Panorama Europe’15: I Can Quit Whenever I Want

The tenure process is not treating a studious young academic right, especially when his unhelpful advisor bizarrely suggests he is a Catholic Royalist to one of the Communist board members. Like many of his over-educated, over-credentialed colleagues, Pietro Zinni finds himself unemployed, but a chance visit to a smart-drug popping nightclub will give him Breaking Bad ideas in Sydney Sibilia’s I Can Quit Whenever I Want (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Panorama Europe, at the Museum of the Moving Image.

Nobody understands Zinni’s research, but it is brilliant. Unfortunately, that means all the funding and the permanent position at stake will go to a politically connected hack. Constantly nagged at home, Zinni even has trouble collecting from the students he tutors on the side. When he uncharacteristically pursues one of his deadbeats into a trendy nightspot, he happens to get a dose of the latest designer drug. It is an eye-opening experience, but Zinni knows he can concoct something better. Best of all, his new product will not be illegal under Italian law, until the coppers duly add it to the national registry.

To form his gang, Zinni will recruit a motley crew of under-employed academics, each of whom comes with his own annoying foibles. The economist will craft the business plan, the Latin scholars will handle sales, and the city archaeologist (who was issued a municipal van with an all access parking pass) will be in charge of distribution. Zinni and his former colleague Alberto will whip up their special blend in the university lab. Unfortunately, the latter will start sampling their product. Evidently, he never saw Scarface.

Comparisons to Walter White are inescapable, but Quit is also closely akin to Gianni Amelio’s super-temp film Intrepido, which bemoans the current state of Italian unemployment. Right, so how’s adopting the Euro and relinquishing the ability to devalue the Lira working out for everyone? Yet, the bitter truth is probably none of these colorful characters has any business working in academia—not even Zinni, who has no aptitude for teaching, as we see on multiple occasions.

As Zinni, Eduardo Leo makes a rather plodding everyman. On the other end of the spectrum, Stefano Fresi indulges in plenty of shtick as Alberto. Despite the thinness of her character, Valeria Solarino still shows some welcome signs of life as Zinni’s significant other. The comedy is pretty broad here, but at least Sergio Solli delivers a few cutting lines as the game-playing department chair.

Quit is amusing from time to time, but there is little here regular movie watchers have not seen before. It has too much quirk and not enough attitude for genre fans, but it is probably the sort of commercial film that can successfully masquerade as an art house indie. For those looking for some decidedly unchallenging humor, I Can Quit Whenever I Want screens this Sunday (5/31) as part of Panorama Europe, at MoMI in Astoria, Queens.

Panorama Europe’15: Bota

Juli Toma’s provincial town is desperately depressed, even by Albania’s standards. Of course, she is not really from there. She and her family were interned there during the Communist era and, one way or another, they have been stuck there ever since. The past is like a millstone holding down the present in Iris Elezi & Thomas Logoreci’s Bota (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Panorama Europe, at the Museum of the Moving Image.

Toma is a waitress at Bota (meaning the world), her cousin Beni’s coffee shop that draws a decent clientele, considering it is literally in the middle of nowhere. That is exactly why the old regime deposited its so-called “state enemies” there. Beni is an operator who has plenty of dodgy dealings with underworld types, but Toma is more-or-less resigned to a futureless future. At least, she will make no plans while caring for Noje, her beloved grandmother, who is increasingly succumbing to the ravages of age.

We soon learn Toma was done wrong by both the Communists and Beni. Her supposed best friend Nora knows it full well, but she keeps quiet hoping Beni, her illicit lover, will leave his unseen wife for her. Eventually, the truth will out, to an extent, but at a great cost for the Bota trio.

Frankly, Bota is so intrinsically bound up in the lingering corrosiveness of the Communist Party and the successive government’s problematic response, Elezi & Logoreci hardly bother to address politics directly. After all, the results are as plain as day. Instead, they focus like a laser-beam on Toma.

Fortunately, lead actress Flonja Kodheli survives and thrives under their potentially withering gaze. With quiet but forceful understatement, she personifies everyday resiliency. Artur Gorishti and Fioralba Kryemadhi are both fine and good as Beni and Nora, but we have seen their like before. However, there is something about how Kodheli’s Toma expresses both naivety and world-weariness that is quite moving.

As inviting and lived-in as the Bota café looks (with considerable credit due to the detailed work of art director Shpetim Baca), Bota the film hardly serves as a tourism commercial for Albania. In a way, it is like the dark flip side of the Central Perk coffee house in Friends. Although there are a few references that will be lost on non-Albanians (for instance, The General of the Dead Army, a celebrated Ismail Kadare novel about an Italian officer commissioned to locate war remains), the larger truths are easy to grasp. Well worth seeing for its discreet tragedy and the power of Kodheli’s work, Bota screens this Sunday (5/31) as part of Panorama Europe, at MoMI in Astoria, Queens.

Panorama Europe’15: Gods

During the Communist era, Poland was officially an atheist state. Yet, Dr. Zbigniew Religa’s crusade to successfully perform the country’s first heart transplant surgery was often denigrated as a desire to play god. The establishment would use any rhetorical club to beat down innovation. Fortunately, Dr. Religa was not the sort to hew to the Party line. Medicine will struggle to overcome politics in Lukasz Palkowski’s Gods (trailer here), which screens on the opening weekend of this year’s Panorama Europe, at the Museum of the Moving Image.

Religa was not the first Polish doctor to attempt a heart transplant. That was Prof. Jan Moll, who was crucified by the medical authorities when the patient rejected the donor heart. Although no longer pushing the frontiers of medicine, Moll will serve as an informal advisor to Religa when he picks up his transplant standard. Unfortunately, it will not happen in Warsaw. All the directors of big urban clinics avoid controversy like the plague. To develop the life-saving procedure, Dr. Religa will assume the directorship of a new clinic in the provincial town of Zabrze. The clinic is fine (it should be, considering Dr. Religa and his staff largely built it themselves from the ground up), but the time away from his wife will wreck Religa’s marriage.

Despite Religa’s eventual breakthroughs, Gods is anything but a ringing endorsement of the old, oppressive system and its socialized medicine. Just funding the clinic was quite a trick. Although Religa is reluctant to ask for Party money, he has little options. Happily, he connects with a regional boss, who is corrupt in a good way. Dr. Religa also has no problem hiring junior surgeons who have been blackballed for their past support of Solidarity.

Clearly, Dr. Religa was quite a physician, but as played by the 6’ 6” Tomasz Kot, he hardly looks like George Clooney in ER. A tall, gaunt, stoop-shouldered chain-smoker, his Religa is far from a picture of health. Frankly, it is easy to see why he was so driven to perfect heart transplant surgery. Nevertheless, he projects a commanding presence that would instill confidence.

Without question, Gods is Kot’s show, but he gets some key consults from veteran Polish actors Jan Englert as Prof. Sitkowski, Religa’s skeptical former mentor, and Wladyslaw Kowalski as the wise and compassionate Prof. Moll. Much like the trailblazing surgeon, inter-personal relations are not exactly the strength of Krzysztof Rak’s screenplay, which means Magdalena Czerwinska is stuck holding a rather one-dimensional stick as Religa's neglected wife, Anna.

Still, Gods has an appealingly dry wit. It is also a first rate period production, reproducing the general drabness of the late Communist era, as well as the defiant manifestations of grooviness that periodically popped-up through the cracks. In fact, it might well be difficult for a potential American distributor to license several of the period-signifying pop songs for theatrical release, so viewers intrigued by Gods should make a point of seeing it on the festival circuit. Recommended for fans of Polish cinema and medical dramas, Gods screens Friday (5/29) at MoMI in Astoria Queens, as part the 2015 Panorama Europe.