Suburra.

This was for me, at least, the best film I had the pleasure of see at Glasgow Film Festival 2016, in fact it was probably the best film I have seen this year. It’s not often that you come out from a screening and want to go straight back in and watch the same movie again. Could I have just witnessed a masterpiece in Italian filmmaking? Beautifully made, intelligently scripted and magnificently acted each of the characters making the story totally believable. Suburra (2015) includes corrupt politics, drug taking and dealing, extreme violence, the Catholic Church and sex.

 

Corrupt politicians.... 

Set in 2011 this fast paced thriller is steeped in the crime and corruption found at the heart of modern Rome and deals with the connection between organised crime and politics. At the heart of the story is politician Filippo Magradi (Pierfrancesco Favino who played Marco Polo’s father in the recent TV miniseries of that name) who thinks nothing of heading straight from a parliamentary debate to a night of sex with two prostitutes, one of them underage. When the latter dies of an overdose, a chain of events are set in motion that will see Magradi drawn into a net woven by Samurai (Claudio Amendola), a former right-wing terrorist turned organized crime boss who looks more like a bank manager than the ‘families’ representative. The corruption between the various parties involved in the movie centers around the coastal town of Ostia, a piece of down-market real-estate that the Italian Parlamento is voting to turn into an Italian Los Vegas – or not. If the vote is positive the interested parties know there a lot of money to be made.  

 

....organised crime....

....sex and drugs.

This neo-noir is directed by Stefano Sollima who was responsible for directing the TV series Romanzo Criminale (2010) and Gomorrah (2014) and is based on a novel by Carlo Bonini and Giancarlo De Cataldo. The movies brilliant atmosphere draws you in and its pace keeps you there. The electronic soundtrack is by French duo M83 and really adds to the movies ambiance. The movie was financed by Netflix and RAI and is due for a cinematic release in the UK in May 2016. As you may have gathered I cannot heap enough praise on this movie and I would encourage you to make a real effort to see it – you won’t be disappointed.

Salvo.

We first meet Salvo, a Mafia Hitman, during a 40c heat wave in Palermo as his boss Randisi is driving him to his latest assignment.  The car comes under attack in a very well planed ambush. Salvo goes after the attackers killing one but capturing a second who is forced to tell who set up the ambush before being executed. There’s a debt to settle and Salvo is sent to extract vengeance on Renato Pizzuto. When the hit man arrives at the much-feared rival’s house he only finds his blind sister Rita at home. Holding her captive until Pizzuto returns when he is able to complete his task. But for some reason he is unable to bring himself to kill the dead mans sister, instead he spares her life and takes her to a disused industrial estate and locks her up. But by lying to his boss, he tells him he has killed both siblings, he sets up an unexpected chain of events.

 

The mafia hitman Salvo.

The very brave Rita.

Directors Fabio Grasadonia and Antonio Piazza, who also wrote the story, present us with a movie that is slow paced, with very little dialog but this does not detract from your enjoyment of this meaningful film. Basically it’s a tale of two very different human beings. Salvo, whose strong physical presence is brilliantly portrayed by the Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri, is a character that say’s very little, a hard man whom never smiles and kills without a second thought. The directors/writers admit taking their inspiration for this individual from Jean-Pierre Melville Le Samourai starring Alain Delon. Another influence was the Spaghetti Western that can be easily spotted in the showdown in the industrial estate.  The dancer Sara Serraiocco, in her first feature film, plays the blind Rita with exceptional believability and as I said in my review for the UK Premiere for Greyhawk (2013) it’s never easy for an able sighted person to convincingly play a blind character.  Topping off this highly recommended film is the cinematography of Daniele Cipri whose camera angles give the film a certain unique style of its own.

Salo o le 120 giornate di Sodoma.

‘All things are good when taken to the extreme’ says one of the characters in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s final and most controversial film, it’s a statement that goes a long way to sum up the great Italian directors film career. I have enjoyed much of Pasolini’s body of work but even I must admit that Salo o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1975) content and imagery is extreme! ‘It retains the power to shock, repel and distress almost 40 years after its release, but remains a cinematic milestone – culturally significant, politically vital and visually stunning’[1] 

 

Inspecting the 'victims'

Happy families?

The movie exposes a degenerate mini world where sexual pleasure and death are the only significant things. It’s based on the novel 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade but is transposed from 18^th century France to the last days of the Republic of Salo where Benito Mussolini made a last stand at the end of World War 2. (Pasolini’s brother was actually killed in Salo a formative event that haunted him all his life![2]). The novel has been described as pornographic and erotic and although it was written in 1785 was not published until the 20^th century. 

 

The wedding.

Pasolini’s adaptation of the story retains de Sade’s original spirit. Four wealthy and powerful male libertines, The Duke, The Bishop The Magistrate and The President desire to experience the ultimate in depraved sexual gratification. To this end they kidnap nine teenage girls and nine teenage boys and take them to a large inaccessible Mansion for four months. Also in attendance are four middle-aged prostitutes three of whom recount stories to arouse the four men of power who in turn subject the teenagers to a series of sexual tortures and humiliations. The forth prostitute accompanies the telling of the stories, entitled Circle of Manias, Circle of Shit and Circle of Blood, on a piano.

The three ladies tell their arousing tales.

The film was made by Pasolini as a metaphor for Fascism (the worship of power for its own sake) and consumer capitalism and its production of junk food (the infamous scene where a naked young girl is forced to eat faeces) as well as his normal anticlerical stance (one of the libertine’s is a Bishop and we witness a wedding ceremony between two of the teenagers that is consummated by the libertine’s and not the bridegroom). The final scene, where the DOP’s camera replicates a pair of binoculars looking through a window seems to represent the final day’s of the Fascist regime where every decent thing that is left is destroyed and we witness strangulation, scalping, tongues cut out and nipples burned with red hot pokers all set to the music of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana.

One of the last pictures of the great director.

A powerful and disturbing film that will never be repeated, no director will ever again give us quite such an erotically profound political statement! Pasolini paid for this with his life. Shortly after it was finished he was murdered in suspicious circumstances that some observers say is related to his making of Salo others say it was due to his sexual orientation. Would I recommend you to watch this film? Yes I would pacifically because it is the final piece in a very great directors body of work and is ‘still relevant, still troubling’[3] and I would like to think that it still gives us all food for thought - wealth and corrupted power should never be the only criteria of our rulers.

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[1] British Film Institute 1998.

[2] Roger Clarke DVD Sleeve Notes.

[3] Time Out.

Le grande bellezza (The Great Beauty)

What is meant by ‘the real world’ and do any of us really want to live there? Jep Gambardella has reached the grand age of 65 and is beginning to dislike the shallow pretentious world he inhabits. Gambardella is a writer who works for an arts magazine and who seems to know every one who’s rich and famous. He recalls in voiceover how, arriving in Rome from Naples at the tender age of 26 he fell into ‘the vortex of high society’ "But I didn't want to simply be a socialite. I wanted to become the king of socialites. And I succeeded. I didn't just want to attend parties. I wanted the power to make them fail" A withering portrait of the city of Rome seen through the eyes of one of its inhabitants who lives the proverbial life of luxury.

 

The City of Rome.

This weeks Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre Film Club showing, Le grande bellezza or to give it its English title, The Grand Beauty (2013) premiered at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and is the Italian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86^th Academy Awards. Rachel Findlay our Film Club web site creator introduced the film and lead the discussion following its screening. Rachel began by giving the well-attended audience a little background to the director. The 43 year old Naples born Italian film director Paolo Sorrentino is best known for his portrait of the former, seven times, prime minister of Italy, Giulio Andreotti in the 2008 biographical drama film II Divo. Other films of note have been 2004’s Consequences of Love, a psychological thriller about a lonely and secretive Italian businessman living in a Swiss hotel. His first English language film This Must be the Place (2011) starred Sean Penn as a middle aged wealthy rock star who becomes bored in his retirement and decides to track down the Nazi war criminal who tormented his father. The director does tend to favour working with the same people, for instance the star of The Grand Beauty Toni Servillo has appeared in four of his films and the cinematographer Luca Bigazzi has know worked besides Sorrentino on five occasions. It is alleged that the death of the directors parents in an automobile accident when he was in his teens has affected his film work in which his main characters tend to be people whose best days are behind them.

 

You're never 65 again?

The film opens with the collapse of a Japanese tourist who is on a guided tour of the wonders of the great city of Rome. This opening shot takes place around the church of San Pietro in Montorio and is beautifully composed between the voice’s of the choir and the beauty of the location, it’s the doorway into the splendor and lushness of the remainder of this film which for me out weighs everything else in Sorrentino’s body of work to date. From there we are brought to Jep’s 65 birthday celebrations and we witness an amazingly choreographed parade of the invited guests dancing to a powerful techno beat, one which incidentally puts similar scenes in Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 The Great Gatsby to shame.

Like all the critiques I have read most of the RBC’s audience seemed to love the film especially the gentleman that had come all the way from Carlisle to view it for the third time. There is to be honest so much in this film that more than one viewing is absolutely essential[1]. It touches on lives that sit at the pinnacle of Rome’s decedent high society previously observed in films like Antonioni’s La Notte (1961) or Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960).  In fact in my opinion it mirrors the unpredictability of Fellini’s films, almost homage or tribute to the legendary Italian director.

The film is full of wonderful characters including the struggling middle aged actor Romano played by Carlo Verdone who is still enamored with Jep's first and only novel The Home Apparatus, Dadina (Giovanna Vignola) who is Jeb's straight talking editor and Ramona (the beautiful Italian actress Sabrina Ferilli) the daughter of an old friend who is still removing her clothes in a nightclub at the age of 42. Last but not least we have to mention the 105-year-old Sister Maria (Giusi Merli) who looks as though she has not eaten a decent meal in years, living a life for the benefit of the poor, quite the reverse from many of the other characters in the film.

 

A moments of reflection.

This latest movie confirms what many critics have been saying that Paolo Sorrentino has established himself as one of cinemas most confident stylist. His trademark use of music to distinctly underline what we see on screen and not just used as an aside. The appropriate use of soundtrack music can enhance a film if done in the correct manner, as it is this case with this film. Another characteristic of his work is filming in wide format to enhance the composition and beauty of the shoot.  This blog ends, as does the film, with the opening lines of Jep Gambardella first novel in twenty years: “Everything ends with death. But before, there is life. Hidden underneath the blah blah blah, buried under the chatter and noise, silence and emotion, emotion and fear – the tiny, sporadic flashes of beauty” Infrequent as they are!

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[1] DVD Release due 13^th January 2014.