a lovely backdrop for the scuttling of a marriage in Kat Coiro’s And While We Were Here (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Right, this movie is in color.  Most are these days, but if you caught AWWWH on the festival circuit, you saw it in an arresting black-and-white, intended to evoke the look and vibe of classic Italian Neo-Realist films.  However, it is standard procedure to shoot in color and convert to black-and-white after the fact (even the had to be B&W The Artist followed this practice), so it was no great technical feat to revert back to color for its theatrical release.  DVD consumers will have the ability to chose, but considering everything is digital these days, why not let the audience decide before each screening?  It would be a little William Castle-ish, but it would be a real novelty.

Regardless, sun-drenched Naples looks lovely in the colorful AWWWH (which also picked up an additional article along the way).  Leonard is a handsome and accomplished viola player who has come to Naples for a high profile concert engagement.  His somewhat younger wife Jane is beautiful, but that’s about it.  Some unspoken tragedy weighs heavily on their marriage, but on their first night in Naples they try to get in the romantic Italian spirit.  Unfortunately, the very next morning, Leonard the wet blanket insists on going to the rehearsals he has committed to attend, leaving Jane at loose ends.

She wanders the streets, listening to her grandmother’s lusty audio diaries that she will supposedly incorporate into some sort of vague writing project, until she encounters Caleb. He looks like a local beach bum, but he is actually an American tourist gone native.  Caleb immediately gets ideas about Jane, but she temporarily holds him at bay.  Nonetheless, it is only a matter of time before she indulges.

There are two long established cinematic clichés that stick out like sore thumbs in AWWWH.  While men who cheat in movies are invariably portrayed as lecherous heels, adultery is almost always an act of New Age self-actualization for women like Jane.  If its good for the gander…? Perhaps even more problematic, when a young male romantic rival is a little light in the masculinity department, he is often given more tattoos than the general population of San Quentin.  Meet Caleb, who appears to have a heavy metal album cover inked on his chest. The idea that a womanly woman like Jane would castoff a manly man like Leonard in favor of an immature boy like Caleb is difficult to buy into, no matter how dysfunctional their marriage might be.

Again, it is all lovely to behold. Kate Bosworth is stunningly gorgeous as Jane, looking like a porcelain doll, but unfortunately giving her the personality to match.  There are a lot of longing stares in AWWWH that do not add up to much.  However, Iddo Goldberg nearly saves the day as Leonard.  His big confrontation scene with Bosworth is smartly written and scathingly honest.  It pops, while the rest of the film mostly ambles in the sun.

Arguably, the sum of the film’s parts is greater than its whole.  Whether in color or black-and-white, cinematographer Doug Chamberlain can certainly frame a striking image.  The classical score is also richly lush yet emotionally resonate, representing career best work from composer Mateo Messina.  Despite the sophisticated sights and sounds, as well as Goldberg’s powerful performance, AWWWH never rouses from its lethargy or overcomes the by-the-numbers elements of its familiar narrative.  Mildly recommended for those who love Italy and 1960’s Italian cinema, And While We Were Here opens today (9/13) in New York at the Cinema Village.

Ferrara at AFA: Napoli Napoli Napoli

It was the seat of its own Renaissance-era kingdom and a cultural center of the Roman Empire. Yet, amid a country of former city-states, Naples has been largely left behind. Abel Ferrara returned to his ancestral roots to witness how far the once glorious city has fallen in his hybrid documentary Napoli Napoli Napoli (trailer here), which screens this Saturday as part of Anthology Film Archives’ Abel Ferrara in the 21st Century series of the director’s recent unreleased or under-distributed films.

Collaborating with screenwriter-producer Gaetano Di Vaio, a former criminal turned filmmaker, Ferrara set out to interview some of the women and young men of the Pozzuoli prison, interspersing their traditional documentary footage with dramatic vignettes inspired by the convicts’ experiences. Certainly the most substantial would be Di Vaio’s story of two Camorra gangsters taking on a friend on a road trip to his eventual execution—an an episode reportedly based on his own life.

Frankly, thin would be a generous description for most of the original narrative sketches, and frankly they are not really necessary. Ferrara vividly captures of a sense of the squalid life on Naples mean streets and elicits more compelling testimony from his interview subjects. He shows an intuitive understanding of those profoundly unlucky to have been caught up in the Neopolitan web of drugs and vice. Though his interviewing skills in Chelsea on the Rocks often seem somewhat suspect, here he shows a knack for asking probing questions, simply and directly. In the case of a Nigerian immigrant lured into the drug trade, he asks how she feels about Italians. He also asks several young inmates if they have ever read a book. Of course, the 64,000 Euro question is whether they think the Camorra has been good or bad for the community.

Napoli 3 even has a hero or two, like the dedicated social worker and an elderly business man who refuses to pick up stakes and leave town. However, the film is not particularly sanguine about the region’s future. The local politicians certainly do not have any answers, though they do their best to point their fingers at the national government. Evidently, personal responsibility will not be starting with Naples’ elected leaders. Despite its odd combination of filmmaking strategies, it is a sobering look at a once great city’s decay that would be a good companion film to Matteo Garrone’s Gomorrah. It screens during AFA’s 21st Century Ferrara retrospective January 8th, 9th, 13th, 15th, and 16th.