Something to watch over the next nine months or so

Unlike most mod­ern film fest­ivals which take a “smash and grab” approach by drop­ping the entire pro­gramme in cinemas all over New Zealand at the same time – max­im­ising mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tion­al atten­tion – the Italians have a much more leis­urely philosophy.

Just like the old days – when battered 35mm film can­is­ters made their weary way around the county, one city at a time – the Italian Film Festival is a kind of road­show. It’s almost a new cinema each week. They even have a relaxed enough atti­tude that they take all of June off (to go and spend a sum­mer in Italian cinemas no doubt).

Check out the web­site to find out when the cara­van arrives in your neck of the woods. Wellington read­ers? You’ll be hold­ing your breath until November.

As is my usu­al prac­tice, I asked fest­iv­al dir­ect­or Paolo Rotondo to send me pre­views of a hand­ful of the films in the pro­gramme. I often describe it as “throw­ing darts at the pro­gramme and see­ing where they land” but it’s a little bit more nuanced than that.

I had time to watch three fea­tures before this Auckland open­ing week­end. There was no need to go back to some of the clas­sics that Paolo has pro­grammed for the 10^th anniversary of his (and wife Renee’s) ver­sion of the fest­iv­al1. Two bril­liant films by the late Anthony Minghella will look resplen­dent on the big screen: The Talented Mr. Ripley (which is set in Italy, of course) and The English Patient (my memor­ies of this film are mostly of the North African sec­tion but, of course, that’s all flash­back as our ‘patient’ is ten­ded to in Tuscany).

There’s also a return for smash hit com­edy Welcome to the South (a remake of anoth­er smash hit, Welcome to the Sticks from France), and Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth star­ring Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel.

Parthenope (Sorrentino, 2024)

Speaking of Sorrentino, he’s one of my favour­ite film­makers and back on form with this tale of a woman so beguil­ingly beau­ti­ful that the world doesn’t know how to cope.

Parthenope (Celeste Dalla Porta) is the second child of a rich and dis­trac­ted couple liv­ing in an idyll­ic villa by the sea in Naples. Reaching her own matur­ity in about 1970 – just as the rest of the world appears to be head­ing in the oth­er dir­ec­tion – Parthenope stud­ies anthro­po­logy (with one of my favour­ite act­ors, Silvio Orlando who was a schem­ing car­din­al in The Young Pope), parties with a depressed American author (Gary Oldman play­ing John Cheever, author of “The Swimmer” which was made into a bril­liant Burt Lancaster film), flirts with hand­some Sandrino (Dario Aita) and fails to pre­vent the sui­cide of her devoted broth­er Raimondo (Daniele Rienzo).

After that tragedy, she finds her­self over the next few years wan­der­ing through a rogues’ gal­lery of Naples char­ac­ters includ­ing an act­ing coach in a mask, a phil­ander­ing but philo­soph­ic­al car­din­al and a Camorra boss.

This is one of Sorrentino’s road movies, like This Must Be the Place or The Great Beauty, where the cent­ral char­ac­ter searches for mean­ing in a priv­ileged but unex­amined life. Indeed, Parthenope is a great coun­ter­point to The Great Beauty – she is “The Great Beauty” but is no more ful­filled than the one search­ing for her.

Parthenope is a per­fect example of a woman who every­one must look at but that no one actu­ally sees, and Sorrentino’s film (while full of the kind of grot­esquer­ies and visu­al non sequit­urs that we love from him) also con­tains deep wells of loneli­ness. I was cap­tiv­ated by this film, not least because the gaze of the cam­era on Parthenope demands it. Which is sort of the point.

The con­tent below was ori­gin­ally paywalled.

Commendante (De Angelis, 2023)

Star of last year’s favour­ite thrill­er Last Night of Amore, Pierfrancisco Favino is Italy’s answer to Argentina’s Ricardo Darín – a sens­it­ive man’s man of a cer­tain age and ubiquity.

He plays the cap­tain of an Italian sub­mar­ine in 1940, head­ing off to sup­port the Axis effort to knock out British sup­ply lines in the North Atlantic. But his heart isn’t in it and he knows – like every­one on the boat – that his own chances of sur­viv­ing the war are slim.

When he sinks a Belgian freight­er – still sup­posedly neut­ral in 1940 – he decides to risk everything and bring the sur­viv­ors aboard. “We’re here to sink their iron,” he says, “Not the men.”

Despite the fact that his own crew are wast­ing away without enough fresh water and that he can’t sub­merge and is now a tar­get of Allied war­ships, he per­severes at try­ing to do the right thing when no one else would have a second thought.

There’s very little war in this war film – it’s about rela­tion­ships under pres­sure and refus­ing not sac­ri­fice your human­ity for an idea, espe­cially an idea that doesn’t belong to you.

Tense, as all good sub­mar­ine movies should be, the film is aided greatly by a very modern-sounding score from Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja. Highly recommended.

Family Matters aka Sei fratelli (Godano, 2024)

I wasn’t quite as taken by Family Matters though, start­ing with the rather limp title.

The pat­ri­arch of an exten­ded but not very well blen­ded fam­ily takes his own life, bring­ing his six chil­dren (from six dif­fer­ent moth­ers) all togeth­er for the first time. As you might expect, secrets will be revealed, fam­ily dis­ap­point­ments re-litigated and an inher­it­ance will be fought over.

A few of the incid­ents are plucked from The Big Chill book of clichés – unre­quited love becomes sud­denly requited, alco­hol­ic falls off the wag­on – and the most inter­est­ing char­ac­ter is the dead one who still man­ages to nar­rate the story from bey­ond the grave.

It’s well acted though, the Bordeaux set­ting is very attract­ive but the meta­phor of the pat­ri­arch blow­ing the fam­ily for­tune by try­ing to make pearls instead of oysters is a bit on the nose.