Italian

The Great Beauty: decadence, stunning imagery and the beauties of Rome itself

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As The Great Beauty (La grande belleza) begins, its protagonist Gep Gambardella is celebrating his 65th birthday in a feverishly hedonistic party.  Gep authored a successful novel in his twenties, which has since allowed him the indulgent life of a celebrity journalist, bobbing from party to party among Rome’s shallow rich.  Gep is having a helluva time, but now he reflects on the emptiness of his milieu and the superficial accomplishments of his past 40 years.  As he alternates introspection and indulgence, we follow him through a series of strikingly beautiful Roman settings.  (And, because Gep  parties all night, we see lots of gorgeously still Roman dawns.)

The Great Beauty is foremost an extraordinarily beautiful art film. If you’ve been to Rome, you know that it is a generally chaotic city with unexpected islands of solitude.  The Great Beauty captures this aspect of the Eternal City better than any other film I’ve seen.  On one level, The Great Beauty is very successful Rome porn.

Writer-director Paolo Sorrentino also explores the moral vacuity of the very rich and the party life. It’s the Italy of Silvio Berlusconi, whom Sorrentino blames for enabling a national culture of escapism.  These themes, along with the main character and the movie’s structure are of course nearly identical to Fellini’s great La Dolce Vita (1960), but The Great Beauty is more accessible, funnier and a bit more hopeful – and much more of a showcase for the cityscape of Rome.  Sorrentino provides plenty of laughs, especially with a gourmet-obsessed cardinal and a cadaverous celebrity nun with a Mephistopheles-looking handler.

It’s hard to imagine an actor better suited to play Gep than Toni Servillo.  Servillo perfectly captures both the happiness Gep takes in carnal pleasure and his self-criticism for giving his entire life to it.  Servillo’s Gep is brazenly proud of his own cynicism, until we see his humanity breaking through at a funeral.  Servillo is even magnificent in wearing Gep’s impressive collection of sports jackets.

There’s so much to The Great Beauty – stunning imagery, introspection, social criticism, sexual decadence, fine performances, humor and a Rome travelogue – each by itself worth a visit to the theater.  The Great Beauty, which will be one of the favorites for the Best Foreign Language Oscar, may not be in theaters for very long – catch it while you can.

DVD/Stream of the Week: We Have a Pope

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WE HAVE A POPE

It’s Papal Conclave Week here at the Movie Gourmet, and my weekly DVD pick is last year’s Italian comedy We Have a Pope (Habemus Papam) – also available on Netflix Instant.  In We Have a Pope, the papal conclave elects a Pope, but just as he is about to be introduced to the faithful, he cries out and shrinks from the balcony.  He is having a severe panic attack, and the Curia secretly sends for a psychiatrist to get him in emotional shape for a public appearance.  After some awkward attempts at individual talk therapy (with the therapist and patient surrounded by cardinals), the Pope-elect bolts from the Vatican and runs off on his own, pursued by frantic Pope-handlers.

If this premise weren’t funny enough,the psychiatrist himself can probably be diagnosed as a narcissist and becomes obsessed with organizing the cardinals into a volleyball tournament.   Another shrink diagnoses every patient with parental deficit.  The cardinals are a quirky and flawed bunch, and the Vatican bureaucrats are suitably sinister.

The troubled Pope is played by the great French actor Michel Piccoli (Contempt, Belle De Jour, La belle noiseuse).  Piccoli embues his character with humanity and authenticity –  he is not a weak or crazy man, just a good and able guy who is unable to shoulder great responsibility at this stage of his life.  Writer-director Nanni Moretti plays the shrink and is himself very funny.

We Have a Pope makes a fine double feature with the sober documentary Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, currently playing on HBO.

DVD of the Week: The Salt of Life

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The Salt of Life (Gianni e le donne) is a gently funny and insightful comedy about a certain time in a man’s life. In the lives of men who are not rich, famous or powerful, there comes a time when attractive young women no longer see them as potential lovers. This is painful for any guy, and our contemporary Roman hero Gianni, with the help of his portly lawyer/wing man, sets out to deny that he has reached this plateau.

In a standard movie fantasy, some adorable young hottie would come to appreciate Gianni’s true appeal and find him irresistible. But in The Salt of Life, the story is more textured, complex and realistic.

The Salt of Life stars and is written and directed by Gianni Di Gregorio, just like the very fun Mid-August Lunch. It is definitively a movie for guys of a certain age and the women who tolerate them, as well as the younger guys who will become them.

Sorry, no subtitles yet on the trailer embedded here. You can watch the English subtitled trailer on IMDb.

The Salt of Life: men will be boys

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The Salt of Life (Gianni e le donne) is a gently funny and insightful comedy about a certain time in a man’s life.  In the lives of men who are not rich, famous or powerful, there comes a time when attractive young women no longer see them as potential lovers.  This is painful for any guy, and our contemporary Roman hero Gianni, with the help of his portly lawyer/wing man, sets out to deny that he has reached this plateau.

In a standard movie fantasy, some adorable young hottie would come to appreciate Gianni’s true appeal and find him irresistible.  But in The Salt of Life, the story is more textured, complex and realistic.

The Salt of Life  stars and is written and directed by Gianni Di Gregorio, just like the very fun Mid-August Lunch.  It is definitively a movie for guys of a certain age and the women who tolerate them, as well as the younger guys who will become them.

Sorry, no subtitles yet on the trailer embedded here.  You can watch the English subtitled trailer on IMDb.

 

Le Quattro Volte: that Italian goatherd movie you’ve been demanding

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In the first 30 minutes of Le Quattro Volte, a septuagenarian goatherd struggles up and down a Calabrian mountain with his goats, hacking away with a worsening old man cough.  Up and down go the goats.  Cough, cough goes the old man.

Then, suddenly (and I mean suddenly), a baby goat is born.  It is licked by its mother.  It hangs out with other young goats.  It walks off with the herd.

Then, a tall tree on the mountain is cut down by the villagers and erected in the village for a festival.  After the festival, it is taken down and cut up.

The logs are added to a woodpile that we see constructed in the traditional way, and charcoal is made.  Then the movie ends.

I understand that Le Quattro Volte is supposed to be a lyrical contemplation on the Circle of Life.  Indeed, I really tried to give myself to this movie, to settle in and absorb its rhythm.  But the stories are not compelling enough.  When I saw the movie at an afternoon show, audience members were falling asleep.  My mind was wandering.

Le Quattro Volte has received very high praise from some of the most respected movie critics, who found it mesmerizing.  It also won the Best European Film award at Cannes, causing another theater patron at my screening to ask “Who voted?”.  It’s an art movie with the art, but no movie.

 

 

Mid-August Lunch

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This is a wry Italian comedy about a contemporary Roman bachelor in his 50s who is saddled with housing his mother AND the mothers of three friends in his ordinary apartment during a getaway weekend. The old gals relish his attention and the freshly caught fish, the baked eggplant and, especially, the macaroni casserole. Here are recipes from the movie.  Starring and written and directed by Gianni Di Gregorio.  Made my list of Food Porn Movies.