More Italian Film Festival 2024.

I didn't get to all the likely material in the Italian Film Festival but the films I caught up with after my first report were a disappointment.

 Paola Cortellesi's C'è ancora domani / There's Still Tomorrow was prominent in the event after its whopping great success on home turf. The film offers a plausible Immediate Post WW2 setting with black and white images, Jeeps of U.S. MPs in the Travestere location streets and people wearing clothes we remember from the Neo Realist movies.

  There's Still Tomorrow - family.

They begin as they mean to go with husband Valerio Mastandrea (Bellochio's Fei bei sogni) waking in the morning and taking a swipe at wife Cortellesi, here pulling double duty as star and director. Just in case we haven't got the idea, he's been made a lookalike for Pietro Germi, when he was doing his macho man leads like Il ferroviere and L'uomo di paglia. 

Cortellesi's life is made miserable by the domestic violence, a couple of bratty boys who evaluate any development as a chance to get a separate room and a bed-ridden father-in-law who tells Mastranddrea his mistake was not marrying a cousin, in the family tradition. The one bright patch is twentiesish daughter Romana Maggiora Vergano, who is rapturous at being courted by the son of the local cafe owners, rumored to have made their bundle by selling out neighbors to the Germans during the war. That's even if Dad won't bankroll her education and wants Romana to go up the aisle in her mum's tattered old wedding dress, surrounded with flowers from the church's last funeral.

Paola does find support in the company of the neighborhood women, a friendly black G.I. with chocolate bars and the nice Autofficinia mechanic who missed his chance at marrying her and offers escape sharing his new job up North. There's also a mysterious envelope which, exceptionally, came addressed to her in person. The set piece is the tension-packed lunch meeting with the potential in-laws, which totters on the brink of calamity. Turns out the film's development is not however what we expect.

Cortellisi at work.

In the black comedy scheme of things, each one of Cortellisi's hopes is dashed until the ending. By that time it's become clear that what the film's supporters are embracing is content rather than entertainment value. Disturbing implausibilities mount. How is Paola able to conspire with the soldier when they don't have a common language? Did she really accumulate the cost of years of schooling with bank notes skimmed off her side hustles on clothing renovations and home injections and shoved in a biscuit tin? Will enfranchisement achieve instant reform? Stylistic choices are also dodgy. The beatings become slowmo ballet and, as the film continues, the small screen Academy Frame opening slowly expands to 'scope proportions for no particular reason. By that time a film that had started like a promising departure from what we are used to seeing has stretched viewer patience.

I'm clearly not the target audience for this one and it has found its public. Cortellisi, conspicuous in Come un gatto in tangenziale, again registers – so bona fortuna!

Paolo Sorentino’s success being the new Fellini is mixed, varying from the ponderous and pretentious La grande bellezza to occasionally imposing pieces like Youth or his Pope TV serieses. Somehow they never fill the promise of his 2004 Le Conseguenze dell'amore but he takes Tony Sevillo and bunga bunga girls along and homes in on things that are imposingly Italian - Catholics, high fashion, Roman ruins, pop music - so hope persists.

The new Parthenope is more of the same (switching Silvio Orlandi for Servillo) and merits the same mixed reception. Starting in 1950 with the delivery of a Golden Coach that would have done Anna Magnani proud, we get the open-air pool birth of our protagonist, who grows to be well-built Celeste Dalla Porta in a variety of revealing outfits.

 Parthenope - Dalla Porta & Sandrelli

By 1975, she has somehow become identified with Parthenope, the spirit of Sorentino’s Neapolitan home, which gives her an excuse to spend time in the bay in her swimmers as well as digressions into a threesome with her siblings, instruction from disfigured (botched plastic job) acting coach Isabella Ferrari and interacting with celebrities like Gary Oldman’s inexplicably top billed John Cheever or influencer (topical) Luisa Ranieri. Ah, but Dalla Porta’s not just a pretty face, acing Professor Orlandi’s anthropology course so that he clears a path for her to take over his position – surreal finale with the concealed progeny. Silvio warned her about dye-haired devil bishop Peppe Lanzetta but that doesn’t seem to deter her from letting him bring her on in gemstones (only) after his Miracle of San Genaro show and we end up in the present, where her character has morphed into Stefania Sandrelli sharing her lifetime of wisdom with her associates.

The dialogue is peppered with lines which it is hard to take as seriously as the makers do – “I don’t need anything but I like everything” “You don’t take advantage of beauty.” “Anthropology is seeing.” Put this together with the scenics and sex and it’s been compared to a long perfume commercial. I'm not about to spring to its defense. I’d rate it middle-range Sorentino.

 The event was into inclusivity, finding space for the English-speaking Conclave and Christophe Dans Paris Honoré's French language Marcello Mio, a peculiar piece where Chiara, Marcello Mastroiann's now middle-aged star-daughter (with Catharine Deneuve) does a makeover that makes her look like dad, to which real-life celebrities get to react.

Best thing about it is the succession of self-caricatures. While directing a scene where she wants Chiara to perform "more Deneuve than Mastroianni" harassed Nicole Garcia triggers an identity crisis. Mum Deneuve is nonplussed, which gives us a chance to see how she has developed as a performer. Fabrice Luchini gets into the spirit of things by embracing a fantasy where he becomes the star's buddy. His wife is as puzzled as the audience. Benjamin Biolay and Melvil Poupaud have to readjust their dealings with the newly transvestite Chiara ("cela me rend heureux")  Hugh Skinner (Falling for Figaro) has a particularly inexplicable subplot re-staging Le notti bianchi and Stefania Sandrelli picks our heroine out of a TV show line of imitators. Of course, action moves to the Trevi Fountain where the cops who take her away have to decide which gender cell she gets shoved into. Then they all go to the seaside.

Craft aspects are adequate but the revelation that would make all this embarrassing posturing legitimate never arrives. The impulse that drives the filmmaker is finally no clearer than the one for on-screen Chiara Mastroianni, last seen swimming out to sea topless. This one is disturbing and not in a good way.

Barrie Pattison 2024