‘We Have a Pope’ (Habemus Papam)

A rank outsider is elected by the Conclave as the new Pope. Taken unawares, the cardinal struggles to believe in himself with such responsibility.

At the death of the Pope, the Roman Catholic Conclave meet in the Vatican to elect a replacement. Cardinal Gregori (Renato Scarpa) is a clear favourite with the world media. But following extended voting, it’s neck and neck in a three horse race. A compromise is reached with outsider Michel Piccoli elected. With the world awaiting the announcement, il papa takes to his rooms and then slips away, reflecting on the position and his own capabilities.

An engaging, dialogue-based narrative of a single soul in crisis wandering the streets of Rome whilst his colleagues, unaware he has left the building, along with the rest of the world bide their time waiting.

Rating: 69%

Director: Nanni Moretti (Mia madre, The Son’s Room)

Writer: Nanni Moretti (Mia Madre, The Son’s Room), Francesco Piccolo (Human Capital, The Traitor), Federica Pontremoli (A Magnificent Haunting, The Caiman)

Main cast: Michel Piccoli (Belle de jour, Une étrange affaire), Nanni Moretti (Mia madre, The Son’s Room), Renato Scarpa (Don’t Look Now, Mia madre)

’Sicilian Ghost Story’

Disappointing psychological fantasy tale interwoven into a deeply disturbing (real case) kidnapping of a 13 year-old boy.

Young love blossoms as 13 year old Luna (Julia Jedlikowska) fantasises about her friendship with classmate Guiseppe (Gaetano Fernandez). His sudden disappearance from their Sicilian village appears to attract little attention from the authorities or the school. Rebelling against the silence and complicity, Luna descends deep into her own dark imagination.

Directed by Fabia Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza, Sicilian Ghost Story blurs its genres resulting in an unresolved double narrative uncertain in what direction it should take. Pan’s Labyrinth it is not – Luna’s fertive imagination is only half-baked, Guiseppe’s tragic kidnapping and murder by the Sicilian mafia misrepresented and disrespected.

Rating: 40%

Director: Fabia Grassadonia (Salvo), Antonio Piazza (Salvo)

Writer: Fabia Grassadonia (Salvo), Antonio Piazza (Salvo)

Main cast: Julia Jedlikowska, Gaetano Fernandez, Vincenzo Amato (Unbroken: Path to Redemption, Respiro), Sabine Timoteo (The Chronicles of Melanie, A Forgotten Man)

’The Great Beauty’

An extraordinary, vibrant single-shot rooftop party launches The Great Beauty as ageing author Jep Gambardella reflects on a life of shallow yet exquisite beauty.

Celebrating his 65th birthday, with his terraced penthouse overlooking the Colosseum, revered one-book wonder Gambardella (Toni Servillo) has charmed and seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades. Having arrived in the city 40 years earlier, as a socialite and newspaper columnist, he has reached the zenith in being the king of society and his opinions are craved. Yet Gambardella questions those years as he voyeuristically meanders through his beloved adopted city, catching glimpses of momentary absurdity, lunching with his publisher Dadina (Giovanna Vignola), conversing with long-term friend and wannabe playwright Romano (Carlo Verdone). As the futility of life spent becomes increasingly apparent, so friends and associates die off or disperse out of Rome. Yet, in all his wonderings and the meeting of new love, ex-stripper Ramona (Sabrina Ferelli) with her own secrets, Gambardella believes that he has the beginnings of his second novel.

Directed by Paolo Sorrentino, La grande bellezza is his homage to Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita. Not only is the Oscar-winning feature set among a lifestyle of excess, fame and pleasure focussing on a journalist and seducer, but also uses a similar narrative structure. The more traditional plot and character development is eschewed in favour of a series of non-linear encounters. The result is sumptuous yet overly indulgent – like Gambardella’s self-reflections, shallow yet exquisitely beautiful. Like La dolce vita, it’s all style over substance.

Won best foreign language film Oscar in 2014

Rating: 61%

Director: Paolo Sorrentino (The Hand of God, Loro)

Writer: Paolo Sorrentino (The Hand of God, Loro), Umberto Contarello (Loro, This Must Be the Place)

Main cast: Toni Servillo (Il divo, Loro), Carlo Verdone (Il mio miglior nemico, Manual of Love), Sabrina Ferelli (La bella vita, Tutta la vita davanti)

‘Bellissima’

With a tour de force central performance by Anna Magnani, Bellissima is a visceral tale of mother’s love and determination as Maddalena attempts, come what may, to secure a role in a film for her young daughter.

Looking to escape the poverty trap of post war Rome, Maddalena becomes obsessed with making Maria a star – starting with the latest film being made at Cinecittà Studios by renowned director Alessandro Blasetti (played by Blasetti himself). Sacrificing all home comforts and alienating husband Spartaco (Gastone Renzelli) in the process, she pays what she can to increase the chances of securing the role – including money to film set hustler Alberto (Walter Chiari) to pay out suitable bribes.

Bruising and turbulent, Luchino Visconti’s undervalued tragicomic send up of the Italian film industry is a powerful and compassionate narrative packed with passion and melodrama.

Rating: 84%

Director: Luchino Visconti (Rocco & His Brothers, Death in Venice)

Writer: Suso Cecchi D’Amico (Rocco & His Brothers, The Leopard), Francesco Rosi (Christ Stopped at Eboli, Illustrious Corpses), Luchino Visconti (The Leopard, Death in Venice)

Main cast: Anna Magnani (Rome Open City, The Rose Tattoo), Walter Chiari (Romance, Vanità), Gastone Renzelli (The Roof, Il commisario)

‘La notte’

Over one day and one night, lives unfold and bourgeois allusions questioned in director Michelangelo Antonioni’s slow yet revelatory story of a marriage.

Struggling with the news that friend Tommaso (Bernhard Wicki – Spider’s Web, Paris Texas) has terminal cancer, glamourous couple Lidia and Giovanni Pontano immerse themselves in their own worlds. At the celebratory reception for Giovanni’s (Marcello Mastroianni – La dolce vita, Leo the Last) latest novel, he basks in the glory whilst attempting to seduce Valentina (Monica Vitti – L’avventura, Modesty Blaise), the host’s daughter. Lidia (Jeanne Moreau – Jules et Jim, The Lovers) slips away unnoticed, wandering the deserted streets of Milan questioning her marriage.

Seemingly cold in its black and white stylishness, La notte is an existential question of life and death. It’s Italian verite cinema of Fellini, Antonioni, Pasolini and early Bertolucci – on the surface, a simple story of a disintegrating marriage that masks deeper personal and social questions. A little too long and indulgent, Antonioni’s (L’avventura, Blow-Up) feature is nevertheless engagingly complex and layered.

Rating: 76%

‘The Roof’

Poetic post-war social realism from Vittorio De Sica as a newlywed couple rush to finish an illegally-constructed building so they can have a home of their own.

With provincial law ensuring that no eviction is allowed from an illegal building once the roof is in place, Luisa (Gabriella Pallotta – Il grido, Gli italiani sono Matti) and Natale (Giorgio Listuzzi – Le notti bianche, Doctor Without Scruples) rally their friends to help build a small structure overnight on the outskirts of Rome. No matter how basic, anything is better than the current cramped arrangements where the couple share two rooms with six other family members.

Director Vittorio De Sica incorporates a general optimism with his grittier socio-political films such as Bicycle Thieves and Two Women but still celebrates collective solidarity of the working classes. A stirring masterpiece of melodrama and social critique.

Rating: 81%

‘Umberto D.’

A classic of post-war Italian neorealism, Umberto D is the story of an old man’s struggle to keep from falling from poverty into shame.

Umberto D. Ferrari (Carlo Battisti), a retired government worker, struggles to survive on his meagre pension. Behind on his rent, his landlady threatens to evict him unless he can pay the 15,000 lire owing within the next few days. Selling personal possessions fails to raise the necessary amount. Whilst sympathetic and on friendly terms with Umberto and his beloved dog, Filke, the young maid of the house (Maria-Pia Casilio – Thérèse Raquin, An American in Rome) cannot help him.

In choosing to work with an almost exclusively non-professional cast, director Vittorio De Sica (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Bicycle Thieves) achieves an ingrained sense of unadorned authenticity. Mundane simplicity is both dramatic and poetic as Umberto’s despair slowly unfolds.

Nominated for the 1957 best writing Oscar (five years after it was first released in Italy).

Rating: 74%

 

‘A Ciambra’

When his father and older brother Cosimo are arrested, 14 year old Pio Amato appoints himself head of his Romani family living in a run down Calabrian estate.

A strutting teenager, he’s more than adept at surviving on the streets and following in his brother’s footsteps. But there’s little in the way of a true sense of dramatic tension within A Ciambra – director Jonas Carpignano (Mediterranea, A Chiara) choosing to focus more on a fly-on-the-wall style documentary as Pio flits between tough-boy home life and a more vulnerable teenager among the equally marginalised and unwanted African community.

With its largely non-professional cast with many from the same Amato family, A Ciambra is a raw commentary on the less visible issues of European migration along with the exploration of Pio’s emerging understanding of manhood. Combined, Carpignano is highlighting the vicious circle that encompasses marginalised communities as Pio puts family first above his friendship with Ayiva (Koudous Siehon – Mediterranea, A Chiara).

Rating: 67%

‘I Am Love’

Elegant in its telling of personal and sexual awakening, I Am Love is a painterly yet thrilling brushstroke of a traditional narrative as Emma Recchi (Tilda Swinton – Snowpiercer, The French Dispatch) transitions from faithful but repressed wife and mother to passionate lover.

Married into the wealthy Milanese industrialist family, Emma is the perfect host and mother to her three twenty something children. A bored dilettante of sumptuous meals, shopping and lunches out, her main confidant is housekeeper, Ida (Maria Paiato – La pelle dell’orso,  Il testimone invisibile). But life and aspirations change when eldest son, Edoardo (Flavio Parenti – Parlami d’amore, To Rome With Love) introduces friend and potential business partner Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini – Ovosodo, Ora o mai più) to the family.

It’s a grand sweep of a feature with a gorgeously brash and climactic score by John Adams (Run Lola Run, Call Me By Your Name) and directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, A Bigger Splash).

Nominated for best costume design Oscar in 2011.

Rating: 79%

‘Amarcord’

A nostalgic reflection on life in a small Italian coastal town over a period of one year in the 1930s as told in a series of vignettes by director Federico Fellini (La dolce vita, La strada).

Centred primarily around the young Titta (Bruno Zanin – The Good Soldier, City Under Siege) and his family, snapshots of the everyday are interspersed with teenage fantasies and scenes highlighting the national fervour stoked by Mussolini. The visit by Il Duce to the town is balanced by Titta’s father, Aurelio (Armando Brancia – Mogliamante, Il gatto) being questioned by the authorities for his anti-fascist opinions. Town beauty Gradisca (Magali Noël – Rififi, La dolce vita) attracts attention from more than just the authorities whilst the annual spring bonfire and the Mille Miglia car race passing through the town provide celebrations for all.

Loosely autobiographical, Amarcord is a fragmentary world of memory and imagination, with characters lacking any real substance, created for the viewers cinematic entertainment. Italian tropes abound as the family fight over the pasta, the buxom Gradisca stops (male) traffic, the Blackshirts march through the town. It’s all a little unnerving and superficial, a bloated circus of emptiness.

Winner of the 1975 film in a foreign language Oscar, nominated for best director and original script Oscars in 1976.

Rating: 50%